The Organ Transplant Debate in Egypt: a Social Anthropological Analysis

Abstract

In this paper, I take the heated debate about the ethics of organ transplantation in Egypt, to ask why Egypt is the only Muslim country in the world that has, for the past three decades, been unable to pass legislation for a national organ transplant program. Why is it that patients and even physicians articulate their antipathy to organ transplantation in terms of “Islam” when most Muslim scholars of Islamic law have argued that the donation of organs is permissible? I argue that we cannot reduce the question of the ethics of organ donation in Egypt to abstract Islamic legal categories (permissible (mubâh) or impermissible (harâm) – as analysts both within and outside the Muslim world are apt to do. Doing so overlooks the pervasive problem of social inequalities that persist in the Egyptian medical system. In the context of vast discrepancies in health status and health care delivery, ordinary Egyptians are wary of medical institutions’ claims of re-using body parts for the common good.