A recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics challenged the right of Muslim doctors to refuse to examine patients of the opposite sex. Robert Card reported cases of conscientious objection by Muslim medical students in the UK.
Card assumes that “clinical activities requiring touching members of the opposite sex would violate such Muslim students’ religious Law, ethics and medicine”.
However, an Australian academic formerly based in the UAE, Michelle McLean, has challenged Card’s fundamental assumption. In her response, She asserts that Muslim doctors are permitted to perform such procedures and cites several ancient and modern Muslim scholars. As several guidebooks for Muslim doctors state, cross-gender examination was permitted even in the time of Mohammed, when battle situations made it necessary. McLean writes that, even in the UAE, she had never witnessed or heard of a male or female student refusing a cross-gender examination.
When the cases of conscientious objection received media attention in Britain, a number of Muslim leaders criticized the refusniks. Both the Muslim Council of Britain and Muslim Doctors and Dentists Association refused to support the students’ campaign.
Categories: Asia, Saudi Arabia, UK, United Arab Emirates
Would a dead body complain or an anesthetized one for that matter?
Conservative people are anal retentive’s always having conniptions about something. Now I know why growing up in a big family has made such a difference for me personally. Pays to have a flexible perspective on basic things.
You just learn to ‘whack things with a spade’ and get on with life rather than split hairs.
Another case of analysis paralysis in the WWWW Wonder wide wacky world.
I’m muslim. And i’m gonna say that there is no rule or law that muslim’s doctors can’t touch opposite gender patients. I myself go to a opposite gender doctor. Even most of the nurses in our country, are women, and they touch the opposite gender. And there’s nothing bad about it because the purpose of all these people is to cure and help their patients.