Permissibility of organ donation in Islam - The opinion of lay Muslims in Britain

This Masters thesis follows on from the 2019/20 undergraduate research dissertation by the
same author which documented the interview responses of non-scholarly (lay) Muslims in
relation to their opinions about the permissibility of organ donation in Islam. The
undergraduate primary research study findings broadly concluded that Muslims in Britain are
grappling with their positionality regarding the permissibility of posthumous organ donation
because there is an absence of absolute divine decree from the Qur’an and Sunnah. There
is however a spectrum of permissibility in Islam derived from the Qur’an and Sunnah based
on methodological reasoning within the scholarly Sharia framework as expressed by
numerous scholars. Thus, theological, social, and ethical debates amongst Muslims were
commonplace with the advent of the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act 2019, which
came into effect in England in May 2020. The study found that at individual level, Muslims
face multifaceted forums of theological discourse ranging from the opinions of known
scholars, respected elders, their own interpretation of ancient scholarly text and a booming
global online community of scholars and commentators, which is why lay Muslims were
inclined to opt out of deemed consent. The discussion is pertinent because British Muslims
are disproportionately represented through Black, Asian, and other Minority Ethnic (BME)
people, who are under-represented organ donors. According to 2019 NHS statistics; 408
patients needing an organ transplant died while awaiting a suitable donor.
In this ethnographical research, volunteer participants from multi-generational households
are interviewed about their views on posthumous organ donation in Islam. The study
highlights intergenerational trends between three generations of mainly labour migrants
owing to the demography of those participants who volunteered to take park in this study.
This primary research demonstrates a paradigm of moral dilemmas; adherence to customary
practice vis-à-vis making informed choices while achieving sharia (doctrinal legal)
compliance. This deeply contextual analysis considers the esoteric through societal
discourse to develop an understanding of the ethical deliberations for Muslims in Britain who
are straddling between cultures and interpretations of religious text.