Organ Transplants, Islam, and the Struggle for Human Dignity in Egypt
"Based on extensive research in Egypt, this powerful, deeply disturbing ethnography causes readers to question commonly held assumptions about the organ transplant enterprise. Hamdy, acutely sensitive to the destructive forces of extreme poverty, argues against an ethics of codified rules whether religious or secular, and for a flexible bioethics situated in the historical, socio/economic and religious realities of Egyptians' daily life."--Margaret Lock, co-author of An Anthropology of Biomedicine “This is the best ethnography yet available on Islamic ethical reasoning and medical practice. Hamdy presents a truly sophisticated and nuanced portrayal of the organ transplant debate in Egypt and its larger implications for the Middle East and medicine.” --John Bowen, author of A New Anthropology of Islam “Our Bodies Belong to God is a sensitive and original exploration of how religious ethics inform the practice of medicine for doctors, patients and policy makers alike. This will be read widely in medical anthropology and the field of ethics.” --Saba Mahmood, author of Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject
Taha Hussein, one of the leading figures of the nahda, whose autobiography The
Days (al-Ayam) has become one of the best-known works of modern Arabic
literature, suffered from trachoma as a child in a poor Egyptian village. When the
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