Research Focus

I am interested in moral issues connected with medical practice, as well as research related to life and death, organ donation, abortion, the ethics of stem cell research, genetic editing, genetic engineering, and patient-care in chaplaincy. I examine what kind of partnership exists between medicine and religion and how it can help provide answers to the difficult questions about the end of human life. Religiously-informed bioethics endeavors to respond to unrequited suffering and provide hope to cure irremediable and genetically inherited diseases by understanding the value of faith in supernatural sources that are provided by spiritual and moral resources in world religions.

Current Projects

■ Defining the ethical parameters of human conduct in view of the two essential resources that guide every person to adhere to the right course of action: reason and revelation

■ Studying the relationship between law and ethics in Islam and the methodology that is evolving to accommodate social and political transformation under the impact of secular modernization

■ Examining whether or not there can be an uninterrupted relationship between spirituality and morality to direct human efforts to establish justice and equity that is universal enough to bypass religious pluralism in its application of commonly understood reciprocal responsibility

■ Investigating the role of conscience in medical practice and research: is it solely determined by universal reason, or does it accept the jurisdiction of divine revelation?

Select Publications

■ Sachedina, A. (2009). Islamic biomedical ethics: Principles and application. OUP USA.

■ Sachedina, A. (2009). Islam and the challenge of human rights. Oxford University Press.

■ Sachedina, A. (2009). Islamic perspectives on the ethics of stem cell research. In Controversies in science & technology Volume 2: From climate to chromosomes. Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Publishers.

■ Sachedina, A. (2006). The search for Islamic bioethics principles. In Principles of health care ethics (2nd ed., pp. 117-125). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.