Georgetown Contributes to Islamic Bioethics Field
Interview with Frieda Wiebe and Zoreh Frouzan
The Bioethics Research Library at Georgetown University and Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service Library in Qatar were awarded a three-year grant by the Qatar National Research Fund to develop an international information resource on Islamic Medical and Scientific Ethics. Georgetown’s Office of Communications recently sat down with Frieda Wiebe, Library Director at Georgetown’s Qatar campus and Co-Principal Investigator, and Zoreh Frouzan, Librarian and Indexer, to discuss the project and its contributions to the field of Islamic bioethics.
What is bioethics?
Frieda Wiebe: Bioethics typically relates to medical and scientific ethics. It’s an interesting topic especially because it is multidisciplinary. There are ethical issues to be addressed in almost every scientific and medical endeavor. Recently, stem cell research has been the big issue in bioethics.
What is Islamic bioethics?
Zoreh Frouzan: Islamic bioethics refers to scientific and medical ethics as seen in predominantly Muslim countries. Because Islam was revealed before the birth of modern medicine, there is no direct mention of issues like cloning, organ transplantation, and in vitro fertilization. Islamic bioethics looks at these issues and attempts to provide some guidance using Islamic law and principles. And not all scholars come to the same conclusions. There are differences between the way Shi’I and Sunni Muslims view abortion, for example. In addition, you have the different schools of thought within Islam that have their own rules.
When people hear the term Islamic bioethics they don’t necessarily associate it with libraries. Could you explain your contribution to this field?
FW: The reason for a specialized research project to bring together literature on bioethics is because it’s not a straightforward topic. Take for instance, a topic like Islamic Law. If you look for books on Islamic law they would more or less be classified in the same area of a library collection. But with bioethics, you could have a book in the medical section, you could have a book in the sociology section, or you could have a book in the theology section. You could basically have a book anywhere that had a chapter on bioethics. So it’s a very interdisciplinary subject and that’s why it’s important to bring it together by indexing materials within books, or articles within journals that discuss bioethics topics.
How did Georgetown’s library in Qatar become involved in the project?
FW: The Kennedy Institute of Ethics is located at Georgetown University, and their library, the Bioethics Research Library is the world’s first library dedicated to the study of bioethics. The book holdings of the Bioethics Research Library are included in the Georgetown Library database. Their collection includes mainly English-language material, and although they had materials on Islamic bioethics (in English) before we started the project, they were really interested in expanding that collection and including materials in Arabic and Farsi languages. They began looking for a partner to help with this endeavor and our library at Georgetown University in Qatar seemed to be an appropriate fit.
How do you go about finding and compiling the related material?
ZF: For my part, I look through other databases, contact universities, and get in touch with people in the field. As I find appropriate articles and materials, I begin the indexing process and send them to our senior indexer in Washington, DC where they are also uploaded to our database.
Where do you find material on Islamic bioethics?
ZF: We are getting material mainly from three countries: Iran, Kuwait, and Egypt. We have also been receiving fatwas from Saudi Arabia.
What are some of the challenges that you’ve faced along the way?
FW: There is a lot of scholarly literature on ethics in Islam. Narrowing the search down specifically to literature on bioethical topics is a challenge. I would say however, that the main challenge has been the structure of the existing database, which is not able to handle Arabic and Farsi script. So at the moment, we are researching other database structures with the aim of providing access to the indexed materials in Arabic and Farsi as well as English.
How has this project been received regionally?
ZF: Doris Goldstein, the Principal Investigator and Director of the Bioethics Research Library, and I attended a conference in Turkey where we discussed our project and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Now that we have started collecting such materials we are getting more information on the subject than what we originally anticipated. We have met many scholars who are excited about the work we are doing. For example, I called a doctor in Iran a few days ago and as soon as I mentioned my name he got excited and said he was very familiar with our project and wanted to contribute. More recently, Iran has created two excellent databases on articles published in the country’s medical journals – one at the Medical Ethics and History of Medicine Research Center at Tehran University of Medical Sciences and the other is IranMedex. They’ve each been generous enough to let us use their database for free.
Who will this database serve?
FW: It’s meant to serve the region and the world. It’s an international index and database available to everybody. And in addition to the bibliographic database, we’re planning on building a physical collection that will be housed in the Central Library of Education City. One of the major contributions of this project is that it will make material that was previously inaccessible, whether due to geography or language, accessible to everyone.
How does the project impact Qatar?
FW: Islamic bioethics is a subject area of growing importance all over the world. The Qatar Foundation very appropriately funded this project as one of its National Priorities Research Program projects because of Qatar’s plan to become a research hub. So it’s absolutely appropriate that they should have a literature database on bioethics and particularly, Islamic bioethics. With the development of these collections it will become increasingly clear that research in all areas is dependent upon the availability of scholarly materials. Also, I think in the future, the Central Library, and its role in supporting research should become really significant.
How has collaboration between Georgetown’s main campus and the Qatar campus helped enhance the scope of the project?
FW: This collaboration has been superb. Before the project began, we weren’t fully aware of the tremendous job that the Kennedy Institute of Ethics was doing in this field. The team in DC has provided excellent guidance and support that has helped us get the results we’ve been able to achieve to this point. Likewise, by being in the region we’ve been able to expand their scope simply by acting as a hub. As we mentioned before, we have made great contacts in the region and people are becoming more aware of what we’re doing and are sending us information that would have been harder to obtain from Washington, DC. Our staff members in Qatar are also fluent in either Arabic or Farsi, so that’s made the collection of material easier as well.
How does this project help fulfill Georgetown’s mission?
FW: Georgetown University places great emphasis on interfaith dialogue and interfaith understanding. In particular, Georgetown does a great deal of work in the area of enhancing Muslim-Christian understanding and I think that agenda is furthered significantly through this project.