Shiites and Sunnis Disagree Over Cloning

Iranian scientists have successfully cloned a sheep, a feat of less scientific than symbolic import: Iran sees biotechnology, along with nuclear power and a space program, as central to its scientific renaissance.

However, the cloned sheep's birth wasn't met with unanimous approval among Muslim religious leaders. Reports the Associated Press,

Iran's cloning program has won backing from the Shiite Muslim religious leaders, who have issued decrees authorizing animal cloning but banning human reproductive cloning. A majority of Iran's nearly 70 million people are Shiite Muslims.

In contrast, Sunni Muslim religious leaders — including senior clerics in Saudi Arabia — have banned cloning altogether, even in animals.

The AP doesn't follow up on that line of inquiry, but it's enough to raise a fascinating and somewhat troubling question: what will the ethical quandaries posed by biotechnology, already bitterly contested in the
United States and Western Europe, mean in the Muslim world?

I wrote about Muslim biotech for Wired Science before, but treated their religious customs as something uniform and settled -- a very sloppy piece of reductionism. The AP article drove home the painfully obvious point that Sunnis, Shiites and other Muslims might actually disagree about stem cells, cloning, genetic engineering and other controversial biotechnologies.

Let's just hope the disagreements stay civil.

Iran Says First Cloned Sheep Thriving [Associated Press]
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Image: Associated Press*

See Also:

• Finding Math in the Muslim World
• Is Science Dead in the Muslim World?
• Malaysian Muslim, First Female Space Station Commander and a Whip ...
• Stem Cells and the Rebirth of Islamic Science