1 2 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 4 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 1 8 Contemporary Islamic religious publications for both expert and lay believers point out that a woman was wrongly condemned in the past for giving birth to a daughter instead of a son because she cannot make a decision about the sex of a child. She does not bear any responsibility in this question and therefore there’s no sense to scold her for that and attack her (Jakubović 1997, 16). This is explained using the cytogenetic explanation that the female egg contains only the chromosome X, whereas the sperm can be either chromosome X or Y. The female (XX) is born if the egg is fertilized with the X chromosome sperm; the boy (XY) is born when an egg is fertilized with sperm with Y chromosome. The responsibility for the sex of the child is therefore fully on the male sex chromosome (Taslaman 2016, 173). To keep the principle of consensus on science and faith, the authors point out to the Qur’anic text: “that He created pairs, male and female sexes from one sprouted drop of seed” [5] (Qur’an 53:45–46). They deduce that the Qur’an claimed 1400 years ago that the sex of a child depends on the genetic basis of sperm, which until recently has not been known to science. 4 Discussion The basic premise of human reproduction in Islam is the institution of marriage, the contractual relationship of men and women, respectively man and a maximum of four women, who is he able to provide the same standard, to secure their housing and nutrition. The man has to choose a suitable wife, who will be a good educator for their common children. The child has the right to a Muslim name and religious education, especially to the knowledge and memorizing of the Qur’an (Hájek and Bahbouh 2016, 49). Allah gives a baby to spouses as a gift. Allah is also a Donor of reason and consequently also the achievements of science that serve the benefit of humanity. Therefore, Muslim spouses are invited to use the achievements of science also in the area of reproduction. Medieval conception of formation of sexes presented in Ibn Qayyim’s work takes over the antique conception of existence of two types of semen: male and female. The existence of female semen is presented in several works of Hippocratic tradition: De victu, De morbis, De mulierum affectibus, De natura pueri, andDe genitura (De semine). Next to this conception antiquity had also another one: that the father is the only procreator, and the mother plays the role of keeper and nourisher of his seed. The author of De victu believes, that fertilization is possible only in one day per month; he writes on the changes of humidity of the uterus on which the success of the fertilization depends. He describes the inception of new human being as a mixture of two parental seeds, that could be of both sexes (Hippokrates 2012, 524–525). Depending on the process of genesis of new being, the author of De victu speaks in its 28th chapter of three types of males, and later in 29th chapter of three types of females that can be formed (Hippokrates 2012, 469–471). Here we can find also the origin of Ibn Qayyim’s conception of predomination (in his words: overriding and overpowering) of male and female semen, which determine the sex of conceived embryo. There is a dualism of the strong one, and the weak one. This dualism, or better to say, oppositeness is also present in the De victu’s explanation of the nature of males and females: while males lean towards fire and are growing because of the food and diet that are dry and warm, females lean towards water and are growing thanks to food and diet that are wet, cold and mild [6]. At the end of our analysis of Ibn Qayyim’s inspiration by the doctrine of De victu in the topic of the origin of sexes we would like to mention, that to already intoduced particularities, diet has to be added. InDe victu it is said, that concrete diet can influence the formation of male or female sex in embryo. Analogously, Ibn Qayyim speaks of the diet as a key factor in the issue of prettiness or ugliness of future child. In order to encourage reproduction in spouses who are unable to conceive the offspring naturally, Islam allows to use ARTs to the extent that complies with the requirements of religious writings and conclusions of Islamic scholars in fiqh and medicine. However, it is interesting that on the list of great sins, which includes the change of Allah’s creature in terms of intervention in the body for beauty and wearing a wig, are according to the magazine Preporod of Islamic community in Bosnia and Herzegovina still in 2003 both usage of ARTs, clonning and sex selection (without mentioning medical indications connected to X-linked diseases) (Sedić 2003, 3). This example clearly shows, how big is the difference between islamic scientific perception of specific religious problems and between their interpretation by mullahs to laity. Although there are always some exceptional cases of Muslim infertile spouses who are interested in the attitude of religious authorities to state-of-the-art in ARTs, the communities of Muslim-believers are generally much more reticent and more conservative in their attitudes. But to be fair, we have to mention that in 2017, in this same magazine Preporod, an interview with the distinguished Bosnian professor of tafsir, Enes Karić, was published, and Karić has significantly shifted the paradigm of the connection between the conclusions of the historical Islamic authorities and the present world presented in this magazine when he said: “Of course, we need traditions, history, and historical studies, we also need to study the past, but in no way in the manner to get drunk on the past and that we out of this ‘drunkenness’ project a falsified
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzgxMzI=