Religion and
Innovation in Human Affairs
Grant Recipients
Religion,
Progress, and
Innovation in the
Contemporary World Science and the
Human Person:
Catholic, Muslim, and
Secular Approaches to
Genetic Engineering
Award
Amount: $100,000 PI:
R. Scott Appleby;
Abdulaziz Sachedina
(co-investigator) Sponsoring
Institution: Kroc
Institute for
International Peace
Studies, University of
Notre Dame
The goals of the Project
are: 1) to bring
Catholic, Muslim, and
secular scholars,
intellectuals, and
religious leaders into
dialogue around common
issues faced in
biomedical ethics,
including their impact
upon understanding of
the human person; 2) to
disseminate the methods
and findings of Islamic
bioethics more broadly
among Muslim and
“Western” publics; and
3) to publish and
otherwise disseminate
the substantive
dialogues among
Catholic, Muslim, and
secular theologians,
scientists, philosophers
and bioethicists. The
major questions to be
addressed are:
a) How have
philosophers,
theologians, ethicists,
and leaders from
Catholic/Christian and
secular communities and
institutions grappled
with the moral dilemmas
raised by modern
biotechnologies and
medical science? How
have these adjustments
and ethical and/or
theological
deliberations affected
their perceptions of the
human person and human
life? b) Can some of the
fruits of these
deliberations and
hard-won insights be
made available and
become useful to Muslim
legal scholars,
ethicists, religious and
cultural leaders, and
others who are seeking
to develop and advance a
new, modern field of
Islamic Bioethics? And
c) What point of
overlapping consensus
and potential
collaboration emerge
from the process of
surveying controversial
medical practices and
ethical deliberations
across Muslim societies
and engaging Muslim
thinkers in conversation
with Catholics and
secularists who have and
are negotiating similar
moral terrain? The chief
outcomes of the Project
will be two conferences,
and an edited volume on
the topic.
R. Scott
Appleby is
professor of history at
the University of Notre
Dame, where he serves as
the John M. Regan, Jr.
Director of the Kroc
Institute for
International Peace
Studies and as director
of the Contending Modernities
initiative. From 1988 to
1993 he was co-director
of the Fundamentalism
Project, an
international public
policy study conducted
by the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences.
Appleby is the author or
co-author of Strong
Religion: The Rise of
Fundamentalisms Around
the World (University
of Chicago Press, 2003);
The
Ambivalence of the
Sacred: Religion,
Violence and
Reconciliation
(Rowman and Littlefield,
2000); Church and
Age Unite! The
Modernist Impulse in
American Catholicism (University
of Notre Dame Press,
1992); and the editor
of, among other books, Spokesmen for
the Despised:
Fundamentalist Leaders
of the Middle East
(University of Chicago
Press, 1997). He
co-chaired the Chicago
Council on Global
Affairs’ Task Force,
which last year released
the influential report
“Engaging Religious
Communities Abroad: A
New Imperative for U.S.
Foreign Policy.”
Abdulaziz A.
Sachedina is
the Frances Myers Ball
Professor of Religious
Studies at University of
Virginia and is one of
the world’s leading authorities
on the ethical dilemmas
posed to Islam by modern
science. He is the
author of several books,
including Islamic
Biomedical Ethics:
Theory and Application
(Oxford
University Press, 2009),
as well as several
journal articles on the
subject. He has served
on the advisory board of
the Center for Bioethics
of the University of
Virginia, on the
editorial board of the Journal of
Religious Ethics,
and as director of the
Organization for Islamic
Learning.
Modernities
initiative. From 1988 to
1993 he was co-director
of the Fundamentalism
Project, an
international public
policy study conducted
by the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences.
Appleby is the author or
co-author of S
authorities
on the ethical dilemmas
posed to Islam by modern
science. He is the
author of several books,
including 
