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Biomedicine as Global Assemblage: The Malay Muslim Account of Total Brain Failure

Biomedicine as Global Assemblage: The Malay Muslim Account of Total Brain Failure The rather rare condition of total brain failure, commonly referred to as “brain death”, has become emblematic of the possible conflicts between scientific and religious, modernising and traditional, and academic and popular views on death and dying. To capture those heterogeneous and often contradictory discourses on total brain failure in one particular context, that of Malay Muslims in Malaysia, I make use of the analytical construct “global assemblage”, a concept that grasps well the complexity of discourses and practices pertaining to biomedicine. The article delineates how the global assemblage of total brain failure has played out in Malaysia, based on ethnographic fieldwork. It reveals that representatives from the Malaysian Ministry of Health and Muslim clergy from JAKIM, the federal Department for Islamic Development, and the State Mufti Departments accepted the established, albeit disputed biomedical notion of total brain failure in order to establish death and remove “viable” organs for transplant purposes. In contrast, the rural Malay Muslim community surveyed here does not accept the notion of total brain failure, sticking rather to their hitherto held, traditional perception of death, stemming from an era before ventilation became a standard procedure at critical care units. The opinions of such communities are, I argue, excluded from the national discourse on total brain failure in Malaysia. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Die Welt des Islams Brill

Biomedicine as Global Assemblage: The Malay Muslim Account of Total Brain Failure

Schreiber, Jenny
Die Welt des Islams , Volume 55 (3-4): 312 – Nov 26, 2015
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References (4)

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0043-2539
eISSN
1570-0607
DOI
10.1163/15700607-05534p04
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The rather rare condition of total brain failure, commonly referred to as “brain death”, has become emblematic of the possible conflicts between scientific and religious, modernising and traditional, and academic and popular views on death and dying. To capture those heterogeneous and often contradictory discourses on total brain failure in one particular context, that of Malay Muslims in Malaysia, I make use of the analytical construct “global assemblage”, a concept that grasps well the complexity of discourses and practices pertaining to biomedicine. The article delineates how the global assemblage of total brain failure has played out in Malaysia, based on ethnographic fieldwork. It reveals that representatives from the Malaysian Ministry of Health and Muslim clergy from JAKIM, the federal Department for Islamic Development, and the State Mufti Departments accepted the established, albeit disputed biomedical notion of total brain failure in order to establish death and remove “viable” organs for transplant purposes. In contrast, the rural Malay Muslim community surveyed here does not accept the notion of total brain failure, sticking rather to their hitherto held, traditional perception of death, stemming from an era before ventilation became a standard procedure at critical care units. The opinions of such communities are, I argue, excluded from the national discourse on total brain failure in Malaysia.

Journal

Die Welt des Islams – Brill

Published: Nov 26, 2015

Keywords: bioethics ; brain death ; fatwa ; global assemblage ; Islam ; Malay ; Malaysia ; Muslim clergy ; total brain failure

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