Baby Milk Bank of Karachi and The Islamic Bioethics
By New Age Islam Staff
Writer
29 June
2024
Karachi Milk Bank Was Shut Down Due To Adverse
Fatwa From A Seminary
Main Points:
1.
Baby Milk Bank or Lactarium is a
modern way of wet nursing.
2.
West countries have baby milk banks
for pre-term babies.
3.
The first baby milk bank was opened
in Boston Floating Hospital inn1910.
4.
Iran, Bangladesh and Kuwait have
baby milk banks.
------
Mr Praveen
Swami delves into the issue of baby milk bank and the Islamic bioethics
involved in it. Baby milk banks are modern alternative to wet nursing, an
ancient practice in Asia, Europe and Africa. The wet nurse of the pharaoh
Tutankhamun was named Maia. The prophet Moses was adopted by the Pharaoh and
his mother was requested by the royal court to breast feed him because the pharaoh
did not know that Moses was her own child. It means that the practice of wet
nursing was an accepted practice during that time. The wet nurse of Islamic
Prophet was called Halima.
The milk bank was inaugurated by Dr. Azra
Pechuho, the provincial health minister of Sindh, along with officials from
UNICEF and the Pakistan Paediatric Association | UNICEF Pakistan
-------
A wet nurse
was engaged to breast feed a child when the mother was not able to breast feed
her or did not produce enough milk. But in royal or elite families, the women
did not want to breast feed their babies and employed a wet nurse. The Quran
permits this practice. It says:
"If you decide to have your children
nursed by a wet nurse, it is permissible as long as you pay fairly." (Baqarah:233)
In modern
times wet nurses may be difficult to find, particularly, when babies are born
in hospitals. Many babies are pre-term babies and have to be kept in hospitals
for longer periods. Therefore, finding a wet nurse may be a problem. So, the
idea of baby milk banks caught up. In milk banks, the breast milk of donor
women are pasteurised and stored for a long period, say 8 months. United
Nations promoted milk banks and more than 30 countries joined the initiative.
WHO stated that the first alternative to a biological mother not being able to
breast feed is the use of human milk from other sources.
Therefore,
along with the European countries, some Islamic countries also started baby
milk banks. But the bioethics of baby milk banks in Islamic society was a big
hindrance in their popularity. Bangladesh, UAE and Iran have milk banks but
some theologians expressed their reservations on the issue. For example, the
Organisation of Islamic Co-operation proscribed milk banks because milk
brothers and sisters are prohibited from marriage and in a milk bank, the
record of donor women and the babies that are fed with her milk cannot be
maintained. On the other hand, modern Islamic scholar Javed Ahmad Ghamidi
approves of the milk bank arguing that through milk bank, a baby does not
suckle the woman. Therefore, the rule of kinship does not apply here.
But the
Jamia Darul Uloom of Pakistan does not agree with the argument. When the Sindh
Institute of Child Health, Karachi opened a baby milk bank aided by UNICEF and
sought the fatwa from the Darul Uloom, it initially issued the fatwa approving
of it with a condition that the milk bank must maintain a record of the donors
and the beneficiary babies but later revised its position saying that it was
not possible to maintain such a record and that poor women may sell their milk
depriving their own babies of their breast milk and elite and rich women may
exploit the poor women. Subsequently, the Karachi milk bank was shut down. The
issue has been referred to the Council of Islamic Ideology that advises the
state on religious issue but it may not go against the fatwa of Darul Uloom.
The Council has not been able to guide the government on the issue of mob
lynching of innocent Christians and even Muslims on whimsical and false accusations
of blasphemy in Pakistan. The Karachi milk bank was shut down because if it
continued even after the fatwa, some religious organisation might blow it up.
This is the
dilemma with the Muslim world today. Though all the theologians claim that
Islamic law or jurisprudence is rooted in the Quran and Sunnah, they present
divergent and often contrary interpretations of the Quran and cherry pick
hadiths to suit their position no matter if the hadith is weak. In this case
too, the theologians of Bangladesh, Iran and Kuwait find baby milk banks
Shariah compliant, but the theologians of Pakistan find it problematic. Their
opinion on the issue may change after 30 or 40 years as has been the case with
the use of loudspeakers or the TV. The loudspeaker was the voice of the devil
and the TV was also a satanic device. But now they cannot live without them. In
fact they lije more to go to the TV studios to attend debates.
Mr Pravin
Swami observes that the issue of bioethics has not created problems for only
Muslims. Other communities and their leaders have also expressed reservations
to new ideas and scientific developments. For example, Gandhiji had opposed
small pox vaccination on the ground that it involved cells harvested from the
cow's udders. The Jehovah's Witness, a religious community, does not allow
their children blood transfusion for religious reasons.
However,
the reservations of the Muslims on the issue may disappear with time because
the Muslims have always shown a knee jerk reaction to every scientific
invention or a new idea. Examples galore. Till then, preterm babies may be fed
with formula milk or breast fed by wet nurses.
-----
Pakistani Fundamentalists Closer to Controlling State. Now The Battle Is
Over Baby Milk Bank
By Praveen Swami
26 June,
2024
The judges
had decided their punishment before the trial began: Like Jesus, the
Persian-born mystic Abu al-Mughis al-Husayn bin Mansur al-Hallaj, known to the
world as Mansur al-Hallaj, was crucified, and his body burned together with his
books. From Gujarat and Kashmir, to Mecca and Medina, al-Hallaj had
relentlessly campaigned against the Abbasid Caliphate’s harsh oppression of the
working poor, preaching the radical idea that the pursuit of kashf, or
enlightenment, could unite the human soul with God.
For a
while, the scholar Shemeem Burney Abbas has written, al-Hallaj was defended by
Shaghab, mother of the caliph al-Muqtadir—but by 922 C.E., all his protectors had been marginalised in court. The word of God belonged,
after all, to the state and its servants, not heretics.
Last week,
newspaper headlines around the world documented the the brutal lynching of Muhammad Ismail, a tourist from
Punjab who was tortured and then set on fire by a cheering mob in Pakistan’s
idyllic Swat. The savage killing is part of a grinding campaign of violence against alleged blasphemers,
spearheaded by the Far-Right Tehreek Labbaik-e-Pakistan, or TLP.
Even as the
horror in Swat unfolded, religious fundamentalists were registering an even
more significant success. Karachi’s prestigious Sindh Institute of Child Health
and Neonatology shut down the country’s first human milk bank after the
powerful Jami’a Dar-ul-Uloom seminary withdrew theological sanction for its
operations. The decision, doctors say, endangers
the lives of
preterm babies whose mothers are unable to breastfeed them.
The battle
over milk banks, part of a bitter debate within Islam, has pitted modernisers
against fundamentalists in many countries. The case of Pakistan is unique, though:
Nowhere else has the decision to open, or close, a medical facility been
delegated to clerics with no legal or constitutional authority.
Fundamentalists
have proved willing to sacrifice infants for the cause of building a theocratic
dystopia, while the nation-state has demonstrated it can do nothing but stand
by and watch.
The Baby Milk Battle
Ever since
the mid-1980s, when milk banks began to establish themselves as a key tool of
advanced neonatal care, Islamic clerics pushed back against the concept.
Islamic theology, doctors Sonia Subudhi and Natasha Sriraman note, mandates the
existence of Rida’a, or so-called milk kinship between the non-biological infant
and the woman who breastfeeds them, as well as her biological children. The Shari’ah,
or religious law, proscribes marriages between so-called milk brothers and
sisters.
Islam recognised
the critical importance of breastfeeding, and wet nursing was a
well-established practice among the Bedouin communities where the religion
first emerged.
The
Organisation of Islamic Countries’ bioethics panel, doctors Mohammed Ali al-Bar
Hassan Chamsi-Pasha wrote, proscribed milk banks in 1985, arguing that it was
impossible for them to maintain the sanctity of milk kin relationships. That
hasn’t ended the debate though. Some theologians, like Javed Ahmad Ghamidi,
argue that the milk-kinship relationship applies only when children are suckled, not by milk itself.
Iran thus
has several milk banks, together with Bangladesh and Kuwait, each operating
under somewhat different kinds of religious compliance. In
Singapore and the United States, where there are significant Muslim
communities, some clerics have given theological approval to existing milk
banks.
Giving
preterm babies pasteurised donor breast milk instead of formula, experts have said, gives significant protection against dangerous
conditions like necrotising enterocolitis.
Earlier
this year, when the Sindh Institute of Child Health decided to open a United
Nations Children’s Fund-aided breast milk facility, it reached out to clerics
at the Dar-ul-Uloom, which traces its origins to the famous seminary of
Deoband. The seminary responded with a Fatwa, or opinion, giving conditional permission.
The Fatwa
stipulates, among other things, that records be maintained of donors so milk
kinship relationships could be established, and that milk only be given from
Muslim mothers to Muslim children—a record-keeping provision that,
interestingly, is not applied to organ transplants or blood transfusions.
The
facility was inaugurated by Dr. Azra Pechuho, the provincial health minister of
Sindh, together with officials from UNICEF and the Pakistan Paediatric
Association.
The Theology of Death
For reasons
that aren’t entirely clear—likely tied to ideological power struggles within
the institution—the Dar-ul-Uloom suddenly changed course last week, amid the
renewed blasphemy mobilisation. The institution now declared, a new Fatwa, that the terms it had laid out were
impossible to observe. There was, it argued, no way to ensure the traceability
of all donors. There were also wider problems: Letting poor mothers sell milk
might deprive their own babies, while elite women would shirk their religious
obligation to their children.
The
hospital promptly shut down the milk bank; one spokesperson for the institution
bitterly told media, “Our society has lost the ability to debate
like educated people.” The issue has now been referred to the Council of
Islamic Ideology, a body founded in 1962 to advise the state on religious
issues. The body, political scientist political scientist Sarah Holz has noted,
has come to be dominated by small-town clerics with reactionary views.
Ever since
the Lahore carpenter Ilm-ud-Din murdered the anti-Islam polemicist Mahashe
Rajpal in 1927—possibly seeking to expiate guilt over homoerotic longing, documents show—this cowing-down has characterised
the course of the project of Pakistan. Lacking legitimacy, elites sought to
recruit the clerics and faith to their cause, with tragic consequences.
In the late
1970s, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime backed clerical demands
for a theocratic state, in return for their declaring that Nizam-e-Mustafa, the order ordained by Islam, demanded the centralisation of power in a despot. Following 9/11, General
Pervez Musharraf created his own clerical army, , backing reactionary elements in the Barelvi sect in the hope of
outmanoeuvring his jihadist opponents.
The State and God
Islam isn’t
unique in promoting anti-science. MK Gandhi resisted life-saving smallpox
vaccinations, historian Nandini Oza reminds us, arguing they involved cells harvested from cows’ udders. For years, doctors in the West have
been compelled to turn to courts to battle parents belonging to the
Jehovah’s Witness sect, who refuse to allow their children to be given blood
transfusions. Ethical debates rage around issues like circumcision and abortion.
The issue
with the Karachi milk bank, though, isn’t the conflict between medicine and
faith: It is whether clerics or the state and its democratic institutions
should have the power to judge issues of bioethics. In this case, a degraded
state has surrendered its authority to decide.
Late one
afternoon in August 1948, as military doctor Major Mahmud Ahmad desperately
tried to restart his stalled car on a Quetta road, someone in an angry mob of
cleric-led anti-Ahmadi protestors noticed he had a neatly trimmed beard. That
was, to them, enough proof Ahmad was an apostate. The doctor’s body was found
days later, one lung pierced with a knife, and guts carved out of his body. The
very first blasphemy murder in Pakistan was of a man charged
with protecting its nationhood.
From
Surriya Shafi, charged with blasphemy for using pictures of mermaids in a
college-level English textbook, to High Court judge Arif Husain Bhatti, killed
for acquitting a blasphemy-accused, and Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab,
assassinated by a fanatic: The victims of Pakistan’s theocracy have not just
been religious minorities, but the upholders of its state.
Today, the
mob in Swat, and the jihadists who murder Pakistani soldiers each day, aren’t
just destroying the state: They’re also coming for the country’s children.
-----
Praveen Swami is a contributing editor at
ThePrint.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)
Source:
Pakistani Fundamentalists Closer to Controlling State. Now The Battle Is
Over Baby Milk Bank
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/debating-islam/baby-milk-bank-karachi-islamic-bioethics/d/132601
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