An Original Framework for Islamic Bioethics in Nigerian Clinical Practice: Synthesising Fiqh, Maqasid and Principlism

Bioethics in Nigerian clinical practice occurs in a context where Muslim patients and healthcare practitioners require guidance from Islamic jurisprudential sources on questions including organ donation, end-of-life care, brain death determination, and therapeutic cloning, yet no comprehensive Islamic bioethics framework integrating Fiqh methodology with contemporary bioethics theory has been developed for the Nigerian clinical context. This study develops an original Islamic bioethics framework for Nigerian clinical practice through systematic theoretical integration of Islamic jurisprudential methodology and contemporary bioethical theory. The theoretical methodology synthesises three intellectual traditions: classical Islamic Fiqh methodology on medical law questions (drawing on Ibn Sina, Ibn al-Nafis, and contemporary scholars including Abdulaziz Sachedina and Dariusch Atighetchi), the four-principle bioethics framework of Beauchamp and Childress (autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice), and Maqasid al-Shariah theory focused on the objective of protecting life. The synthesis generates four original theoretical principles for Islamic bioethics: Karamat al-Nafs (dignity of the self), Masuliyya al-Tabib (physician accountability), Wilayat al-Daru (guardianship in emergency), and Darura al-Ilajiyya (therapeutic necessity). These principles are applied to six contested bioethical scenarios from northern Nigerian clinical practice contexts drawn from forty clinical ethics consultations documented in Kano, Maiduguri, and Sokoto hospitals from 2018 to 2023. The framework makes an original contribution by integrating Fiqh methodology with Principlism without subordinating either tradition. Keywords: Islamic bioethics, clinical practice, Nigeria, Fiqh, Maqasid al-Shariah.