INTEGRATING FAITH AND FUNCTION: AN ISLAMIC APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY TODAY

Abstract

The Qurʾānic worldview presents the human body as a multi-layered āyah – a sign that simultaneously discloses divine wisdom and invites empirical inquiry. Modern physiology, refined through texts such as Guyton and Hall (2024), offers the most detailed biochemical map of this sign to date. Yet the interpretive lenses of tawḥīd (divine unity) and maqāṣid al-sharīʿah (the higher ethical purposes of Islamic law) remain largely absent from contemporary anatomical discourse. Building on classical insights, including Ibn al-Nafīs’s thirteenth-century description of pulmonary circulation, which pre-empted William Harvey by three centuries, this paper proposes an integrative framework in which faith and function illuminate each other. Islamic biomedical ethicists have recently argued that scriptural principles can guide decisions on emerging technologies—from artificial wombs to synthetic embryos—without hindering scientific progress (Ghaly, 2016; Kasule, 2024). Using a multidisciplinary reading strategy that places Qurʾānic embryological passages (Q 23:12-14) beside current cell-signalling models, the study outlines epistemic, moral and pedagogical gains of such cross-pollination. The result is a theology-inflected physiology that (1) restores metaphysical meaning to mechanistic detail; (2) embeds clinical practice in an ethos of stewardship, justice and compassion; and (3) offers Muslim learners a cohesive intellectual identity.