Technology in Muslim Moral Philosophy

The article explores the place, role and status of technology in Muslim moral philosophy. Invoking early Muslim encounters with technology the author makes the case why technology is already deeply embedded in contemporary Muslim bioethical thinking. Due to an absence of the philosophical grounding there remains some ambivalence as to why technology is essential to Muslim ethical thinking. Countering the techno-pessimists, the author makes a case in favor of compositional thinking, namely that our thinking itself is altered by our tools and our environment. Compositional thinking opposes the representational mode of thinking that creates a dichotomy between nature versus culture, and technology versus nature. One should, however, anticipate an environment in which technology would be beneficial and not be viewed as potentially harmful.