Islamic Clinics in Egypt: The Cultural Elaboration of Biomedical Hegemony

Abstract

This article examines the provision of health care by Islamic voluntary organizations in Egypt. It links the development of Islamic clinics to national, regional, and international political‐economic transformations of the past decade. The Islamization of medicine is revealed as a particular manifestation of the worldwide spread of biomedicine and not as a revival of earlier Islamic medical traditions. Far from representing an alternative health care strategy that challenges state authority, Islamist medicine is considered as a vehicle for power sharing.

Negotiating Ambivalence: The Social Power of Muslim Community‐Based Health Organizations in America

“…The MCBHOs are distinct from ACCESS and Hamdard because they have religious rather than ethnic identifications. It is also important to note that despite the history of medical science within the Muslim tradition, almost none of our respondents mentioned or drew from this tradition, implicitly asserting, in contrast, the norms of the biomedical frame within which they work (see Morsy 1988).…”

“…In a carefully nuanced ethnographic portrait, Erica Bornstein (2003) analyzes the intersection of religious motivations and discourse with the social practices of international development in Zimbabwe, setting up local and transnational conflicts and power relations that in many ways reinforced neoliberal economic policies. Related to the substantive topic of this article, Soheir Morsy (1988) examined the emergence of Islamic charitable medical clinics in Egypt, arguing that rather than providing an alternative to biomedicine they merely provided a “cultural elaboration of biomedical hegemony” (355). Like the examples from Haiti, Mexico, and Bangladesh, Islamic clinics in Egypt provide a component of the social welfare package that the state cannot fully provide.…”

“…Examples from around the globe show NGOs filling gaps as they provide alternatives to fragmented states and plug holes in existing social service provision while simultaneously undermining the capacity of states to govern or to expand social service provision in ways that would challenge existing inequalities (Fisher 1997; Richard 2009; Schuller 2009). A wide range of case studies focus on how NGOs function as ambiguous actors in these situations as they mediate among the conflicting interests of local, national and international actors affiliated with and distant from such organizations (Bornstein 2003; Clark 2004; Karim 2001; Morsy 1988).…”

Animating Biomedicine’s Moral Order

“…"Moral order" here follows the usage of Livingston (2005:20), who defines it as "a shared set of values held by society that guides its members in expected conduct and provides a way to judge or interpret the actions of others." nologies inevitably travel together (Lewis 2007;Morsy 1988;Ugalde and Alubo 1994). Some critics argue that medicine's stance as universal truth devalues local healing knowledge and that its increasing dominance extends the jurisdiction of a Westernized biomédical elite (Cunningham and Andrews 1997;Maier 1988).…”

Réinventer une « médecine pour tous »

“…En fait, le modèle libéral de pratique en cabinet urbain, qui représente le modèle idéal de l'exercice de la profession, a cédé la place à un fonctionnariat bien moins lucratif, exerçant parfois en milieu rural et qui met quelque peu à mal la précieuse indépendance du praticien. 10 Le malaise que ressent aujourd'hui une grande partie de la profession médicale égyptienne prend pour certains la forme d'une véritable crise. Les praticiens égyptiens ont sans doute été parmi les premiers à souffrir du chômage dans une profession longtemps épargnée 6 .…”