An Investigation of Withholding Judgment on Human Cloning

Human cloning is one of the issues which has been challenged in different areas such as theology, law, ethics and jurisprudence, and has also attracted the attention of contemporary scholars due to its relation with basic social and individual human affairs .Sunni scholars unanimously condemn human cloning and believe that it is an illegitimate act. Shi'a scholars, however, have different opinions about the act of cloning; their perspectives have been formulated in terms of four fatwas including: absolute permission, limited permission, primary ban and secondary ban. In this paper, human cloning is first briefly discussed from a scientific point of view and then withholding it from the point of view of Shiite clerics is evaluated.