Our religious clerics talk about referring matters to the Council of Islamic Ideology established by General Ziaul Haq. There is an interesting case of what kind of work they were engaged in. Once on my way from Karachi to Islamabad. I was sitting next to the then chairman of the Islamic Ideology Council (CII) in the plane. When I asked him what was the issue presently being undertaken by the CII, he told me that they were working on the issue of whether transplanting a non-Muslim’s kidney into a Muslim person is permitted in Islam.
PS: with only some 3% of the population non-Muslim (and that too, in part because Ahmeddiyas are declared to be non-Muslims) one wonders where this non-Muslim supply of kidneys is coming from. In the Pakistani context, this has to be an entirely theoretical question. Maybe they were doing this for the edification of their co-religionists in India, who number about 15% of the population? I doubt it is for Saudis and other wealthy Middle Easterners, who presumably can find a way to purchase organs in India, because they would not look on Pakistanis as authorities on Islam.
