A review of the literature on organ donation and transplantation among Muslims reveals that Muslims are more likely than people of other faiths to have a negative attitude toward organ donation (Rasheed ). Study after study demonstrates two overarching themes: first, Muslims are frequently uncertain whether organ donation is permissible or forbidden according to the Islamic ethico‐legal tradition, and second, even in the cases where the Muslim laity believes donation to be permissible, this knowledge does not lead to actively supporting organ donation through actions such as signing a donor card (Rasheed ). This observation has led to the implementation of numerous health behavior change interventions that aim to increase organ donation rates among Muslims by targeting perceived religious impediments to donation.

One may argue that there is no direct relationship between being Muslim and having negative attitudes toward donation, and that the negative attitudes seen in the literature are completely attributable to indirect, nonreligious factors such as acculturation, education, health literacy, and sociodemographics. It may be, for instance, that Muslims have negative attitudes toward donation because they are not English‐literate, and therefore do not have access to much of the literature that explains organ donation processes to the lay population.

While nonreligious factors such as the aforementioned do influence attitudes toward organ donation and transplantation, they cannot explain Muslim attitudes entirely. Existing survey research involving diverse Muslim groups shows that religious affiliation, namely identifying with Islam, is associated with negative attitudes toward, or lack of support for, organ donation and transplantation. These studies have been conducted among ethnically and racially diverse groups of Muslims and in diverse sociocultural settings such as the United Kingdom (Randhawa ; Sheikh and Dhami ; Alkhawari et al. ), Malaysia (Loch et al. ), Saudi Arabia (Shaheen et al. ), Turkey (Bilgel et al. ; ), and the United States (Padela et al. ).

This growing body of literature suggests that a global “Muslim” phenomenon cannot be attributed to socioeconomic factors entirely. Given that these studies document similar findings among Muslims who come from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, live in societies that vary in political and healthcare system structures, and face different social and health challenges, the literature suggests that something that they all share influences their similar attitudes. According to many researchers, that common epidemiological factor is religion‐related. Indeed, an increasing amount of research shows that Islam influences Muslim health behaviors across racial and ethnic lines (Padela and Curlin ). Bolstering the evidence for a “religious” influence upon Muslim behaviors related to organ donation is the fact that being Muslim often appears to be independently associated with negative attitudes toward donation. In other words, some of the aforementioned surveys report that even when the influence of sociodemographic factors is accounted for, through multivariate regression modeling for example, affiliation with Islam continues to predict negative attitudes toward organ donation.

One example of a study that illustrates this phenomenon analyzed a population‐based representative sample of 1016 Arab Americans. Data analyses revealed that Muslim participants were significantly less likely than Christian participants to find organ donation after death to be justified, even after the effects of factors unrelated to religious affiliation such as age, educational attainment, level of income, and gender were controlled for (Padela et al. ). Similarly, another study that surveyed 904 Malaysians identified being Muslim (as opposed to Hindu) as a significant factor associated with reluctance toward donating one's organs after death. Multiple logistic regression analysis confirmed that this factor was independently associated with attitude toward organ donation (Loch et al. ). Therefore, while nonreligious factors certainly play a role and merit further study, it seems that there is clearly something about being Muslim in and of itself that leads to negative attitudes toward organ donation.

In light of the apparent suspicion with which Muslims from across the globe view organ donation, one may presume that the Islamic ethico‐legal tradition judges organ donation to be either forbidden or discouraged. Such a presumption is, however, unwarranted. The majority of fuqahā’ and ethico‐legal councils deem organ donation and transplantation to be ethico‐legally permissible. Prominent among this group are the five former grand muftīs of Egypt, the Saudi Senior Ulama Council, the Islamic Fiqh Academy of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation, the Turkish Supreme Board of Religious Affairs, and the European Council for Fatwa and Research. Others such as the Islamic Fiqh Academy of India hold cadaveric donation to be forbidden, but still allow transplantation from living donors. Only a small minority of fuqahā’, the late Grand Muftī Muḥammad Shafīʿ of Pakistan being the most notable among them, consider the practice prohibited absolutely by Islamic law (Ghaly ; Rasheed ).

For health behavior interventionists working to improve Muslim donor rates, this poses a conundrum: how do we reconcile the lack of support that organ donation has among the Muslim laity with the apparent green light that the fuqahā’ have given the practice? Improving Muslim donor rates requires addressing this puzzling observation. While there have been a great many programs aiming to increase the support for organ donation in Muslim communities, and thereby increasing donor rates among Muslims, we suggest that these efforts have missed the mark because they overlook the theological motivations that categorize Islamic religious leaders. Consequently, the theoretical frameworks that implicitly, or explicitly, guide health behavior interventions incorporating Muslim religious leaders often neglect a key group of religious actors, the representatives of a particular Islamic theological imperative, that must be partnered with when seeking to effect health care behavior change among Muslims.

In this article, we will highlight some key assumptions underlying the theoretical frameworks behind many health behavior change interventions up till now. We will then reevaluate these assumptions in light of the theory of planned behavior (TPB), a leading conceptual theory used to organize health behavior change interventions. We will subsequently link the TPB to the theological motivations of Muslim religious leaders as a way to draw attention to a neglected key group of religious actors: representatives of what we identify as the iṣlāḥī imperative in these interventions. This group of on‐the‐ground religious guides includes, most prominently, the imāms of local mosques and Islamic centers. We argue that for future interventions to be successful, this group must be engaged when seeking to effect health care behavior change among Muslims, and that this lack of partnership is a common characteristic of health behavior change interventions that have thus far been conducted.

Bioethics researchers and health behavior interventionalists have most often partnered with the fuqahā’ to overcome Muslim reticence toward organ donation, and concerned themselves mainly with fatāwā that these fuqahā’ had penned. The theoretical framework of these interventions was based upon the assumption that the negative attitudes of Muslims at the ground level were on account of either (1) a lack of awareness about the religious decrees (fatāwā) that permitted organ donation and transplantation, or (2) the lack of supportive “local” fatāwā penned by fuqahā’ who were native to, and familiar with, the indigenous societal contexts (and thereby more likely to be trusted and accepted by the local Muslim community).

One example that illustrates these assumptions is found in the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation. The Center conducted several studies regarding the effect of being Muslim on public attitudes toward organ donation and transplantation. An examination of these studies reveals the underlying premise that the vast majority of fuqahā’, and in particular the Saudi‐based Senior ʿUlamā’ Council, support donation. Hence, public objections to transplantation must arise from a lack of awareness about these decrees. For instance, one study writes:

The public should be well informed on the religious aspects of organ donation. This was reflected in the results where in 27.5% of the respondents refused the concept of organ donation due to religious reasons. Uniformity and consistency on the information of the religious aspects of organ donation through the approval of the fatwa [the author is referring to the Saudi Senior Ulama Council's fatwā that permits donation] is very important in Saudi Arabia, since most people abide by Islamic law and reject any intervention that is forbidden by Islam. (Alam )

This passage demonstrates both of the aforementioned assumptions. It asserts the connection between the study participants’ refusal to donate with their lack of awareness of the fatāwā that permit donation. It also puts emphasis on the Senior ʿUlamā’ Council's fatwā in particular, because of the assumption that the views of indigenous fuqahā’, with their familiarity of their society's context, will resonate best with the local population.

Implicitly, then, the fatwā was seen as an instrument for health behavior change. The corollary assumption is that if a Muslim knows that the Islamic ethico‐legal tradition permits a certain practice, he or she will then be more willing to support, and engage in, that practice. Illustrating this type of interventional model and the underlying assumptions about Muslim religious leadership and fatwā, Turkish researchers carried out an educational program where participants attended “teach‐ins” that aimed to dispel common myths and understandings about organ transplantation (Yilmaz ). One of the primary lessons was structured around presenting participants with fatāwā that permit organ transplantation issued by several Islamic ethico‐legal bodies including the Turkish Supreme Board of Religious Affairs.

If we move from the Muslim majority context to one where Muslims are in the minority, we see that the same role of fatāwā is assumed. An example of this is where British researchers from the Birmingham Organ Co‐ordination Team collaborated with the UK Muslim Council to address lower rates of Muslim participation in the UK organ donation programs. The collaboration resulted in the UK Muslim Council, comprising nineteen prominent British fuqahā’ and religious leaders, passing a fatwā that judged organ donation to be permitted in Islam (Badawi ). Public health leaders “considered [the program] a success and a step forward,” believing that “it would lead to a breakthrough in resolving the problem of low donor rates among Muslims” (Razaq and Sajid ). Nine years later, however, a follow‐up study of Muslim donor rates revealed that Muslim donor rates in the region had not significantly increased since the passage of the fatwā. The medical community's disappointment with this collaborative effort, and the fatwā by extension, is apparent as authors note that the initiative had “fallen flat,” “in spite” of the outreach efforts of the community health workers (Razaq and Sajid ).

From this examination, we learn that the theoretical framework behind previous health behavior change interventions rested upon assumptions that center around the fatwā, and they often attempted to use the fatwā as an agent to change health behavior. It seems, however, that these fatwā‐centered interventions tend to be unsuccessful. In the case of the British intervention involving the UK Muslim Council, Razaq and Sajid write that “perhaps a more harsher [sic] regime has to be enforced, whereby the Muslim community is advised that organ transplantation can only be offered as an option to them if they are willing to become a donor” (2007). Before resorting to these measures, however, perhaps this lack of success can be explained upon a closer examination of the theoretical framework behind the interventions (this framework is summarized in Figure , and explained in detail in the sections that follow).

According to the TPB, the most important predictor of whether people will perform a certain behavior is if they have an intention to perform that behavior (Azjen ). In terms of the topic at hand, the behavior changes most pertinent may be, for instance, that someone registers to be an organ donor. According to the TPB, the best predictor for whether or not that person actually signs up would be whether they made an intention to do so. According to TPB, one's behavioral intention is informed by: (1) one's overall attitude toward the action, including his or her expectations of the outcomes associated with the action; (2) one's belief that most of the people important to him or her believe that he or she should or should not perform the action (known as subjective norm) and beliefs about those norms; and (3) one's perceived control over performing the action. In other words, the Attitude refers to an overall view a person holds toward a specific action. The Subjective Norm refers to an individual's summative evaluation as to whether all of his important others (i.e., family, friends, mentors, role models, society at large) approve or disapprove of his performing the action. And Perceived Behavioral Control refers to the perceived ease or difficulty of performing the action (Azjen ).

To apply this in the case of organ donation and transplantation, the TPB explains that Muslims will be more likely to donate their organs or sign a donor card if they have a strong intention to do so. This intention to donate is determined by three factors: (1) they must have an overall positive attitude toward donation; (2) they must believe that the individuals or entities most important to them have a favorable view toward their donating their own organs; and (3) they must perceive themselves to have substantial control over donating their organs.

Each of these three determinants to intention (Attitude, Subjective Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control) has two other subdeterminants. We will focus on Subjective Norm because it is the most pertinent determinant of the three for the discussion that follows. Subjective Norm refers to the overall sum of what others think about a certain behavior. According to the TPB, it is in turn determined by two factors: Normative Beliefs and Motivation to Comply. Normative Beliefs are concerned with the likelihood that important referent individuals or entities approve or disapprove of performing a given behavior. The other factor, Motivation to Comply, takes into consideration to what extent a person is motivated to comply with those referent individuals or entities (Azjen ). In other words, an example of Normative Beliefs might be, “What do I believe person x or y thinks about my donating my organs?” An example of Motivation to Comply might be, “How much do I care about what person x or y thinks?”

With respect to decision‐making based on an Islamic ethico‐legal framework, the category of Subjective Norm appears to be a significant one for developing health behavior change programs through religious communities. In the Subjective Norm domain, a person with high religiosity may consider the most important referent other to be God. An example of Normative Belief that a potential Muslim donor may ask himself about would be, “How do I believe God views my donating my organs?” In the Motivation to Comply domain, a potential Muslim donor may ask himself, “How important is it to me that I act according to God's approval or disapproval of my donating my organs?”

Islamic religious scriptures seem to support the paradigm above. For example, the Quran says:

If your fathers, your sons, your brothers, your wives, your tribe, the wealth you have gained, the commerce you fear may slacken, and the homes you love are dearer to you than Allah and His Messenger and the struggle in His cause, then wait until Allah brings about His command. Allah does not guide the corrupt. (Quran 9:24, Murad et al. )

In verses such as this, the Quran exhorts the faithful that their behavior must conform to God's desires (and, by extension, the teachings of Prophet Muḥammad due to his role as the explainer of Islam's moral code). They must obey God's decree in all matters. In terms of the TPB, this means that the Quran is establishing that God's views regarding the actions a person chooses to perform have a place within the domain of Subjective Norm. The verse further states that if one's familial, social, or economical motivations regarding a certain action clash with God's will, one should comply with God's decree at the expense of those other motivations. In other words, if God has decreed that faithful Muslims must perform a certain action, they must perform that action even if their “fathers, sons, brethren, and wives” say otherwise. Through the lens of the TPB, this means that for a Muslim, God's decree on any matter should be the principal component in the Normative Beliefs domain, and the corresponding Motivation to Comply should be very high as well.

All this begs the question of how a Muslim is to know what exactly is God's will on a certain matter. The answer lies in a study of the Sharīʿah. The Oxford Dictionary of Islam defines Sharīʿah as “God's eternal and immutable will for humanity, as expressed in the Quran and Muḥammad's example (Sunnah), considered binding for all believers; ideal Islamic law.” A closely related term, Fiqh, is “the human attempt to understand divine law (Sharīʿah). Whereas Sharīʿah is immutable and infallible, Fiqh is fallible and changeable. Fiqh is distinguished from Uṣūl al‐Fiqh, the methods of legal interpretation and analysis. Fiqh is the product of application of Uṣūl al‐Fiqh, the total product of human efforts at understanding the divine will.” Therefore, a Muslim may come to know God's will regarding an ethical matter by researching what the Sharīʿah decrees on the matter, as expressed through Fiqh. The Islamic ethico‐legal tradition encompasses all these concepts. We can, therefore, restate the abovementioned paradigm in the following manner: for an ideal Muslim, the Sharīʿah's stance on any matter should be the predominant component in the Normative Beliefs domain, and its corresponding Motivation to Comply should be very high as well.

This paradigm is also consistent with the Hadith literature. For example, it is recorded the Prophet Muḥammad is reported to have said, “None of you truly believes until his desires become subservient to that [message] which I have brought” (Nawawi ). This tradition equates a Muslim's level of religiosity with the extent to which he or she willingly conforms to the message of God, or in other words, the Sharīʿah. Hence, within the framework of the TPB and Subjective Norms, the term “religiosity” can be thought of as interplay between Normative Beliefs and Motivation to Comply, with the referent entity being God. A “religious” Muslim is one who, in every matter, takes into consideration only God's command as expressed in the Sharīʿah regarding that matter, to the exclusion of all other referent others, when it comes to Normative Beliefs, and has a high corresponding Motivation to Comply.

When discussing religion in the context of health behavior interventions, understanding the concept of religiosity is essential because the goal of religious leadership in any faith tradition is to increase the religiosity of their followers. Based on the understanding of religiosity through the lens of the TPB as described above, religious leaders tend to work within the area of Subjective Norm, at the interface between Normative Beliefs and Motivation to Comply. In the Islamic tradition, these correlate to two broad imperatives that the ʿUlamā’, Islamic religious leaders, concern themselves with: the ʿilmī imperative, and the iṣlāḥī imperative.

The Arabic word ʿilmī literally means “scholarly” or “academic.” The ʿilmī imperative is concerned with religious academics. It involves the study, research, and application of Fiqh. The fuqahā’ can be more precisely understood as Islamic scholars who apply their jurisprudential knowledge, particularly their knowledge of Uṣūl al‐Fiqh, to the scriptures in an attempt to determine whether a particular action lies within the Islamic ethico‐legal tradition on the scale of permissible, impermissible, or somewhere in between. In doing so, the fundamental question they are trying to answer is: What is the moral injunction attached to that particular action in a certain circumstance? The fuqahā’, whether they act collectively as in an ethico‐legal council, or separately as independent muftīs, are representatives of this ʿilmī imperative. Fatāwā are the most common form in which they express the conclusions they arrive at in their attempt to answer that fundamental question. In terms of the TPB, the fatwā can be thought of as the jurisconsult's attempt to discern an approximation of God's will, through the channel of Fiqh. Therefore, it corresponds most directly to the Normative Beliefs component of Subjective Norms.

The second imperative, the iṣlāḥī, literally means “reformatory” in Arabic. Its goal is to spiritually reform and rectify the Muslim masses. It is concerned with providing the Muslim public with on‐the‐ground religious guidance by exhorting them to the worship of God and giving them religious and moral counsel. An iṣlāḥī message might focus on topics such as the importance of developing good character, the virtues of prayer, and the reward one will receive for leading a pious life. Examples of representatives of the iṣlāḥī imperative are broad and include chaplains, preachers, local imāms, Sufi shaykhs, and counselors. Within the TPB‐based framework, the iṣlāḥī imperative most directly corresponds to the Motivation to Comply component of Subjective Norms. This is because they focus on trying to exhort and persuade Muslims to take heed to God's will and be as compliant to His decrees as possible.

A harmonious interplay between the ʿilmī and iṣlāḥī imperatives of Islamic religious leadership is important in religiously motivated behavior change. Without the ʿilmī imperative, one would not be aware of what the Sharīʿah dictates regarding matters of concern, thereby crippling the Normative Beliefs domain, and without the iṣlāḥī imperative, one would not be sufficiently motivated to comply with those beliefs even if they were well known.

To provide a practical example of the above‐explained theoretical framework at play, we will examine the case of two opposing viewpoints on organ donation by two different Egyptian Muslim scholars.

Muḥammad Sayyid al‐Ṭanṭāwi (1928–2010) was the Grand Muftī of Egypt, and later went on to become the Grand Shaykh of the University of al‐Azhar, the same institution where he had been trained and had earned his doctorate degree in Quranic Exegesis. In 1989, Ṭanṭāwi penned a fatwā that gave wide latitude to the practice of organ transplantation, determining it to be Islamically permissible to transplant the organs of one person into another person (Ṭanṭāwi ). Ṭanṭāwi's fatwā was a scholarly treatise utilized the method and science of Islamic ethico‐legal reasoning through Uṣūl al‐Fiqh. His opinion of permissibility rode on the back of a long line of Egyptian Grand Muftīs who had also permitted donation and transplantation.

Ṭanṭāwi was speaking from an ʿilmī channel because he expressed his opinion in the form of a formal fatwā written in classical Arabic and distributed within scholarly, policy and public circles. In terms of the TPB, Ṭanṭāwi's fatwā is essentially an expression of his opinion that God approves of, and may even encourage, donation. Therefore, it correlates with Normative Beliefs.

The second scholar, Muḥammad Mitwalli al‐Shaʿrāwi (1911–1998), was a prominent late twentieth century cleric and preacher. Like Ṭanṭāwi, he also graduated from the University of al‐Azhar, and went on to teach Sharīʿah and Uṣūl al‐Dīn in Egypt, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia. He is most renowned for his regular appearances on religious television in the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike Ṭanṭāwi, Shaʿrāwi preached that organ transplantation was impermissible in all its forms, citing the idea that humans are simply stewards of the God‐given endowment of a body. Shaʿrāwi addressed organ donation spontaneously during his television show by rhetorically asking, “How can you give a kidney that you yourself do not own?” Shaʿrāwi's opinion could not be called a fatwā in the normal sense, which tends to be formal and employs legal reasoning. Nevertheless, he did express an opinion of impermissibility. By Shaʿrāwi claiming that organ donation was impermissible, he essentially said that God willed for the Muslims not to donate. In that sense, Shaʿrāwi's claim could also fall into the category of Normative Beliefs.

On top of merely expressing his opinion on donation, however, Shaʿrāwi also did something Ṭantāwi did not: Shaʿrāwi expressed his opinion through iṣlāḥī channels. The forum in which he expressed his opinion was that of a television show broadcast every day to Muslim viewers. He spoke in the vernacular of the Egyptian street as opposed to the formal classical Arabic commonly employed in fatwā. Clearly, his opinion manifested an iṣlāḥī imperative through directly addressing people on the ground on their terms. In the show, Shaʿrāwi was expressing an opinion not as a legal verdict but as a springboard for the spiritual lesson that all Muslims are utterly dependent on God and that they must therefore live their lives in His obedience. By doing so, his message also fell into the category of Motivation to Comply.

While Ṭantāwi had only targeted one component of Subjective Norm, Shaʿrāwi had targeted both. Which religious leader, then, was more effective in promoting this health behavior change? Clearly, Shaʿrāwi's opinion resonated with the Egyptian people much more powerfully than Ṭanṭāwi's. For instance, medical anthropologist Sherine Hamdy writes: “[A]mong most of the dialysis patients I interviewed, all the Islamic scholars, and even many transplant physicians, it was Shaʿrāwi's opinion that was most often cited and held the deepest resonance among patients in need of kidney transplants” (Hamdy ). In light of the TPB, this is no surprise because Ṭanṭāwi's opinion only correlated to Normative Beliefs, but Shaʿrāwi's opinion correlated to both Normative Beliefs and Motivation to Comply. It was Shaʿrāwi's inclusion of the iṣlāḥī imperative, tying organ donation to the larger issue of reliance on God, and iṣlāḥī channels, the television show, that allowed his opinion to reach and then resonate with the Egyptian laity.

The ʿilmī/iṣlāḥī and Normative Belief/Motivation to Comply dichotomies have profound implications for health behavior change interventions that target Muslims. By extrapolating from the case of Shaʿrāwi, we learn that the most successful interventions that target religion‐related factors must incorporate both Normative Beliefs and Motivation to Comply, or in other words, they must work through the ʿilmī imperative as well as the iṣlāḥī imperative.

As noted when previously discussing health behavior interventions targeting Muslims, bioethics researchers and health behavior interventionists have most often partnered with the fuqahā’, which is to say the ʿilmī imperative, to overcome Muslim reticence toward organ donation. In the process, they have often overlooked the crucial role of the iṣlāḥī imperative in behavior change. Interventions that reach out to local imāms, preachers, teachers, and other representatives of that imperative are few and far between.

Representatives of the iṣlāḥī imperative play a crucial role in delivering religious messages for several reasons. One reason that iṣlāḥī representatives must be involved is the technical nature of most fatāwā. The fatwā has traditionally been a tool of the ʿilmī imperative because the qualifications one must have in order to issue a recognized fatwā are distinctly scholarly. For instance, a muftī that passes fatāwā must have a comprehensive understanding of Islamic ethics, law, theology, and other relevant disciplines. The vocabulary of these disciplines is often quite specialized. If the fatwā is short and the question is simple, the muftī and the lay Muslim might interact with one another in person. If the matter is more complicated, however, and the muftī must employ more sophisticated legal reasoning, the laity often depends upon a trusted representative of the iṣlāḥī imperative, such as the local imām or religious mentor, to interpret these fatāwā.

A second reason is that the iṣlāḥī imperative is more than merely a passive echo of the ʿilmī imperative, and iṣlāḥī‐focused ulamā frequently use personal discretion when passing religious messages from the fuqahā’ to the laity. For example, an iṣlāḥī‐focused imām may advise his congregation against donation because he feels that the view of impermissibility is more ethico‐legally sound, for even though the majority of fuqahā’ have ruled that organ donation is permissible, other fuqahā’ still hold the view of impermissibility. Alternatively, the imām may not be aware of fatāwā that allow donation and will therefore discourage it. This is seen in another Saudi study in which researchers list the “Local Imām Factor” as one of the barriers to donation and transplantation among Saudi Muslims. They observed that a health care professional may inform the relative of a potential donor of an official fatāwā that permit and even encourage donation. When the relative seeks the opinion of his or her local imām, however, the imām discourages donation in spite of the fatwā (al‐Khader et al. ).

This is also illustrated in a British study that said local clerics are “very influential” to lay Muslims considering donation (Alkhawari et al. ). The study found that ten subjects actually admitted to canceling their donor cards on the advice of their local imāms. Upon questioning the imāms that these ten subjects had consulted, the authors reported that the imāms were hesitant to discuss the matter of donation and transplantation, stressing the disagreement between the fuqahā’ on the issue. They also had little knowledge of the organ donation program in the United Kingdom. If interventions attempting to increase British Muslim donor rates had reached out to these imāms, it is likely that they would have been better‐informed about organ transplant processes, and may have subsequently encouraged donation to their congregation.

A third reason for the importance of the iṣlāḥī imperative is that even if the laity is quite capable of reading and understanding the fatwā for themselves without the help of the likes of an imām, they may not be sufficiently motivated to act upon the fatwā without persuasion and exhortation from representatives of the iṣlāḥī imperative. To put it another way, their Motivation to Comply was not sufficiently high enough to lead to an intention to donate. An example to illustrate this is a study that surveyed 22 Saudi Muslim physicians. The study notes:

Ninety percent of the intensivists knew about the Islamic view on organ donation [i.e. the view of permissibility expressed by the Saudi Senior ʿUlamā’ Council]. Seventy‐two percent would agree on donation if one of their relatives became brain dead, 12 would not agree, and one could not decide; however, only 13% carry donation cards. (al‐Sebayel and Khalaf )

Here we see that the subjects were quite aware that Saudi fuqahā’ had ruled donation to be permissible. The subjects had even agreed to the theoretical concept of donation since most of them were willing to consent to the harvesting of a brain‐dead relative's organs. They had not, however, been motivated to take action and sign donor cards themselves. One of the reasons why this may be is that the fatwā did not come to them through iṣlāḥī channels. If an imām had first preached to the study participants that they should donate because they would, for instance, receive reward in the afterlife for their charity, then perhaps the percentage of subjects carrying donor cards would have been higher.

This is also illustrated by the previously mentioned intervention in Birmingham that led to the fatwā in 1995 by the UK Muslim Council which was considered unsuccessful. One possible explanation for its lack of success may be that it seems not to have been well disseminated through iṣlāḥī channels. Publicity of the fatwā was limited to a news item on the morning edition of Radio 4; television coverage on the local evening news in the area where the fatwā had been initiated; and limited coverage in two Asian newspapers. It was also quoted in a brochure by UK Transplant (Ghaly ). The dissemination of this fatwā was diffuse and limited. Randhawa states that “the publicity campaign was not utilizing effective channels of communication for informing the Muslim population” (1998). While Shaʿrāwi's view also employed television for dissemination, his program was by contrast broadcast all throughout the Middle East, and he already had a following at the time he expressed his view on donation (Hamdy ).

Even if it had been well disseminated, however, the main shortcoming of this initiative in light of the TPB and the presented theoretical framework was that it targeted the ʿilmī imperative without giving due importance to the iṣlāḥī imperative. It can be likened to Ṭanṭāwi's fatwā in that it satisfied the domain of Normative Beliefs, but Motivation to Comply was given less attention. The initiative might have been more successful if after the fatwā had been passed, for instance, the Birmingham Organ Co‐ordination Team had worked with local mosques to arrange seminars to educate local imāms about the fatwā and to encourage Friday preachers to encourage donation among their congregation in a rewards‐based iṣlāḥī context such as the rewards the Quran promises for saving a life or showing altruism. For organ donation to become more common among Muslims, there must be preachers understanding the Islamic value of organ donation and being motivated to exhort the community to consider organ donation as part and parcel of being a good Muslim.

The case of The Netherlands is an example of attempts to increase Muslim donor rates that incorporated, at least partially, actors of both the iṣlāḥī and the ʿilmī imperative. The Dutch Milli Görüs, the Netherlands‐based branch of a Turkish social‐religious organization, collaborated with The Netherlands Institute of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (NIGZ) to promote public awareness of organ donation among Muslims in the Netherlands through a project called Geven en Nemen (Give and Take) which was started in October 2005. The project aimed to have the issue of organ donation raised during the Friday sermon in all mosques affiliated with Milli Görüs, resulting in the dissemination of an iṣlāḥī message promoting organ donation to an estimated 30,000 Muslims in the congregations. The imāms and eminent board members of Milli Görüs suggested that they would express their support of donation and encourage the congregation to donate (Ghaly ). This intervention was very different from most previous interventions due to the involvement of imāms and iṣlāḥī‐focused Islamic religious leaders as opposed to only fuqahā’.

Another noteworthy initiative in The Netherlands related to increasing Muslim donor rates was a conference on Islam and organ donation held by a Dutch organization called the Contact Group for the Relations between Muslim Organizations and Government (CMO). While this was not a health behavior change intervention per say, it is relevant in that it engaged the issue of organ donation among Muslims in The Netherlands. At the conference, a twenty‐page fatwā that endorsed organ donation in the Islamic ethico‐legal tradition was presented (Ghaly ). The fatwā analyzed the issue from many different angles and addressed legal questions that previous fatāwā had left unanswered, such as the interreligious dimensions of organ donation, namely donating organs to or receiving organs from non‐Muslims. The presentation of the fatwā was a manifestation of the ʿilmī imperative, but the conference was also a demonstration of the iṣlāḥī imperative, at least to a small extent, because at least a hundred imāms attended the conference, and the NIGZ developed brochures quoting the declaration of this conference, both in Arabic and Turkish, and available online and in printed form.

Although empirical studies that assess the increase in donor rates resulting from the interventions in The Netherlands are still wanting, there are some positive signs. One small study noted a slight increase in the number of registered donors in 2007, compared with 2005, among Dutch people with Muslim‐country origins (Moroccan and Surinamese) (Ghaly ). Furthermore, some imāms suggested they would now promote organ donation after attending the CMO conference. As one of them said, “We follow the advice of our scholars and we will allow organ donation,” upon which the audience, which included many imāms, applauded (Ghaly ).

On the other hand, however, other studies suggest that the number of registered Muslim donors has remained unchanged, largely due to their uncertainty about the stance of their religion toward donation (Ghaly ). Hence further work needs to clarify the effectiveness of efforts to increase Muslim donor rates such as the above‐mentioned ones by the Milli Görüs and the CMO. Although encouraging, a critical failing of these efforts, in the light of TPB, is that the theory (as well as all other behavioral change models) require robust interventions that target specific barrier beliefs, for example, organ donation desecrates the body, through tailored messaging, for example, organ donation processes maintain respect for the donor body and procuring organs from the dead is Islamically permissible. The Milli Görüs intervention, as well as the CMO conference, appears to have placed more emphasis on the widespread dissemination of fatāwā of permissibility rather than focused iṣlāḥī messaging that attempts to dispel myths and change barrier beliefs. Further, while the imāms at the conference may have resolved to support organ donation we do not know to what extent they organized classes, lectures, workshops, and other programs at their mosques that actively promoted organ donation through targeted and tailored messaging. Nevertheless, the case of The Netherlands represents an encouraging first step.

This article has two objectives. The first one, the broader of the two, is to propose a new model for thinking about Islamic religious leadership. Too often among the medical community, the ʿulamā’ are thought of as a homogenous, static, and monolithic body. It is hoped that the ʿilmī/iṣlāḥī dichotomy will offer a touch of nuance to this image and lead to a new and more accurate understanding of the ʿulamā’. A clearer picture of the relationships between lay Muslims and the multiple levels of Islamic religious leadership will allow for more conducive collaborations between medical researchers and the Muslim community.

The second objective is to call attention within the medical community to the importance of reaching out to the representatives of the iṣlāḥī imperative among Islamic religious leadership. While much research has been conducted on what the Islamic ethico‐legal tradition says about various issues in medical ethics, few studies have examined how Islamic bioethics plays out on the ground. Speaking about the scant collaboration with local imāms, a study notes:

The community role of…[a] mosque‐based imam is analogous to the role of Christian priests or ministers and Jewish rabbis. However, while the medical literature is replete with studies describing partnerships with rabbis and priests to improve Jewish and Christian health, respectively, and chaplaincy programs have effectively incorporated these faith leaders within hospital systems, few imams have been included in such initiatives, and little is known about their multiple roles in American Muslim health. (Padela et al. )

And yet, this incorporation is critical because without these imāms to couple the iṣlāḥī imperative with a fatwā, the fatāwā are less likely to be effective agents of health behavior change. To begin this initiative of reaching out to representatives of the iṣlāḥī imperative, we suggest that there is a need to conduct studies on the opinions of local imāms and preachers in order to clarify what they feel are barriers to their involvement in health promotion, their concerns over promoting health practices donation in sermons, and their reading of community health challenges. In the aforementioned study, for example, some imāms were concerned about health workers “co‐opting” religion for health goals and “expressed discomfort with being asked to convince patients to pursue physician recommendations through religion‐based arguments” (Padela et al. ).

For future health behavior change interventions, we propose a multifaceted model that is informed by the proposed theoretical framework derived from the TPB. Interventions should focus on changing not behavior or intention but rather the more upstream determinants of behavior change, with a particular emphasis on Subjective Norm. The Normative Beliefs component should be addressed by encouraging fuqahā’ and ethico‐legal councils to research the understudied issues in health and medicine, such as organ donation, and tackle the controversial points from the lens of Islamic Law. At the same time, interventionists must give equal attention to the Motivation to Comply component by reaching out to representatives of the iṣlāḥī imperative. They should be informed of what Muslim jurists from a wide variety of intellectual and ethnic backgrounds have ruled regarding the proposed health behavior intervention. They should then be encouraged to frame the intervention to their congregation in an iṣlāḥī context, perhaps by mentioning it in the Friday sermon, or by holding classes at the mosque on the topic.

The ideas presented are not without limitations or qualifiers. One example of issues that require further consideration is that some Muslims may feel uneasy with initiatives that use iṣlāḥī messages to promote health behavior change, possibly perceiving these initiatives as employing Islam as a mere tool to achieve worldly objectives. In the previously mentioned study, for instance, one respondent states:

I think using religious venues and sharing common values is okay. So going to the masajid [mosques] and encouraging women to get their mammograms and … men to get their prostate exams, for people to get colonoscopies—that's totally cool … when you go to the next step and you say that Allah wants you to get a colonoscopy … I get nervous … that's not my understanding of my religion. (Padela et al. )

Therefore, as the authors write, “there seems to be an ethical line between coercing Muslims to seek healthcare using religiously laden messages and general health promotion activities at the mosque” (Padela et al. ).

Another challenge for medical researchers in practically approaching the iṣlāḥī imperative is that it is much more diverse than the ʿilmī imperative. The iṣlāḥī imperative includes a broad range of religious leaders who share the common role of middlemen in educating the Muslim masses and guiding them in matters of religion. Some are imāms of mosques, but others include televangelists, community service workers, chaplains, and counselors. The question for health behavior interventionists when attempting to reach out to them is where to start? As a practical starting point in the United States, they should work to develop linkages with umbrella organizations such as the Islamic Society of North America or the North American Imāms Federation, where imāms and community leaders may come together to discuss health challenges and bioethical issues facing the Muslim community and work toward implementing change in health behaviors.

Another point that deserves mentioning is that in the presented theoretical framework, we have only discussed religious factors that determine the intention to donate. We mentioned previously that in the religious context, the Motivation to Comply domain would theoretically encourage Muslims to act in accordance to God's decree, as conveyed through the Sharīʿah, to the exclusion of all other referent others such as family, society, or government. While a very religious Muslim may consider God and nothing else in his or her decision to donate organs, in reality nonreligious factors affecting the intent to donate will invariably apply to varying extents for the majority of Muslims. Religion is but one factor in motivating health behavior, and it may or may not be the most significant from person to person. Therefore, the proposed multifaceted approach to health behavior intervention must also address nonreligious factors such as acculturation, adequate dissemination of health information, and the overcoming of any language barriers.

The issue of transnational application is also noteworthy. The dynamics of the way the ʿilmī and iṣlāḥī imperatives manifest themselves differ from region to region, most obviously between countries of Muslim majority versus minority. In the case of the ʿilmī imperative, collaboration may be relatively straightforward in a country like Egypt which has a state‐sponsored body responsible for fatwā (Dār al‐Iftā’ al‐Miṣrīyyah), as well as a well‐recognized system for dissemination and research of religious knowledge. In Britain or the United States, on the other hand, the situation is not so clear‐cut. Without authoritative institutions for fatwā application, every Muslim in a nonmajority context must decide for him‐ or herself which fatwā to abide by or which scholar to follow. Similarly in the case of the iṣlāḥī imperative, the local imām serves a much more dynamic role within the community in countries of Muslim minority. He at once serves the role of a counselor, teacher, muftī, and preacher. Therefore, his iṣlāḥī messages can be transmitted through multiple channels of influence. In countries of Muslim majority, on the other hand, people obtain iṣlāḥī messages from different avenues. The health behavior interventionist must take all these nuances into consideration for intervention to be successful.

The authors thank Shaykh Mohammed Amin Kholwadia for his insightful formative comments.