Islamic law, Qur'an and Commentaries, Medical ethics in Islam, Human rights in Islam, the status of women in Islamic law and society

Curriculum vitae

 I am associate professor (emerita) at the Department of Arabic Language and Literature, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel. I received my Ph.D. in 1985 from UC Berkeley, USA. I taught Islamic topics for 35 years at the Department, mainly related to Islamic religion and law. My classes included: Introduction to Islam, Qur’an and Commentaries, Fatwas Literature, Islamic Medical Ethics-the Beginning of Life and Its End, Science and technology in Islam, Disabilities in Islamic law, Islamic Religious Duties, Rights of Women in Islam and Human Rights in Islamic Law.
Since I have recently retired, I am no longer teaching at the Department.
My research topics are: various aspects of Islamic medical ethics, disabilities, abortions and organ transplantation, the pre-selection of the sex of the embryo, the reconstruction of a torn hymen, and more. All these are also analyzed in reference to the Islamic religious duties, rights of women in Islamic societies and human rights in general.

The following is a selected list of my most recent publications:
1. Vardit Rispler Chaim. “The role of procreation (injab) in marital life: A shift in attitude from medieval fiqh to contemporary fatwas.” HAWWA 18(2020): 1-19.
2. Vardit Rispler Chaim. “Some Observations on Attitudes to Disability in Islamic law.” IJMES 51/1(2019): 116-119.
3. Vardit Rispler Chaim. “Debates in Islamic Bioethics on How to Increase Organ Donations: Between Presumed Consent and Explicit Consent.” Ethics Medicine and Public Health 7(2018): 88-94.
4. Vardit Rispler Chaim. “The notion of privacy in Islamic medical ethics.” Medicine and Law 35(2016): 465-482.
5. Hazar Haidar, Vardit Rispler-Chaim, Anthony Hung, Subhashini Chandrasekharan, and Vardit Ravitsky. “Noninvasive Prenatal Testing: Implications for Muslim Communities.” American Journal of Bioethics, Empirical Bioethics (AJOB eb) 6(1) (2015): 94-105.
6. Vardit Rispler Chaim. “Recent Interpretations of the Laws of Zakāt with Regard to People with Disabilities: A Comparison with Classical Fiqh.” Comparative Islamic Studies (CIS) 9.1 (2013): 91-112.