Technologies of war as well as biomedical technologies have radically reshaped our conceptions of life and death. In the spheres of war and healthcare technology has radically reshaped our understanding and conceptions of life and death. What was once considered to be violent and morally contested modes of warfare-whether in the form of terror sponsored by non-state actors or states-have slowly become acceptable in certain discreet categories of social discourse in the media and political lexicon. Similarly, new modes of sustaining organic life in human bodies in life support-machines as well as the continued use of body parts in organ transplantation radically interferes with our inherited conceptions of life and death.

Political philosopher, William Connolly believes that we are entering into a new phase of neuropolitics where thinking and speed provides new modes of imagining self and culture. My paper will draw on Connolly's insights and examine a few issues related to warfare and bioethics in a general sense, as well as explore its interface with existing debates and practices in Muslim ethics.

EBRAHIM MOOSA joined Duke University in the fall of 2001. With interests in Islamic thought, especially Islamic law, ethics, theology and critical theory, Ebrahim Moosa is Associate Research Professor in the Department of Religion and Director of the Center for Study of Muslim Networks. Prior to that he taught at the University of Cape Town in his native South Africa and was also visiting professor at Stanford University. Apart from his doctoral studies on the confluence of language and theology in the legal thought of the 12th century Muslim thinker, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d.1111) his book, Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination will be released in May 2005 by the University of North Carolina Press.

He is the author of many published essays in Islamic thought ranging from issues in ethics and law covering topics such as human rights, women's rights, Muslim family law, medical ethics and political ethics to historical studies that deal with questions of Qur'an exegesis and medieval Islamic law and philosophy. He is especially interested in the way religious traditions encounter modernity and the way new conceptions of history and culture dialogically engage with the Islamic heritage.