Legal experts from the Arab League have hammered out a consensus on cloning which would lead to laws banning both reproductive and research cloning. At the moment there is a legal vacuum in the Arab world on cloning. An Arab treaty will probably be approved before the UN re-opens its discussion of a global treaty on cloning next year — and could influence its outcome.

Several Muslim groups oppose cloning. “The international community should stand up to the heresy of… human cloning which… violates divine laws,” says Muslim World League secretary-general Abdullah bin Adbul Mohsen Al-Turki. Muslim doctors have also spoken out against research cloning. Dr Ali Khalifa, professor of Medicine at Cairo’s Ain Shams University, says that cloning endangers “the human personality, human dignity and honour, and human family and society”. Creating and killing human embryos for their stem cells is “murder in the name of scientific advancement,” he says.

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