THE USE OF DNA fingerprinting, or genetic print, in criminal investigations is a novel legal usage (nâzilah) about which Muslim scholar-jurists (fuqahâ’) are divided in their opinion. The fuqahâ’ differ as to the kinds of cases in which a genetic print may stand as reliable evidence.
In Western countries, DNA use in adjudicating legal disputes is common, including many European courts of law that have approved its admissibility. Muslim countries, as in other matters, have now begun following suit, employing the genetic print to establish guilt. For this reason, it is now very important for Muslim legal experts and judges to familiarize themselves with DNA fingerprinting on a technical level and then to establish to what extent it might be considered authoritative in determining, for example, paternity—or in crime investigation as a basis for deciding culpability and administering the ḥudûd-punishments.
Advances in the medical sciences, particularly in forensics, have given us the capability of exploring and deciphering the contents of a human cell and visualizing the genetic prints of chromosomes. Identical twins apart, no two persons ever carry identical genetic prints (though the actual fingerprints of identical twins differ since fingerprints are formed by the interaction of genes and the developmental environment of the uterus). The genetic print is extracted from one’s basic biological material, obtained from blood, semen, hair root, bone, saliva, urine, amniotic fluid surrounding fetuses, the cells of a fertilized ovum, and body cells. A sample size equal to a pinhead suffices for establishing a genetic print.
The Fiqh Academy of the Muslim World League, headquartered in Makkah, has adopted the following definition of the genetic print: “The genetic print is the distinct genetic structure that points to and is unique to, the identity of each human being.” (See the decisions of the Fiqh Academy of the Muslim World League).
Genetic prints are found in the nucleus inside each of the human body cells. The human body comprises trillions of cells, each one containing a nucleus that controls and determines the cell’s life and function. Each nucleus contains the genetic material—from the characteristics common to human beings as a whole to those shared among related ethnicities, to the characteristics peculiar to the individual.
The material root of the genetic print is found in the form of amino acids (DNA) known as chromosomes or nucleic acid. Half of a human being’s chromosomes come from the father, and half from the mother. (In addition, there are chromosomes engendered by a process known as neo-mutation, but this does not concern us here). Genetic qualities transfer from the genes that are found in the chromosomes (there are 100,000 genes in each single chromosome). Hence, if two chromosomes are randomly investigated, a vast number of genetic qualities could be determined, which raises the accuracy rate of the degree of genetic correspondence, or non-correspondence, to 99.9 percent, the reason being, as stated, that no two humans (save identical twins) ever share all of their genetic qualities at this percentage.
Usages of Genetic Print
It is by the will and grace of Allah that humans are able to detect the principles governing genetics, to arrange and classify their elements, both universal and particular, and to know how to benefit from these principles. Allah says: And they do not comprehend any of His knowledge except what He wills (Sûrat Al-Baqarah, 2:254).
The following are the areas in which DNA genetic printing may be utilized [in agreement with the current opinion of most fuqahâ’]:
Paternity: (a) Sorting out inadvertently misidentified newborns in hospitals; (b) determining the identity of a missing child; (c) deciding the actual paternity of a child attributed to someone when another comes forward with clear proof of a paternity claim, or (d) the rare case of a woman impregnated by two men (through concurrent fertilization of two different ova), as in cases of gang rape.
Identity: (a) Establishing the identities of prisoners of war—or others, like abducted children—who have been gone for an excessively protracted period of time; (b) identifying corpses deformed beyond recognition; (c) verifying the identity of claimants of blood affiliation with a certain ethnic group or person (such as the descendants of the American founding father Thomas Jefferson through his slave-concubine).
Culpability: Establishing criminal guilt from the DNA traces left by criminals (i.e., a body cell, semen, saliva, hair, cigarette butt, blood) as in the cases of rape, fornication, murder, theft, child kidnapping, etc.
One famous case wherein DNA fingerprinting technology was employed to establish guilt is that of the American President Bill Clinton, in his scandalous involvement in an extramarital sexual relationship with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The president’s denial of the affair was refuted when evidence showed the existence of the president’s genetic print in the seminal smear found on Lewinsky’s dress.
Another relevant incident occurred in Saudi Arabia, cited by members of the Fiqh Academy of the Muslim World League during their fiqhî discussion about the use of DNA fingerprinting to establish guilt. The story is as follows. A woman claimed her father had impregnated her. The accused father, 60 at the time, was known as a kind, caring father, so many thought the woman was framing her father to deflect the charge away from the real culprit. In the interest of the fetus’ health, the judge delayed the use of DNA fingerprinting until after the woman delivered her child.
When the baby was born, the DNA analysis showed the baby had no possible biological relation to the father. Strangely, however, DNA analysis also established that the baby did not relate biologically to the woman (its putative mother). Investigators suspected foul play. For if the refutation of the father’s paternity of the baby could be natural, the negation of any biological affiliation between the woman and her own child was not!
Investigators consulted the hospital’s register of babies born on the same day as that of the woman’s child and found that 30 babies were born that day. The babies’ families were contacted, DNA tests conducted, and the sought-after baby was identified and found genetically related to both the female plaintiff and the accused father. It was also found that the baby whom the claimant woman thought was hers was in fact a foundling brought to the hospital the same day of her delivery and surreptitiously given to her in place of her biological baby in an evil bid to cover the crime and the truth of the baby’s paternity.
Source: aljumuah.com
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
