Faith at the Frontiers of Cancer Care

Shaykh Amin Kholwadia at Crescent Oncology’s Jumuʿah at ASCO

The American Society of Clinical Oncology—better known as ASCO—gathers tens of thousands of members of the oncology community for a conference in Chicago at the end of May and the start of June every year. The meeting has long since outgrown most convention centers, and in recent years it has filled McCormick Place, the largest such venue in North America — a big venue for an even bigger topic.

At this year’s ASCO Annual Meeting, Crescent Oncology brought more than 60 Muslim oncology professionals together for a second consecutive year. Crescent Oncology is a grassroots, peer-to-peer organization of medical oncologists across the United States that has organized Jumuʿah prayer, reflection, and community-building at major oncology conferences. This year’s khutbah was delivered by Shaykh Amin Kholwadia of Darul Qasim College, marking his second time addressing the gathering. His message spoke directly to the realities of Muslim clinicians working at the frontiers of cancer care: how to remain people of faith not only in the home or masjid, but also in the hospital, clinic, and at the bedside.

Shaykh Amin’s remarks situated oncology within the larger field of Islamic bioethics. Medicine is not morally neutral terrain. It is a space where Muslim physicians, nurses, researchers, pharmacists, trainees, and industry leaders regularly confront questions of life and death, benefit and harm, permissibility and necessity. Treatments may involve materials with halal and haram considerations, such as porcine-derived heparin, or clinical decisions in which the risk of toxicity must be weighed against the possibility of benefit. These are not abstract legal questions; they are lived realities in modern medical practice.

That tension is sharpened by a striking gap in clinical training. As an oncologist-in-training myself, I face ethical dilemmas nearly every day: in choosing among treatments, deciding when to continue or stop therapy, and navigating events near the end of life—yet many have had little to no formal ethics training to prepare them for it.¹ Even in the emerging area of artificial intelligence in cancer care, more than half of surveyed oncologists report no prior training, and roughly three in four say they would not know where to find appropriate educational resources, despite the overwhelming majority believing such training would benefit them.²

The khutbah also highlighted the need for serious scholarly engagement between Islamic scholars and health professionals. Academic debate offers a model for this work: not simply issuing rulings from a distance but placing scholars in conversation with physicians and other clinicians who understand the granular details of medical practice. Such collaboration allows professionals to think more carefully about issues of faith, law, and care in the most complex corners of contemporary medicine.

There was something symbolic in the fact that Shaykh Amin’s voice carried clear across the entire lobby of the Chicago Hilton hotel. The setting underscored the message itself: a call to ethics and virtue in medicine offered for the benefit of all of humanity, not for any single group of people.

That complexity was especially visible at ASCO, where tens of thousands of oncology professionals gather to discuss the latest advances in cancer research and treatment. The field continues to change rapidly. Diseases once considered nearly untreatable are being approached with new tools. KRAS, long described as “undruggable,” is now the target of an emerging therapy: in the phase III RASolute 302 trial presented at this year’s meeting, the RAS inhibitor daraxonrasib roughly doubled overall survival—to 13.2 months from 6.7 months with chemotherapy—in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer whose disease had progressed after prior treatment.³ Antibody-drug conjugates, which act like “smart bombs” to deliver chemotherapy more precisely to tumor cells, have proliferated rapidly; the FDA has now approved roughly fifteen of them, the majority within the past several years.⁴ Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to match patients with clinical trials, part of a broader AI-in-clinical-trials market valued at close to $2 billion in 2024 and projected to grow severalfold over the coming decade.⁵ The American Cancer Society’s 2026 data reflect this broader progress: for the first time, the five-year relative survival rate for all cancers combined has reached a historic milestone of 70% for people diagnosed during 2015–2021, up from roughly 50% in the mid-1970s. Survival for distant-stage disease has also climbed sharply, doubling for all cancers combined from 17% to 35% since the mid-1990s.⁶

Yet Shaykh Amin reminded the audience that scientific progress does not remove the need for humility. Every treatment carries side effects; if a person read the full list of possible adverse effects for even a common medication like acetaminophen (Tylenol) — which can include, in rare cases, serious liver injury and severe skin reactions — many would hesitate to take a single pill. The physician’s work therefore requires both technical expertise and spiritual clarity. The clinician must pursue healing while remembering that cure ultimately belongs to Allah.

In that spirit, Shaykh Amin invoked the Qur’anic account of ʿIsa عليه السلام, who healed the blind and the leper and raised the dead by Allah’s permission. The lesson was not to be dazzled by creation or confined by material means, but to recognize that a single moment with the Creator can reorient the heart. Medicine is a means; Allah is the One who gives life, death, harm, benefit, illness, and healing.

Crescent Oncology’s gathering served as more than a prayer space inside a major medical conference. It was a reminder that Muslim clinicians need community as they navigate practice management, academia, research, and industry. Organizations such as American Muslim Physicians Association (AMPA) are among the first to systematically connect thousands of clinicians across specialties, while groups like Crescent Oncology create spaces for oncology professionals to find one another at national conferences and identify mentors and trailblazers.

The khutbah ultimately called Muslim health professionals to bring their full selves into medicine. Islam is not a private identity to be left at the hospital door. It is a moral and spiritual framework that should shape how clinicians think about suffering, risk, innovation, healing, and service. At ASCO, amid the newest data and most advanced therapies, Shaykh Amin’s message was clear: the future of medicine needs Muslim professionals who are excellent in their fields, grounded in their faith, and courageous enough to bring ethics into the heart of clinical care.

To learn more about AMPA: American Muslim Physicians Association

To learn more about Crescent Oncology: Crescent Oncology

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Disclaimer: Material published by Traversing Tradition is meant to foster scholarly inquiry and rich discussion. The views, opinions, beliefs, or strategies represented in published articles and subsequent comments do not necessarily represent the views of Traversing Tradition or any employee thereof.

Photo by shot ed on Unsplash

Works Cited:

1. Mackler E, Kotwall N, Smith TJ, et al. Ethical considerations in oncology: balancing the interests of patients, oncologists, and society. Oncology (Williston Park). Reviewing how oncologists face ethical dilemmas daily while many have limited formal ethics training. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7666106/. [↩]
2. Hantel A, et al. Perspectives of Oncologists on the Ethical Implications of Using Artificial Intelligence for Cancer Care. JAMA Network Open. 2024. (53% of surveyed oncologists reported no prior AI training; 75% did not know of appropriate resources; 93% felt they would benefit from dedicated training.) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10979310/. [↩]
3. Wolpin BM, et al. Daraxonrasib (RAS(ON) multiselective inhibitor) versus chemotherapy in previously treated metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: the phase III RASolute 302 trial. Presented at the 2026 ASCO Annual Meeting; published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine. https://www.asco.org/about-asco/press-center/multi-selective-ras-inhibitor-nearly-doubles-survival-pancreatic-cancer. [↩]
4. U.S. Food and Drug Administration approvals of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). As of late 2025, approximately 15 ADCs had been approved by the FDA, the majority within recent years. https://www.susupport.com/blogs/biopharmaceutical-products/fda-approved-antibody-drug-conjugates-adcs. [↩]
5.  AI in Clinical Trials Market: market size and forecast. The global AI-in-clinical-trials market was valued at roughly $1.85–$2.1 billion in 2024, with projected growth at a strong compound annual rate over the following decade. https://media.market.us/ai-in-clinical-trials-market-news/. [↩]
6. Siegel RL, et al. Cancer Statistics, 2026. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. American Cancer Society. (Five-year relative survival for all cancers combined reached 70% for 2015–2021 diagnoses; distant-stage survival doubled from 17% to 35% since the mid-1990s.) https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/acs-annual-statistics-report-milestone-70-percent-5-year-survival-rate-for-all-cancers-combined-largest-gains-for-advanced-and-fatal-cancers-302659051.html. [↩]