Elsevier

The Lancet

Volume 366, Issue 9487, 27 August–2 September 2005, Pages 774-779
The Lancet

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End-of-life: the Islamic view

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(05)67183-8Get rights and content

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Principles and rules for ethical-legal decisions

To ascertain the contemporary response to ethical dilemmas from a Muslim point of view in the crosscultural context of bioethics, questions about what constitutes appropriate behaviour in Islam first need to be addressed. Mere presentation of practical judgments or the legal rulings (fatawa) on issues such as abortion, organ donation, and euthanasia is insufficient, since there is a lack of unanimity among Muslim jurists of different schools of Islamic law. As such, the underlying principles

End-of-life issues: who decides?

End-of-life issues are religiously, emotionally, and politically charged topics. As Islam teaches, everyone will face death, and the way we and those we love die is of great individual importance. For Muslims, life is sacred because God is its origin and its destiny. Death does not happen except by God's permission, as dictated in the Qur'an. Nevertheless, there is recognition of the fact that diseases and trauma cause death. In Islam, health-care providers must do everything possible to

Right to die?

“How fortunate you are that you died while you were not afflicted with illness”,6 said the Prophet addressing the person whose funeral rites he was reading. Such an assessment of death without illness, coming from the founder of Islam, indicates the importance attached to a healthy life in Muslim culture. Good health is God's blessing for which a Muslim, whenever asked, “How are you [How is your health?]?” responds, “All praise is due to God!” This positive appraisal of good health suggests

Stewardship of the body and pain

A person is merely a “tenant in this temple [ie, the human body] for Him Who made him to dwell therein and stipulated that in lieu of the payment of rent for his dwelling he take care of its upkeep and preservation, its cleaning, repair and use, in a manner which would help him in his search for happiness in both this world and the next world.”4 As caretakers, human beings are charged with taking all the necessary steps to preserve their body in a way that will assist them in seeking the good

End-of-life decisions in Islam

In Islam, the Shari'ah does not recognise a patient's right to die voluntarily because life is a divine trust and cannot be terminated by any form of active or passive human intervention, and because its term is fixed by an unalterable divine decree. As such, suicide (intihar or halakat al-nafs) is judged irrational and an act that should not be committed. However, Muslim scholars interpret suicide as being committed under conditions a person is unable to cope with, which indicates a factual,

Conclusion

In Islam, the killing of a terminally ill person, whether through voluntary active euthanasia or physician assisted suicide, is judged an act of disobedience against God. However, pain-relief treatment or withholding or withdrawing of life-support treatment, in which there is an intention of allowing a person to die when there is no doubt that their disease is causing untreatable suffering, are permissible as long as the structures of consultation between all the parties concerned about the

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References (11)

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