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Islamic ethical perspectives on life-sustaining treatments

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journal contribution
submitted on 2024-08-27, 11:35 and posted on 2024-08-27, 12:10 authored by Mohammed Ghaly

Deliberation about optimum use of life-sustaining treatments (LSTs) within the Islamic tradition arose from the broader discussions on whether brain death should be recognized as death from an Islamic perspective. From the 1980s, influential institutions adopted different positions on brain death, including the Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences (IOMS) in Kuwait in 1985 and 1996, the International Islamic Fiqh Academy (IIFA) in 1986, and the Islamic Fiqh Academy (IFA) in 1987; both based in Saudi Arabia. Despite their disagreement on the definition of death, the 3 institutions agreed that forgoing LSTs for patients diagnosed with brain death is justified from an Islamic perspective because braindead people would have no life to sustain. Some of those who did not recognize brain death as real death accepted the limitation of LSTs because of the irreversibility (lā yurjā burʾuh برؤه يرجى ال (of the patient’s terminal condition. Although they regarded brain-dead persons as still living from an Islamic perspective, they conceded that these persons are in the process of dying, with no possibility to bring them back to stable life.

Other Information

Published in: Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/igo
See article on publisher's website: https://dx.doi.org/10.26719/emhj.22.044

History

Language

  • English

Publisher

World Health Organization Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean

Publication Year

  • 2022

License statement

This Item is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Intergovernmental Organization.

Institution affiliated with

  • Hamad Bin Khalifa University
  • College of Islamic Studies - HBKU
  • Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics - CIS

Geographic coverage

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia

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    College of Islamic Studies - HBKU

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