End-of-Life Medical Challenges – Some Reflections on Muslim Juridicial Discourse

• Published in: Hamdard Islamicus Vol. 40; no. 3
• Main Authors: SYED SIKANDAR SHAH HANEEF, MOHAMMED ABBAS BIN ABDUL RAZAK
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hamdard Foundation 01-03-2021
• ISSN: 0250-7196

Unprecedented advancement in medical technology and its rapidly growing field of allied sciences indisputably have contributed significantly to the treatment of diseases and even inborn defects. However, they challenge many traditionally cherished age-old conceptions about diseases, natural deformities and even end-of-life care. Victims of accidents and those suffering from irrecoverable chronic diseases are put in life-support in the intensive care of the hospital thereby creating a new kind of life and possibility for terminating such a life. Thus, modern means of dealing with end-of-life matters raise topical issues of bioethical import, such as euthanasia and brain death, for both the scholars of bioethics and jurists to speculate. In the Muslim world, juridical bodies and individual jurists have come hard on active euthanasia but by and large endorsing medical definition of brain death to be in consonance with Islam. This has led critics to question the legitimacy of such juridical pronouncements on larger ethical and metaphysical grounds and propose methodological framework to remedy the situation. This paper, therefore, by engaging with such a discourse argues for a holistic approach to meet the medical challenges of end-of-life care in line with both ethical and legal ethos of Islamic Sharʑah.