Islamic Center of Southern California

The Arguments of Islamic Law Rulings on Recent Medical Issues

Topic Twenty Eight

Mercy Killing of the Aged, Encouraging Them to End Their Lives, and Denying Them Intensive Care and Expensive Medicines

Definition

Some people with a materialistic way of thinking have voiced their views on the problem of the increase in number of aging people and their consumption of provided services. Those people's argument call for killing aged people, for, the argument goes, they have already performed their roles and had their shares. They compare an aged person to a machine whose life expectancy is completed. The argument calls for giving physicians the right to relieve the aged from the pain of illness or the suffering caused by ingratitude, and to relieve their families from the burden of supporting them and the obligation of keeping in touch with, and being dutiful to, them.

According to this argument, a physician should advise the aged to the best and quickest methods to achieve that goal.

Advocates of the argument also demand depriving the age of intensive care equipment and expensive medications, so that these may be available for young people, who are capable of serving their communities.

The Discussion of the IOMS and Its Legal Position

The IOMS addressed these questions in the seminar on "Rights of the Elderly" in 1999. It had already tackled the question of "Mercy Killing" in the medical and jurisprudence (fiqh) papers and discussions of its fourth seminar in 1988.

The recommendations of the Rights of the Elderly seminar in 1999 are clear in their prohibition of mercy killing and suicide. As for the question of intensive care equipment and expensive medications, the recommendations leave it to affordability and the absence of any party that needs them more urgently.

The seminar's recommendations include the following:

Although the IOMS had already discussed this subject in a former seminar, it has devoted to it a special session in this seminar, in which scholars Yusuf Al-Qaradhaawi, Muhammad Mukhtaar Al-Salaami, Muhammad Al-Mahdi Al-Taskheeri, John Brynt, and Jamaal Zaki have spoken. The time allowed for arguments and discussion has been quite liberal. This is due to the fact that promotion of the notion of mercy killing is increasing in the West, in a world where distance is no longer a hindrance for communication and where our scholars who study in the West are exposed to a new cultural preaching. Moreover, the medical workforce in some Islamic countries includes an increasing number of people who do not believe in or observe divine creeds.

The seminar reaffirms that mercy killing is inconsistent with Islamic belief, regardless of the different names given to the procedure (such as death with dignity, for example), and whether it takes the form of a direct medical intervention or of a physician paving the way for a patient to take his own life.

This ruling applies to active intervention as well as passive intervention by withholding the patient's medication with the intention of causing his death, even if it is done at the request of the patient himself or his family.

However, it is not obligatory to administer a medical treatment which is ruled to be definitely useless; a treatment procedure may be withheld or stopped, as long as the patient retains his general human rights, which include being provided with food, drink, nursing care, and relief from pain. Islamic Center of Southern California