Assisted dying from an Islamic perspective

Assisted dying from an Islamic perspective

by: Dr Mohammad Akram Nadwi
Oxford

Any action which results in the death of a human being is a crime except in specific situations, such as executing a lawful decree of capital punishment or killing an active combatant in a lawful war. So called assisted dying is strictly speaking the taking of a life without legal justification. In situations of extreme pain, just as with illness generally the moral duty of a Muslim is to try to lessen the pain and cure the illness. If the illness is incurable, the duty to lessen pain remains. If the condition of the suffering person is so bad that any treatment is equivalent to trying to give life to a corpse, someone who has died, then it is a wrong to try and keep that person alive. However, it is of the utmost importance to understand that the decision as to whether a condition is curable, or incurable is a technical matter for experts to decide. It is not a moral matter that anyone can have an opinion about.

If an ill person asks to die, then, again, the technical question arises: it is for the medical experts, not for the patient or for the patient’s representatives, to make the judgement. Only if the experts agree that the patient’s condition is incurable and there is no hope of cure or improvement, then (usually with the permission of the patient or representative) then the experts have a duty to withhold treatment except for what alleviates pain. In such a circumstance, the experts are not causing a death. They are lessening suffering and allowing the patient’s body.