How often a teenager shout"its my life dammit ,what i do is my business"It may be the wests concept of freedom to do just about anything pushing the envelopes to the limits,but Islam gives responsibility with gifts.Life is a gift that Allah has still control over.Sometime when our life is full of suffering we may tend to despair & give up.What would ypou do in such situation,give u & die or fight till god pulls the curtain??or yopu would differ in different situation like in cancer pain ,severe disability,lack of money to take care of the ill person?? Do you in some cases allow mercy killing ??or you would consider the pain suffering & difficulties as allahs promise of rewarding you in life here after & ‘tough it out’& advice so ???
Title:Euthanasia and Islam..
EUTHANASIA
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Euthanasia gained a legal foothold in Holland. It went to the ballot box
in two states in America but was defeated. Its lobby is getting more
active. Islam has definite views on euthanasia.
HUMAN LIFE
The sanctity of human life is a basic value as decreed by God even
before the times of Moses, Jesus and Mohammad. Commenting on the killing
of Abel by his brother Caine (the two sons of Adam), God says in
theQuran: “On that account We ordained for the children of Israel that
if anyone slay a person -unless it be for murder or spreading mischief
in the land- it would be as if he slew the whole people. And if anyone
saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people”
(Quran 5:32). The Quran also says: “Take not life which Allah made
sacred otherwise than in the course of justice” (Quran 6:151 and 17:33).
The Shari’a went into great detail in defining the conditions where
taking life is permissible whether in war or in peace (as an item of the
criminal law), with rigorous prerequisites and precautions to minimize
that event.
IS THERE A RIGHT TO SUICIDE?
Not in Islam. Since we did not create ourselves we do not own our
bodies. We are entrusted with them for care, nurture and safe keeping.
God is the owner and giver of life and His rights in giving and in
taking are not to be violated. Attempting to kill oneself is a crime in
Islam as wellas a grave sin. The Quran says: “Do not kill (or destroy)
yourselves, for verily Allah has been to you most Merciful” (Quran
4:29). To warn against suicide prophet Mohammad said: “Whoever kills
himself with an iron instrument will be carrying it forever in hell.
Whoever takes poison and kills himself will forever keep sipping that
poison in hell. Whoever jumps off a mountain and kills himself will
forever keep falling down in the depths of hell.”
EUTHANASIA - MERCY KILLING
The Shari’a ( Islamic Law) listed and specified the indications for
taking life (ie. the exceptions to the general rule of sanctity of human
life), and they do not include mercy killing or make allowance for it.
Human life per se is a value to be respected unconditionally,
irrespective of other circumstances. The concept of a life not worthy of
living does not exist in Islam. Justification of taking life to escape
suffering is not acceptable in Islam. Prophet Mohammad taught: “There
was a man in older times who had an infliction that taxed his patience,
so he took a knife, cut his wrist and bled to death. Upon this God said:
My subject hastened his end, I deny him paradise.” During one of the
military campaigns one of the Muslims was killed and the companions of
the prophet kept praising his gallantry and efficiency in fighting, but,
to their surprise, the Prophet commented, “His lot is hell.” Upon
inquiry, the companions found out that the man had been seriously
injured so he supported the handle of his swo
rd on the ground and plunged his chest onto its tip, committing suicide.
The Islamic Code of Medical Ethics endorsed by the First International
Conference on Islamic Medicine (Islamic Organization of Medical
Sciences, Kuwait, 1981, p.65) includes: “Mercy killing, like suicide,
finds no support except in the atheistic way of thinking thatbelieves
that our life on this earth is followed by void. The claim of killing
for painful hopeless illness is also refuted, for there is no human pain
that cannot be largely conquered by medication or by suitable
neurosurgery…”.
There is still another dimension to the question of pain and suffering.
Patience and endurance are highly regarded and highly rewarded values in
Islam. “Those who patiently preserve will truly receive a reward without
measure” (Quran 39:10). “And bear in patience whatever (ill) maybe fall
you: this, behold, is something to set one’s heart upon” (Quran 31:17).
Prophet Mohammad taught “When the believer is afflicted with pain, even
that of a prick of a thorn or more, God forgives his sins, and his
wrongdoings are discarded as a tree sheds off its leaves.” When means of
preventing or alleviating pain fall short, this spiritual dimension can
be very effectively called upon to support the patient who believes that
accepting and standing unavoidable pain will be to his/her credit in the
hereafter, the real and enduring life. To a person who does not believe
in a hereafter this might sound like nonsense, but to one who does,
euthanasia is certainly nonsense.
THE FINANCIAL FACTOR
There is no disagreement that the financial cost of maintainingthe
incurably ill and the senile is a growing concern, so much so thatsome
groups have gone beyond the concept of the “right to die” to that ofthe
“duty to die”. They claim that when the human machine has outlived its
productive span its maintenance is an unacceptable burden on the
productive stratum of society, and it should be disposed of, and rather
abruptly than allowing it to deteriorate gradually (Jacques Atalli: La
medicine en accusation - in Michel Solomon ‘L’ avenir de la vie’, Coll.
Les visages de L’avenir. Ed. Seghers, Paris, 1981, p. 273-275).
This logic is completely alien to Islam. Values take priority
overprices. The care for the week, old and helpless is a value in itself
for which people are willing to sacrifice time, effort and money, and
this starts, naturally with one’s own parents “Your Lord decreed that
you worship none but Him, and that you be kind to your parents. Whether
one or both of them attain old age in your life, say not to them a word
of contempt but address them in terms of honor. And lower to them the
wing of humility out of compassion, and say: my Lord, bestow on them
Your mercy even as they cherished me in childhood” (Quran 17:25- 25).
Because such caring is a virtue ordained and rewarded by God in this
world and in the hereafter, the believers don’t take it as a debit but
as an investment. In a materialistic dollar- centric community this
logic is meaningless, but not so in the value-oriented God heeding
community of the faithful.
When individual means cannot cover the needed care, it becomes,
according to Islam, the collective responsibility of society, and
financial priorities are reshuffled so that values take priority over
pleasures, and people derive more pleasure from heeding values than from
pursuing other pleasantries. A prerequisite of course is a complete
moral and spiritual re-orientation of a society that does not hold to
these premises.
CLINICAL SITUATIONS
In an Islamic setting the question of euthanasia usually does not arise,
and if it does, it is dismissed as religiously unlawful. The patient
should receive every possible psychological support and compassion from
family and friends, including the patient’s spiritual (religious)
resources. The doctor also participates in this, as well, and provides
the therapeutic measures for the relief of pain. A dilemma arises when
the dose of the pain killer necessary to alleviate pain approximates or
overlaps with the lethal dose that might bring about the patient’s
death.
Ingenuity on the part of the doctor is called upon to avoid
thissituation, but from a religious point of view the critical issue is
the doctor’s intention: is it to kill or to alleviate? Intention is
beyond verification by the law but according to Islam it cannot escape
the ever watchful eye of God Who according to the Quran “knows the
treachery of the eyes, and all that hearts conceal” (Quran 40:19). Sins
that do not fulfil the criteria of a legal crime are beyond the domain
of the judge but remain answerable to God.
The Islamic Code of Medical Ethics (1981 p.67), states: “In his/her
defense of life, however, the Doctor is well advised to realize his
limit and not transgress it. If it is scientifically certain that life
cannot be restored, then it is futile to diligently keep the patient in
a vegetative state by heroic means or to preserve the patient by deep
freezing or other artificial methods. It is the process of life that the
doctor aims to maintain and not the process of dying. In any case, the
doctor shall not take a positive measure to terminate the patient’s
life”.
The seeking of medical treatment from illness is mandatory in Islam,
according to two sayings of the prophet: “Seek treatment, subjects of
God, for to every illness God has made a cure”, and “Your body has a
right on you.” But when the treatment holds no promise it ceases to be
mandatory. This applies both to surgical and/or pharmaceutical measures,
and, according to a majority of scholars, to artificial animation
equipment. Ordinary life needs which are the right of every living
person and which are not categorized as “treatment” are regarded
differently.
These include food and drink and ordinary nursing care, and they are not