Common questions on Islamic law, bio-fiqh and medical ethics.
Because the preservation of life is a fundamental objective, active euthanasia — directly ending a patient's life — is not regarded as permissible by the prevailing view and is treated as intentional killing. A detailed analysis appears in "Whose Life Is This?".
No. Euthanasia involves active or passive intervention in life, whereas refusal of treatment is a patient declining a specific medical procedure. The two are discussed within different conceptual frameworks.
Her main works are the book "Whose Life Is This?" and the article "The Right to Die: A Comparative Approach from Fritz Jahr and Islamic Law".
When treatment no longer offers benefit and merely prolongs dying, limiting life support is discussed within a different framework from active killing; the ruling depends on the medical situation, consent and maṣlaḥa.
Jurists differ on the ruling of seeking treatment; it is mostly held to be recommended or permissible, and obligatory in some cases. Details are addressed in "Withholding of Treatment in Islamic Law".
Bio-fiqh is the interdisciplinary field in which developments in medicine and the life sciences are evaluated within usul al-fiqh; it is also called Islamic bioethics.
Preservation of life, non-maleficence, beneficence, patient consent, privacy and human dignity are the principal ones.
Most contemporary fiqh councils permit organ donation and transplantation under certain conditions (necessity, consent, prohibition of commerce); it remains an issue of ongoing ijtihad.
In cadaveric transplantation, determining death is critical for organ viability, so the debate over whether brain death counts as real death becomes decisive.
Contemporary jurists differ: some regard brain death as legal death, while others adhere to the traditional cardio-respiratory criterion. The matter is one of ijtihad.
Western bioethics rests on autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice, whereas Islamic bioethics evaluates these issues through usul al-fiqh, the objectives of the law (maqāṣid) and the textual sources.
It covers a broad field: the beginning and end of life, organ transplantation, reproductive technologies, genetics, euthanasia, treatment decisions and the ethics of epidemics.
By applying the concepts of usul al-fiqh (ijtihad, analogy, maṣlaḥa, custom, maqāṣid) to new issues — first describing the issue accurately, then assessing it in light of the textual sources.
AI's participation in medical decision-making raises new questions for the doctrine of liability (ḍamān); this is discussed in the essay "Artificial Intelligence and Liability in Islamic Law".