Islamic ethical perspectives on life-sustaining treatments

Deliberation about optimum use of life-sustaining treatments (LSTs) within the Islamic tradition arose from the broader discussions on whether brain death should be recognized as death from an Islamic perspective. From the 1980s, influential institutions adopted different positions on brain death, including the Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences (IOMS) in Kuwait in 1985 and 1996, the International Islamic Fiqh Academy (IIFA) in 1986, and the Islamic Fiqh Academy (IFA) in 1987; both based in Saudi Arabia. Despite their disagreement on the definition of death, the 3 institutions agreed that forgoing LSTs for patients diagnosed with brain death is justified from an Islamic perspective because braindead people would have no life to sustain. Some of those who did not recognize brain death as real death accepted the limitation of LSTs because of the irreversibility (lā yurjā burʾuh برؤه يرجى ال (of the patient’s terminal condition. Although they regarded brain-dead persons as still living from an Islamic perspective, they conceded that these persons are in the process of dying, with no possibility to bring them back to stable life (ḥayāh mustaqirra ]مستقرة حياة5–1[