During a recent religious debate on organ transplants that was attended by religious scholars and doctors in Riyadh, it was recommended that a joint committee be formed to discuss the issue of patients being declared brain dead. Participants also recommended that the committee visit hospitals and medical centers to acquaint themselves with the reality of the matter. The issue of whether someone on a life support machine but clinically brain dead can be considered dead in Islam is something that is left for the sheikhs and religious scholars to discuss. Traditional Islamic jurisprudence defines death as complete cessation of the heart or respiration. However, a further dimension has been added to this with the introduction of life-support systems which allow bodies to function even though a person might be brain dead. This development raises the question whether someone who is brain dead can be considered dead according to Islam. Regarding this, Dr. Faisal Shaheen, director general of the National Center for Organ Transplantation, said caring for brain dead people cost the government SR1 billion last year, Al-Watan Arabic daily reported. “This is the case at a time when 2,000 patients need annual kidney transplants, 500 patients need liver transplants and 200 need lung transplants. You can then add to this that 25 percent of the Kingdom's population suffers from diabetes that can be treated by pancreas transplants,” he said. He said that the organs of people who are brain dead can be used for transplants, but that this can only be done with the input of religious scholars. The Kingdom's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Aal Al-Asheikh has emphasized the ruling issued by the Board of Senior Ulema that people who are brain dead cannot be considered dead unless their hearts and respiratory systems have stopped functioning. The grand mufti said that a Muslim always depends on God and never gives up on Allah's mercy - all Muslims, including brain dead people, submit their will to God alone and no one else, and as is mentioned in the Holy Qur'an: “And never give up hope in Allah's soothing mercy.” Dr. Hussien Al-Abaidi, head of the Department of Islamic Jurisprudence at Imam Muhammad Bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, said that although the Qur'an contains various verses that add significantly to our insight into the meaning of death, the concept is left undefined and is always portrayed in close relationship with the concepts of life, creation and resurrection. The Holy Qur'an seems to be more concerned with determining the nature of death, he said. Thus, in speaking about the agonies of death suffered by non-righteous people it uses the crucial term “nafs”, which means “person” and not simply a thing or an existing entity. To quote the Hoy Qur'an: “Every person (nafs) shall taste of death; and We try you with evil and good for testing, then unto Us you shall be returned.”
