Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
Medical treatment in Islam is generally permissible but not obligatory. If there is little to no chance of survival or recovery to a conscious state, it is religiously permissible to remove life support, as we are not required to prolong life through artificial means indefinitely.
In response to this question, Dr. Yasir Qadhi — the Dean of The Islamic Seminary of America and the resident scholar at the East Plano Islamic Center — states:
Medication and Medical Treatment Are Permissible, Not Obligatory
Very, very sensitive question and please, don’t just listen to a generic response and do something. I’m gonna give a generic response so you have background knowledge, but you should come to me or any Sheikh and go into more specific detail. So understand, I’ll give you a generic response; listen to this carefully.
Medication of all types—the default is that medication is permissible; it is not obligatory. Taking medicines, putting on a ventilator, engaging in chemotherapy, doing any treatment—it is permissible, not obligatory and not haram, unless there are other conditions of haram.
Refusing Treatment Is Not Considered Suicide in Islam
This means if somebody says, “I don’t want chemotherapy,” that is permissible. If somebody says, “I don’t want a ventilator put on me if I’m in that situation,” that is permissible.
You are not obliged; we don’t believe that Allah required us to push life as much as we can. No, we’re not allowed to take our lives—suicide means you do something that inevitably causes your death in a means that directly causes death. For you to not take medication, that is not suicide because medication is not required.
Suicide is you jump off a building, shoot yourself with a gun, or take poison. But to say, “I don’t want to do chemotherapy,” that’s not suicide. Nobody says this.
Chemotherapy is a tactic to cure a disease. If you choose to not do it, putting a ventilation is a tactic.
Decision-Making When the Patient Is Conscious or Unconscious
So if the person is conscious and he’s asked, “Listen, you have breathing difficulty; do you want to be put on a ventilator or not?” and he says no, that is OK, he has the right. That’s his right. If he says yes, okay, put it on.
But what if he’s not conscious? If he cannot make a decision, then the family needs to make a collective decision and nobody can intervene—the wife, the mother, the parents.
Shari`ah-wise, it is the family’s decision and they will do what is in the best interest of the person.
Life Support vs. Natural Means of Sustaining Life
It is not obligatory to provide food, water, and air above the natural way that we usually take them. We are breathing with our lungs; if you take a pillow and put it on a person’s nose and mouth, you have deprived them of the normal mechanism to breathe—this is murder.
If somebody cannot breathe because their lungs collapse, you are not obliged to put a ventilating machine and some fake pump to do that. That’s above and beyond what Allah gave them; you’re not obliged to do this.
If the family says, “Now he is clinically dead; we don’t see the point in putting this on,” that is their right to do so. You are not obliged to go above and beyond what Allah created you upon.
If a person is hungry and you deprive them of food, that is murder. But if a person is unconscious and the doctor is saying he’s clinically dead, should we put some tube? You do not have to put a tube on them because this is not the same as giving food and water.
Quality of Life and Scholarly Guidance on End-of-Life Care
Now, should you or should you not? Here is where the Councils of Fiqh have basically said to look at a number of things, first and foremost quality of life. The goal of the Shari`ah is not that you just live for the sake of living. If a person is a vegetable, there’s no Dhikr, no worship, no prayer, no charity—what is the purpose of keeping a vegetable alive? If a person is not conscious, complete, almost brain dead and just lying there, and the family is waiting for a miracle—miracles can happen whether you do something or not. We do not plan miracles.
If the doctors say, “I’m sorry, but he’s basically brain dead; it’s up to you,” most fatwas I have read say that if there is little to no chance of survival or coming back to normal, then the better thing to do is to let them go on their journey.
Now they’re in an awkward state between life and death—neither can they reach their destination nor can they worship Allah in this world. So as a default, if chances are minimal and they’re in a vegetable state, it is best to let them go. If chances are good and the doctors say they’ve had a heart attack but we can resuscitate, then yes, Bismillah.
Bottom line: If your doctors say there’s little chance of coming back and they’re basically in a semi-vegetable state, then in reality there is no need to prolong it. You are prolonging a torturous time frame. If you were to remove the plug, this is not considered murder in the slightest. They’re not able to breathe; you’re not obliged to keep on physically pumping them. If the person is young and there’s a good chance of survival, that changes everything. But if the person is elderly and it’s end of life, it is permissible to pull the plug and let Allah’s destiny take effect there.
Read more related rulings here:
- Is Withdrawing Life Support Haram?
- When Can You Pull the Plug on Life Support?
- Stopping Mechanical Ventilation and Circulatory Support at Cessation of Heartbeat: Permissible?
Almighty Allah knows best.