Mustafa Umar – Organ Donation & Transplantation in Islamic Law
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AI: Transcript ©
Alright. So,
welcome to our program tonight on organ
donation and transplantation
in Islam.
This is a topic
which
is very relevant to us today because,
there are many
important issues,
about organ donation and about organ transplantation.
Let me just start with the definition.
So the definition,
when we're talking about an organ, sometimes we
think about, like,
we think, like, only a heart or a
hand or or a kidney or something like
that. But,
when we say organ, it's used in a
very loose way.
So this is actually talking about giving an
organ
or some part of the body to a
recipient who who needs something, like a kidney,
a heart, a liver, a lung. It can
even be a cornea of the eye. It
can be skin. It can be blood. It
can be bone marrow. It could be so
many different parts of the body. So what
it means in organ,
we're not only talking about, like, you know,
a larger part of the body, but we're
talking about any part of the body that
could actually be transplanted to another person.
Now the statistics
say
that every 27 minutes,
there is an organ transplant that's taking place
in the world today. So by the time
we finish this lecture,
2 or 3 organ transplants would have already
been done.
So there's a lot of organ transplantation
taking place in the world.
But every 2 hours and 24 minutes,
somebody dies
waiting in line for an organ that they
needed but they did not receive.
So this is where the issue becomes very,
important,
and there are certain considerations that we need
to look at.
So in 2015,
there was a a study done
with data from 104
countries, which represents
90%
of the global population.
And they said that
127,000
solid organs,
solid, not blood and liquid and all that
stuff, but solid organs
were transplanted
just in that year,
2015.
And out of all of those 127,000
transplants,
41.8%
of them were living kidney transplants,
and 21%
were living liver transplants.
This is very important
when we talk about
Islam status and what the different fatwas are
on this topic because I want you to
keep this statistic in mind. So 41%
living kidney transplants were all the transplants that
happened in the entire world.
21%
were living
liver transplants. Living meaning that the donor was
living. They were not deceased. K? And then
out of that same number of 127,000,
there's 32,800
deceased donors giving other stuff.
K?
So in the United States alone,
2017, there were 34,770
transplants,
and 7,000 people died waiting for a transplant.
And 80% of the ones that died, guess
which organ they were waiting for?
Kidney. K. Kidney.
So with that said,
the question is why do people donate,
and why do they not donate? Why are
organ transplants taking place, and why are they
not taking place? Why are some people,
you know, either not giving the organs, or
why are they unable to give for some
reason?
Well,
when it comes to the attitude that people
have towards organ donation,
there are 7 main factors that influence their
decision
whether they're gonna donate or not donate. It
doesn't matter whether they're donating while they're alive
or they're donating while they're dead and they're
signing up for a donor card. There's 7
main reasons. The first reason is whether or
not they're giving it to family. So there
are people I'm I'm talking about Muslims here.
I'm talking about just people in general. There
are many people who say, I would give
it to my close family member,
but I'm not gonna give it to a
non family member.
Second reason
is religion,
and we'll talk more about that. Different religions
have different restrictions when it comes to organ
donation. The third is culture.
If if if if donating is part of
your culture,
then you're more, you know, likely gonna be
donating. Number 4 is family pressure or family
influence. Right? So if your family is really
convincing you to, you know, either sign up
to be an organ donor or donate to
a specific person, it's gonna play a role.
Number 5
is body integrity
depending on what, you know, what kind of
body you have.
Number 6
is
and also body integrity,
the same category comes in in terms of
what's gonna happen to your body later on,
right, if you if you donate.
Number 6
is people's attitude towards the health care system.
So if you are mistrusting of the health
care system and you don't trust pharmaceutical companies
and you're very either a little bit skeptical
of doctors because of your previous experience and
all that, it's gonna affect whether or not
you wanna donate. And number 7
is fear of early organ retrieval.
K. What fear of early early organ retrieval
basically means is they say, I'm concerned that
if I get into a car accident and
end up in the hospital,
they're just gonna take my organs out before
I'm even dead, and I'm it's gonna kill
me. So there's a concern that people have.
So these are seven main reasons why people,
seven reasons that affect
people's attitude
towards donating in the first place.
Now
in terms of religion, this is the main
thing we're focusing on about Islam stance. But
let's look at other religions. Who are the
people,
from their religious perspective, they're a little bit
skeptical of donating?
So among the groups, we have some Native
Americans.
In their religion, there's an issue with donating
organs.
There are gypsies, Roma gypsies. If you ever
heard of the gypsy people, there's also a
concern that they have. Confucians
Confucianists
also have a concern with organ donation.
Shintoists,
people who practice the Shinto religion, have a
concern.
Some Orthodox Jews and Orthodox rabbis have a
concern.
Buddhism
mostly is against the practice of organ donation
because it's disrespecting the bodies of ancestors and
is considered to be something against nature.
Jehovah's Witnesses have a requirement that organs must
be drained of any blood,
and this is due to their interpretation of,
the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament as
prohibiting
blood transfusion.
And there are, you know, some other religions
that also have,
certain restrictions
when it comes to organ donation. So we're
gonna look at what Islam says regarding these
things. So first of all, Islam is not
the only religion that actually discusses organ donation,
and it's not the only religion that actually
has some concerns
about the procedure and the process of organ
donation and putting conditions on there. So it's
very important to keep that in mind,
when we approach that. So let's look at
what are the Islamic source texts. Right? Whenever
we're looking at something from an Islamic perspective,
we wanna understand what Islam says about something,
we go back to the Quran,
and we go back to the sunnah, the
teachings of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him.
So some of the verses
and statements of the prophet, peace be upon
him, that have been used
against organ donation
are one of them is a verse which
says, and verily we have honored the children
of Adam.
Surah
verse 70.
And you say, well, wait a minute. What
does that mean? You've you know, God says
that we have honored the the children of
Adam, meaning we've honored human beings. So they
say, well, cutting open a human being just
to transfer something is considered to be a
dishonor
to the human body.
Right? Whether it's alive or whether it's dead,
different interpretations whether it's gonna be alive or
dead.
The second thing that they've used is a
hadith of the prophet, peace be upon him,
where
he used where it says that he used
to encourage
giving charity
and preventing and stopping.
Now this word means,
what's it called?
Like
desecration,
right, or mutilation.
K?
Mutilation,
of of a body is considered to be
something which was prohibited by the prophet, peace
be upon him. And, in another hadith, he
said, avoid.
Avoid mutilation. So regardless of what's happening, you
should always try to make sure you show
respect to a dead body and never mutilate
that body no matter what, whether you're alive
or whether it's dead. So there's a sanctity
that exists in the human body that's based
on that verse and is based on these
hadith. 1 of them is in Bukhari, one
of them is in Muslim. These are very
strong sources. But again, it's not 100% clear
cut saying that organ donation is necessarily desecrating
or mutilating the body. So we're gonna look
at that.
The next hadith
is where the prophet, peace be upon him,
he said, breaking the bone of a dead
person
is similar to breaking the bone of a
living person.
So based upon that, scholars have, you know,
looked at that and said, well, wait a
minute. That means that after the body has
died,
even if you break the bone of a
dead body, it's like breaking the bone of
a of a living body, which is a
huge sin. That's a very bad thing to
do. Right? Break someone's bone. Right? So the
same thing applies to a dead body. This
is a hadith in Abu Dawud, ibn Majah,
and the Muslim al Imam Ahmad. Its authenticity
has been disputed amongst scholars.
But if it's strong and if it's authentic,
then it means that
there is a part of desecration of the
body that exists even after death. And some
people have said maybe because, you know, the
the dead body can, you know, feel that
as well even after it's dead. So there's
a scholar
by the name of Imam Tawawi. He lived
about
1100 years ago. K. He lived about around
300 or so after hijra.
He says in his book, Sharf Muskil al
Athar, he says this hadith shows that the
bone of a dead person has the same
sanctity and honor as the bone of a
living person. So this was his commentary on
that. And then you have another hadith related
to this in the Muslimaf of ibn Abi
Shaiba. He says that the prophet said harming
a believer after his death
is similar to harming him in this life.
So the way you cannot harm a living
body, you should not be harm harming a
dead body as well. So this was,
one
of the main hadith on the on the
subject. The second one is it says that
Allah's curse,
the prophet, peace be upon him, said, Allah's
curse is on a woman who wears false
hair
or
arranges false hair for other people.
Right? Now these hair extensions and all that
we're talking about, this is specifically talking about
human hair.
So Imam Nawawi is a very famous scholar.
He wrote a book called Rialu Salahi. He
wrote the 40 hadith of Imam Nawawi. Many
few people have heard of Imam Nawawi before.
So he writes in his commentary on Sahih
Muslim, and this hadith is in Muslim. It's
very authentic.
He said if human hair is being used
for these hair
it wasn't just hair extensions, but it was
like hair beautification, you add other parts of
hair. If hair is if human hair is
being used, it's unlawful by consensus according to
all scholars,
Whether it's the hair of a man or
it's the hair of a woman because the
all the narrations of the prophet
prohibit this. And he says it's also unlawful
to take benefit from the hair
and all other organs of a human body.
Right?
So all of these things, you're not allowed
to take any benefit from them. K? So
looking at that, organ donation was not, like,
a very widely discussed thing at that time,
but scholars have looked back and said, well,
wait a minute. You have a hadith about
the prophet, peace be upon him, saying not
to use human hair from one person
to another person, and this is something that
is prohibited. So scholars have looked at that
and said, well, this can be a reason
for the prohibition of organ donation. K. And
then, they used another verse of the Quran,
which we'll we'll skip that one. So then
the verses that have been used for permissibility
of organ donation I'm just presenting both sides
here. K. The verses that have been used
for, it says that whoever saves the life
of 1 person,
it is as if they've saved the life
of all humankind.
This is chapter 5 verse 32. So it's
saying that basically, look, it's not in the
same category. If you're saving the life of
a person by doing this, look, you've saved
the life of the entire person. Even if
you had to disrespect,
let's say, human hair or body or something
like that, that's not such a big deal.
You're saving an entire life. So breaking a
bone
of someone according to
the hadith versus saving entire mankind,
there should be some reason for that. There
should be some, leeway for that. And then
another verse, it says
that he, meaning Allah, has only forbidden you
dead meat
and blood and the flesh of swine,
and that on which any other name has
been invoked besides that of Allah. So, basically,
this verse says, these are the things which
have been prohibited for you to consume as
Muslims.
You can't eat dead meat, meat that has
already died. You can't have blood. Right? And
you can't eat pork.
Right? And you and whatever you, you know,
you eat should be slaughtered in the name
of Allah. But then it says, but if
one is forced by necessity
without intentionally
disobeying,
meaning disobeying Allah,
nor transgressing the due limits,
not eating, like, to their heart's extent, just,
you know, going off and eating a bunch,
then this person will not have any blame
because Allah is forgiving and merciful.
So the principle in Islam from this verse
is that you are allowed to even eat
pork
when you are driven to necessity.
So even though the original rule is you're
not supposed to eat pork, if there's a
need or a necessity,
then you're allowed to do that in order
to preserve your life. Therefore, even though we
have other hadiths which are saying that, you
know, breaking the bone of a dead person
is considered to be a sin or human,
you know, hair transplantation is considered to be
a sin, when there is a need for
it that's gonna actually be a necessity in
order to someone's life is in danger,
then there's gonna be an exception to even
eat pork. Why wouldn't there be an exception
for, you know, even dealing with a dead
body or something like that? So that
those are the main,
verses and hadiths that are used in this
discussion. K? So now
there have been a lot there's been a
lot of discussion
on
this among Muslim scholars, And I wanna give
you a history of transplant surgery to make
you understand
why there's a history of fatwas and why
it matters to trace those fatwas. So let's
take a look at the history
of transplant surgery and how it how it's
evolved over time, k,
so that we can see the fatwas and
how they've evolved over time and how they
continue to evolve over time. So,
for my research, the first skin transplant that
we know of in modern times was done
in 18/69.
K? And then in 1906,
the first transplant of a cornea was performed.
Alright? So I want you to think about
that. Between 18
69 and 1906,
guess how many Muslim scholars are gonna be
talking about cornea transplants?
None. Because it didn't happen. Right? So if
it doesn't exist, they're not gonna be discussing
it. It's not a really important issue unless
they're just discussing it in theory. What if
one person's eye was moved into another person's
eye, but they're not able to do it
until
1906?
And then 1954
was the first successful kidney transplant
to an identical twin.
So what you're gonna see is you're gonna
say, well, wait a minute. What what about
those Muslim scholars from Al Azhar and, you
know, other universities and school? Why why didn't
the scholars in the 19 thirties 19 forties?
Why weren't they giving us fatwas and discussions?
Fatwas is a religious verdict. Right? Why weren't
they doing research papers on kidney transplants?
Because they weren't actually successfully done at that
time. Right? So if the literature
is lacking,
it's because the research the the the ability
to do that was actually lacking until this
time.
1962
was the first kidney, lung, and liver transplants,
recovered from deceased donors.
So the the first ones were done by
living donors.
Now we have 1962, 1963.
We have
from deceased donors coming. So now all of
a sudden, look, the fatwas
that are being given in the 19 fifties
are not focusing on deceased donors, people who
have already died and were extracting their organs.
Why?
Because that was not something that was even
being done. So it starts to become an
issue after the 19 sixties. So now it
gets presented. 1963
was the first organ recovery from a brain
dead donor. And I'm gonna explain what brain
death is. It's a very, very important topic,
which I'm gonna address today in detail.
1967
was the first successful liver transplant.
67 was the first heart transplant as well.
68, bone marrow transplant.
68.
1968 was the first definition
of brain death
that was based on neurological
criteria
by,
Harvard Medical School ad hoc committee that was
there to decide what the issue of brain
death is. So I'm gonna explain what brain
death is in detail, but just understand that
the concept of brain death
really became prevalent in 1968,
and it took a lot of time to
even catch up. So it's a fairly new
issue. K?
1976,
they discovered
cyclosporin.
It had the ability to suppress the immune
system
that will actually prevent the rejection of transplanted
organs. So now a lot of these have
been rejected. It's not a very successful surgery.
Now things start to change. Now it becomes
more successful.
So the discussion is gonna be different now
that it's becoming more of a successful surgery.
1990,
1st living donor lung transplant was performed.
1998,
1st successful hand transplant was performed in France.
And in 2,010,
the first successful
full face transplant
was conducted in Spain. Entire face was
transplanted. And now, actually, I I think a
head has been transplanted already. I forgot which
country it was. So it just continues to
evolve. And now the question becomes, well, wait
a minute. What if you have somebody else's
head?
Right? Like, what is what does Islam say
about that? Right? It's not even your own
head.
It's gonna get to a point where,
not in the near future,
we may actually have
so many different body parts of other people,
and we may actually have different body parts
which are not even they're robotic.
So the question becomes, well, what at which
point
are you not really you anymore?
Right? What constitutes you?
Right? Where you know, where is the definition
of you as a person
versus you being part of another person versus
you being part of a machine?
Right? So that's actually,
something that we should probably start discussing now
as Muslim scholars,
because it's coming and it's very it's it's
it's around the corner.
But let's focus on, organ donation for today.
So if we look at that, you see
how things have been progressing over time. So
if you go and you look and say,
okay. Well, wait a minute.
When did Muslim scholars start discussing these things?
When did they start talking about these things?
Well, they started talking about them as soon
as
these,
procedures
became common.
So what happens is people in the medical
community,
especially Muslims in the medical community, in the
medical field, they're gonna go to Muslim scholars
and say, well, wait a minute. You know,
what does Islam say about this? Right? Because
it's not default everything is allowed. These these
are serious moral considerations
that we have. When when we say moral
considerations Islamic considerations
in Sharia in Islamic law,
The people who are doing this, mostly from
Western countries,
they also are concerned about the morality
and the the ethics involved in transplanting some
of these things. So they go to their
philosophers,
and they say, we need
some guidance on what are the ethical implications
of
transplanting these things
because they don't necessarily have a religion. So
people who are secular, they don't have a
religion. They don't go to religious authority. So
they go to their philosophers
who are their ethical, moral philosophers to say,
hey.
What do you say about this? Right? So
they're discussing it, and Muslim scholars are discussing
it, while Western ethicists are discussing it at
the same time. K? This is important to
understand.
So what do you find? So Muslim scholars,
they go back.
When Muslim scholars get this issue, they go
back and they say, well, what did Muslim
scholars of the past
talk about? Did they ever discuss anything
that somewhat resembles
these issues?
That we can kind of find some type
of analogy so that we can understand how
to think about these issues. Rather than just
saying we just go to Quran and hadith
directly and we figure it out on our
own, we go back to our intellectual history
to see what have other people done. And
you know what? Western ethicists who are secular,
they have no religion, they do the same
thing. They go back and say, let's read
what Aristotle and Plato and, you know, all
of these other philosophers
had said about these type of issues so
that we're not starting from scratch.
So Muslim scholars do the same thing. They
go back, and some of the things they
found was they found, for example,
Imam Samarkandi. He wrote a book called.
In volume 4, page 261,
he mentions an issue.
He's a Hanafi scholar. He mentions an issue.
He lived about,
300, 400, maybe 900 years ago, something like
that.
He says, if a pregnant woman died
and the child in her stomach is still
alive,
then her stomach should be cut open
in order to take the child out because
in that is saving the life of a
human, thus the sanctity of a human body
will be overlooked.
So you see what he's saying? He's saying,
look, we know in Islam, we have these
hadiths. We know we have to honor the
sanctity of the human body. We should not
desecrate it. But if a woman dies and
there's a child in there, we have to
choose between 2. And what we're gonna do
is we're gonna cut open that body. It
doesn't matter if we're desecrating the body because
there's a greater benefit there. Therefore, we have
permission to go ahead and do that. Then
we look at Imam Nawawi again. Lived about
700,
years ago or something like that.
Imam Nawawi, the same one I was mentioning,
he wrote this in his book called Al
Mujhmuh. He talks about teeth transplantation.
He talks about bone transplantation,
which was happening probably during the time of
Muslims, you know, when they were in their
golden age. Muslims were very advanced in science
and in medical practice. So he talks about
teeth transplantation,
bone transplantation.
Can you change this from one person to
another, and then what categories and circumstances,
and all of that stuff? So you have
a discussion on that. Then you have another,
book called al Fataw al Hindiya,
or Fataw al al Mihiriyya, which is a
group of Muslim scholars came together in India.
This is about,
again, like, 600, 700 years ago, something like
that, and they discussed this issue.
And they said,
if a person feared death
due to hunger
and another person said to him so let's
say you're you're afraid of death, you think
you're dying, another person comes along and says,
cut off my hand and you can eat
it.
The Muslim scholars are thinking about this, say,
what should we say? Or the person says,
you can cut off part of me and
you could eat you could eat part of
me because you're dying,
Says it will be unlawful for him to
do so. So the Hanafi scholars at that
time, they said he's not gonna be allowed
to do that. And he says similarly,
it is impermissible for a desperate person who's
starving to cut part of his own self
off and eat it.
He says, you can eat pork,
you can drink alcohol,
but you can't cut off part of your
own body and eat it. But then they
said, but this is one opinion
at the time.
According to Imam al Shafi'i, another very famous
scholar, he said it is permissible for a
person who is dying out of hunger
to consume the meat of another person. You
can actually eat the human flesh of another
person. Right? So the scholars look at this
and they say, okay. Well, wait a minute.
Okay.
We're seeing a bunch
of religious rulings or fatwas
like this where we can kind of get
an understanding of the issue where there has
been some discussion,
where there has been some difference of opinion,
and all of that stuff. So they go
and they look at that. They look at
the hadith that we talked about. They look
at the verses that we talk about, and
they said, now let's try to understand what
kind of, you know, things are being done,
and let's come up with a conclusion of
what we wanna say. So to summarize,
in a nutshell, here is a list of
most of the main fatwas
coming out from the Muslim world
on organ transplantation.
So 1959
we have earlier ones documented, but I just
have from 19 59. So from 1959,
you have the Grand Mufti of Egypt.
He says that,
cornea transplants because that's the first one that
was happening. He said cornea transplants are permissible.
We don't have many you don't have kidney
transplants. You don't have lung transplants at this
time. So they're not really talking about that.
They're talking about cornea transplants. It's permissible.
Alright. Then you have the next grand Mufti
of Egypt in 1966.
He says that, yes, the other organ donations
are permissible, but we need conditions.
You cannot trade in organs. You cannot be
selling organs. There need to be other restrictions
and all of that. K? So that happens
in Egypt. Then you have 1967, the following
year, Mufti Mohammed,
Shafi'a.
Right? He is the grand Mufti of Pakistan.
He issues,
he writes a pamphlet,
and he says organ donation is prohibited. Keep
in mind, 1967.
K? So what you do is you realize
that he's,
he's someone who
greatly influences
the Indo Pak subcontinent,
scholars at the time. And his son is
the famous scholar Mufti Takki Usmani, who's very
well known in the world today,
who, you know, until recently, he was abstaining
from issuing a verdict on this issue. Then
you have 1969.
You have an international conference in Malaysia
who says that organ donation is permissible in
general.
And then the Algiers Supreme Islamic Council says
it's permissible.
And then you have a bunch of other
people. Supreme council for fatwas in Jordan says
it's permissible. Senior olema council in Saudi Arabia
says it's permissible.
You know, the next fatwa you you so
you have all these fatwas coming down all
the way from different groups, sometimes from an
individual scholar,
sometimes from a group and collective scholar from
a country.
And what happens is
that
while the technology is changing,
sometimes the fatwa is changing. K? So we're
gonna see that in a moment.
Now out of this list, the most influential
bodies that exist over here are a few.
One of them is the IIFA
of the OIC.
IIFA IIFA is the Islamic Fit Academy
of the OIC. OIC is the Organisation For
Islamic Cooperation or something like that. It's like
the group of all these Muslim countries.
It was established in 1981 in Jeddah, which
is in Saudi Arabia,
and they ruled that live
donation
and cadaveric donation, meaning deceased donation, is allowed
in principle.
But then they're they put a bunch of,
you know, conditions there, but they said, generally,
it's allowed.
This fatwa is one of the most prominent
fatwas
that exists in terms of the one that
people quote so much. It's from 19,
it's from 1988,
Islamic fic Academy, book of decrees. It's even
quoted on the government's website, organ donor.gov.
If you look at the religions,
they quote this fatwa and say, see, it's
permissible for Muslims to go ahead and donate
organs according to this fatwa where you have
representation
of many different scholars coming from many different
parts of the world. So they say in
principle.
But then if you read the fatwa very
clearly,
they have this wording here, and they say,
all cases having to do with this topic
are subject to further research and discussion,
and they should be studied and discussed in
a future session in the light of medical
data and Islamic rulings. So they're saying this
is kind of like a preliminary
statement that we're giving you, but we need
a lot more, you know, detail. We need
more research. We need this. We need that.
So don't assume that this is like some
kind of
be all, end all binding type of thing.
K? The second most influential,
body is the IFC, the Islamic Fiqh Council,
from the Muslim World League, which was established
in 1977
in Mecca.
Also
has scholars coming from around the entire world
all meeting in Mecca discussing issues like this.
So in 1987, they had a fatwa that
was released, which says basically the same thing,
that live donation
and, cadaveric donation, deceased donation is allowed
in principle.
K? So you have these 2 very prominent
bodies
saying that it is permissible
to,
you know, have organ donation, kidney transplants, whether
the body has died or whether the person
is alive, they're it's all allowed, k, with
some conditions, which we'll talk about.
But then you have
some very prominent
scholars
who said no, and they disagreed.
One of them was, I said, Mufti Shafir.
Right? The grand Mufti of Pakistan in 1964.
He says it doesn't matter whether it's medically
necessary or it's not necessary.
It is not Allah. He's used the hadith
of breaking the bone of a dead person.
He says that Allah owns your body, and
you cannot give another part of your body
to anyone else.
And then he gives, you know, some other
explanation.
So he was a person who was very
prominent in Pakistan
and and in India, right, and in Bangladesh,
I assume, that
who's really set the tone for many people
saying, no. This should not be allowed.
We should not be doing this organ donation.
The second one
is Sheikh Shahrawi in Egypt. So those of
you who have ever heard of Sheikh Shahrawi,
he's a very probably the most famous scholar,
popular scholar that ever came out of Egypt.
He used to be on a TV show.
He used to have a tafsir program, the
most widely watched, you know, TV show in
Egypt at the time. They say that this
the the the streets would just, like, shut
down during his TV program. He's very, very
popular. He just died recently in 1998.
So Sheikh Shahrawi,
he also believed that organ transplantation
was impermissible in all forms.
And the reason why he said that was
he said that human beings do not own
their bodies. They are trust from God, and
you cannot give it to someone else. And
his opinion became very widespread on TV because
one time, he just spontaneously during one of
his TV shows, he just addressed it in
an interview, and he said he said, how
can you give a kidney
that you yourself do not even own in
the first place?
Right? So and then he talked about suicide
and all of these things. And what happened
was is that when they interviewed
Egyptians
who were refusing,
organ donation or against the idea, they asked
and said, well, why are you against it?
So Sheikh Shar always said so. Right? He's
a very, very popular,
scholar.
Well, I mean, he's a graduate
of of Al Azhar. Right? So to say
he's mufassir and not faqih,
again,
he he he's he's a he's a graduate
from Al Azhar. He may not be a
specialist,
in these issues. But this is a, you
know, this is a hamdah. This is his
opinion.
Then you have the Islamic FICC Academy of
India in 1989. They
said that deceased donation
is prohibited,
but live donation is allowed. So you see
the, you know, very prominent Fiq Council in
India.
And then you have
the Grand Ayatollah Sistani,
who is the leader of the Shias of
Iraq. Not Iran.
The leader of the Shias in Iraq. He
said it is not permissible to remove any
organ from the dead body of a Muslim,
right, for transplant or or anything like that.
And he has a whole fatwa against that.
So he says this is not allowed, and
he's very staunch,
against that. Now you notice that in Iran,
it's different, and in Iraq,
it's different. And these are the Shia Shia
school or the Shia sect in that sense.
So these are the most popular fatwas that
are pro
and the most popular fatwas that are against.
Or you could say the most influential
that influenced the Muslim community
around the world.
Then you find I'll I'll take questions at
the end, unless it's directly related. It's like
a clarification.
Oh, go ahead.
Oh oh, so, yeah, the son Mufti
Ismani is the son of the grand Mufti,
he
he said
that I don't have an opinion. Recently, he
said I don't have an opinion on this
issue.
Although I think there's there might be some
leeway for it. I'm undecided.
But that's what he said. So he's not
following his father's opinion. He's not against it,
but he's not coming out and saying he's
for it yet either. So that's the one.
And then you have the Islamic Religious Council
of Singapore.
Alright? In
1973,
they issued a fatwa which says that
if you make a pledge in the form
of a will
and you say that you wanna give some
of your organs,
it is not allowed
because
you have to honor the human body, and
this is dishonoring the human body. 1973.
And then what happened is in 1985,
they reconsidered. And they said, now that we
under now that there's medical advancements and you
saw the chart before. You saw, you know,
the different things being done. Now that there's
medical advancements, we have reconsidered our position,
and it is allowed.
And we were just saying the previous fatwa
because we were concerned
about we wanted to be a little bit
on the safe side because we we still
were not sure what's gonna happen in terms
of technology and all of that. But they
said now it's allowed because protecting human life
is more important than protecting the dignity of
the body, just like what,
Imam Samarkandhi had said, you know,
centuries ago. Right?
Then there's another fatwa that came out of
England, out of the UK, and there's fatwas
that coming out of the Netherlands and many
European countries.
And what you find is that these fatwas
issued by Muslim scholars
tend to be influenced
by
political circumstances.
So it's it's unfortunate. So what you find
is, for example, in England,
there's a bunch of people who hate Muslims.
We call them Islamophobes or Islam haters. Right?
They started saying that, hey. You know what?
In in England, there's a very large population
of Indo Pakistani,
you know, Muslims.
So if they're following
either the India Fiqh Council or they're following
Mufti Mohammed Shafir,
and they're saying that we don't we don't
do donation, then you see that that's one
of the reasons why,
donations may be low. And that's not the
only reason. Again, we said there's culture, there's
family pressure, there's this, there's that. So many
different reasons. So the peep so these Islam
haters in England and in the Netherlands, they
said, well, you know what? We need to
pass a new law. And the new law
is gonna be specifically
for Muslims.
That since Muslims
supposedly
are very low they're the lowest in the,
organ donor category of people who are signing
up to be organ donors, which is not
true, by the way, but they claim that.
Said, therefore,
we should not allow them to have organs
if they're not gonna sign up for the
organ,
you know, donor list as well.
So the Muslim scholars looked at that, and
they said, woah. Now we have a problem.
This becomes part of Islamophobia.
This becomes part of discriminating against Muslims in
particular, and this rule is designed to actually
cause Muslims a problem. So what ended up
happening was is that,
you know, some of the Muslim scholars, they
said, now we have a problem. We're trying
to survive
as Muslims as a minority in Europe, and
we're being discriminated against. And we're a small
minority, and we need to do something which
is going to, you know,
establish ourselves
in Europe. So what happens now is you
find that there's more leniency
in kind
of adopting and acknowledging
any type of
general medical practice that comes out
in order to kind of appease the society,
of, you know, making sure that, you know,
we can exist and remain in Europe and
all of that. But what you found is
when you find researchers who actually investigated this,
they said that,
one of the most common
reasons
for not wanting to be an organ donor
is not just religion. It's actually,
one of the most common reasons of wanting
to donate an organ in your community
is feeling a sense of solidarity
with the broader community
and believing that donated organs are put to
good use.
Right? It's a precondition.
Now the problem is if you study Muslims
in Europe
and you ask them
whether they feel a sense of solidarity with
the general Muslim community outside of England maybe,
you look at France, you look at Spain,
you look at Italy, you look at the
Netherlands,
you'll find that Muslims in Europe are very
different from Muslims in America.
They tend to be
you know, there was immigration and more blue
collar workers and all, but they tend to
be more marginalized,
especially in places like France, even in Germany,
even in especially Netherlands, especially Spain, especially Italy.
They're very marginalized, so you can see that
it's not only a religious factor that is
causing them to not be so interested
in donating organs per se, but it's actually
part of their sense of solidarity
they feel with that community
that exists.
So you have this,
few fatwas that were passed in Europe
that are very,
much
not in line or they're more accommodating,
than you find all the other fatwas coming
out of the Muslim world. And this is
one of the reasons for it because politics
plays a role
in giving a fatwa
when Muslims are living as a minority and
they feel they're a persecuted minority and they
feel that, you know, when they're trying to
decide between this and that, it's a little
bit of a gray area. They wanna kind
of
choose the gray area on the side where
it's gonna be in their own best interest
from a political perspective. So we have to
keep all of those things in mind when
we're analyzing these fatwas and understanding them. So
with that,
there are certain subissues.
Right? So so, again, going back to this
list. If you look at the list across
the board,
the vast majority I know it's kinda small.
The vast majority of all of these bodies
have said that it is permissible in principle.
Organ donation is permissible in principle. The vast
majority.
Now the minority
is a small minority, but it's a significant
minority.
K? So it's not just like some dismissed
minority. It's a significant minority.
But at the same time,
people should not
confuse this and think that because you have
all the x boxes checked in the permissible
category,
that this is some kind of blanket approval
that all of these people are saying that,
you know, it's okay.
So there's a paper that came out by,
van Vandenbranden
and,
Brocaheart,
Brokart.
Alright? Vanden, Brandon and Brokart in 2011,
they said we analyzed
70
English
in addition to the old ones. Right? And
we subjected them to an in-depth text analysis
in order to reveal the key concepts
in the Islamic ethical framework regarding organ donation
and blood transfusion.
And what they said was, our analysis shows
that all 70 fatwas
allowed for organ donation and blood transfusion.
What they didn't mention
is the detailed conditions that were attached to
the permissibility of that. So that's what we're
gonna go through now. K? So, hopefully, the
first topic is, is it allowed or is
it not allowed? But then what are the
conditions under which it's allowed? It's very important
to go through that. So the first condition
is pretty simple, is that there must be
a genuine medical need,
right, and there should be no harm done.
It's a general principle in Islam, that there's
a need or a necessity, and there's no
harm. So what does that mean? So for
example, in some of the fatas you find,
it says it's haram to tran haram means
prohibited.
It is haram to transplant an organ
on which life depends,
such as transplanting the heart from a living
person to another person. Now you say, well,
that's pretty obvious. Right? Why would you even
need that fatwa? Well, you need that fatwa
because
there's gonna be people
who are living in societies where powerful people,
wealthy people
are potentially gonna
influence or coerce or convince someone
to give their heart out
for the sake of donating,
you say, we're gonna take care of your
entire extended family, and there are people who
would sign up for that.
So what happens is this photo, which seems
like it's not even needed, you know, when
you first read it, it's actually very important.
It's very important to clarify that you cannot
do that under the principle of no harm.
Let me give it to you. First one,
under the principle of no harm. So no
harm to the donor.
The second is
that
if you're giving an organ from a living
person
and its removal is gonna cause an essential
function to seize,
even though his life doesn't depend on it,
you are not allowed to do that. So
for example, can you take the core both
corneas of the eyes?
If you take one cornea of the eye,
at least you have one eye you can
still function.
You can donate that potentially. Right? But you
cannot take both. If you take both, it's
essential function of life to be able to
see.
You're gonna lose both corneas,
you're gonna be a problem. So they said
that is prohibited because you're giving up an
essential function of life. You should not be
allowed to do that. Now that's important because,
again, you're gonna have the same issue. You're
gonna have people in societies who are pressuring,
you know, powerful people or wealthy people are
pressuring other people to give that up, and
they say, look. I'm willing to give up
my eyesight
in order to get my family out of
poverty. People would be willing to do that,
and they say, no. This is not allowed
under this principle. So the idea of genuine
medical need, the idea of no harm either
to the recipient or to the donor,
it's a pretty basic one, pretty much agreed
upon by everyone.
The next one is absolute respect to the
human body.
So what does that mean?
It means that the process of organ donation
needs to uphold the dignity and the honor
of the dead human being. Right? So we're
talking about the human body. When you're alive,
you know, they're gonna cut you up and
then show you back together. But what about
the dead body? The dead body, when it's
cut up, it needs to be
done in a way that's apps actually necessary.
Right? There's a genuine medical need of cutting
up that body.
And you're gonna make sure that you're honoring
that body by making sure you put it
back together properly, and
a correct burial is gonna take place. There's
no x,
unnecessary delay in the burial and and so
many you know, so on and so forth.
Like, in Islam, we don't we're not allowed
to cremate bodies. We're not allowed to desecrate
bodies and stuff like that.
So this becomes a problem, actually. The reason
why it becomes a problem is you have
1 Muslim family. You know, we were sitting
in a group of, scholars at the FICC
Council of North America discussing an issue, and
one of the peep one of the imams
was there and said, I have some member
of my community
whose son,
signed the donor card
and died in a car accident.
They took his body.
It was a teenager. They took his body,
and when the body came back,
everything was gone. All the organs,
all the bones were gone.
Even the muscles were taken out. It was
like a bundle of skin given back to
the to the family.
The family was very disappointed. So what what
is this? You know? What did you do?
And they said, well, you know, he signed
the donor card, and, that's what happened. So
I said, well, this would be an example
of not absolute respect to the human body.
To what extent was that necessary? To what
extent was that something that was,
you know
you know, something important? So that becomes,
an issue.
Another issue,
is
and this is not only for Muslims. So
there was another guy by the name of
George
Eisenweiss.
He died in 2011.
So you have this in court courthouse news.
So there was a lawsuit that was filed
against the California transplant donor network.
And the reason why there was a lawsuit
is because
the family said, yes, we're gonna give his
body to take some of the organs out,
but
we insist
that we want to make sure that the
body is still intact
so that we can have an open casket
funeral.
So now in Islam, we don't do this
open casket thing. Right? Okay. But, you know,
in many Christians and other religions, they do
the open casket and they do wanna decorate
and they want everyone to see. So they
say we want the body back in a
way that we can do an open casket
so that everyone can see and it's still
body looks good? And they say, yeah. Yeah.
No. Don't worry about it. You know? And
then it comes back and the body is,
like, you know, while the open casket is
going on, like, he's bleeding, your hand is
missing, your leg is missing, All sorts of
things. And they're like, wait. What happened here?
Like so they filed a lawsuit against them
and say, you promised us that you were
gonna do such and such thing, but you
didn't. So what's happening is you find that
the Islamic
definition
of respect, absolute respect to the human body,
is different
than the American definition of respect to the
human body. So they're gonna say, yeah. Yeah.
We're gonna respect the body. But there's a
different type of respect that they have in
terms of our standards and in terms of
their standards. So that's another problem.
K? So that's something to keep in mind.
So when people sign up for the donor
card, they always ask you, you sign up?
Do you not sign up? It's state by
state whether you can opt out, whether you
can restrict things, whether they're gonna even, you
know, follow through on what you want
versus whether they're gonna do what they think
is best and then tell you, hey. We
respected the body. It suffices.
K? The third one is no reproductive organs.
So this is pretty much agreed upon that
you cannot
transplant
reproductive organs because they're carrying genetic inheritance
from the donor.
So, you know, all of the internal *
organs and stuff like that, you cannot transplant
because what's gonna happen now is if you
have children,
what's happening with, you know, whose whose children
are these?
Anything that contains the,
the genetic material per se.
The the next one is explicit consent,
and this becomes a really big issue even
in in in Islamic law.
So explicit consent consent means that the donor
himself, the person themself,
must be willingly giving per giving permission to
donate that organ. But you should not be
coerced and forced
to decide, you know, that someone else is
gonna make a decision on your behalf. But
then you have some concerns here. So
the question first question is,
what if the person died
and they did not
indicate their permission?
Can relatives decide on their behalf
that this is what they want to do
or not? So the vast majority of scholars
have said no.
There are some scholars like Sheikh Tan Tawi
from Egypt, they said yes.
They can.
They're allowed to go ahead and say this.
Even if they didn't want it, your relatives,
they can go ahead and make that decision.
Now again, this comes with ethical problems. Right?
Assuming that, you know, you have some families.
So you know what? This is really what
they would have wanted, and maybe that's what
they would have wanted.
And you have some other some other families.
Always was a disobedient child.
Let's see. Kewa, that is I I doubt
anyone would do that. But, you know, there
there's gonna be a reason for that. Right?
So the problem is who's going to decide?
Who has to decide?
Are relatives allowed to decide or not? Then
you have another issue. The Kuwait Fatwa Council
in 1979,
they ruled that
you're allowed to transport organs from the deceased
with or without the deceased consent, meaning the
state
can decide for you
when you die whether or not we're gonna
take your body. So the state has ownership
of your body to decide even if you
don't want to, even if your relatives don't
want to. The state comes in and says,
we have made the decision to do that.
So it becomes a very big ethical issue.
So it's a it's an Islamic issue, and
it's an ethical issue among western ethicists, and
it's not been resolved. So you find that
in some Eastern European countries, some former former
Soviet Union countries, there's a different standard than
you find in other countries. So it becomes,
another concern.
Then
the issue of compensation.
No compensation
should be allowed for selling an organ. Now,
again, if you remember the statistics that I
mentioned, right,
a person is dying every 2 hours and
30 minutes or so, right, I mentioned,
because they can't get an organ. So I
say, well, you know what? People are waiting.
So just imagine all those people who are
on waiting lists and they're dying
because of organs,
they would be like, hey. Wait a minute.
You know? I'm willing to pay whatever it
takes. I'll give a $1,000,000.
So in 1999,
if you remember the tech boom,
eBay was popular.
So someone
put a listing up there, 1 functional human
kidney on eBay,
and the bid started going up.
It reached $5,700,000,
and it was not a joke. Right? Someone
was ready to pay on eBay $5,700,000,
and then eBay had to block the auction
and shut it down because it's not allowed
because it's against the law. It's against the
law in America. It's against the law in
pretty much every single country in the world
except what?
Does anyone know what country that is? It's
not Pakistan.
It's not India.
It's Iran.
It's Iran. And I'm gonna come to that
right now. So
here's the issue now. K?
The issue, first of all,
is that when we say
when we say that it's you cannot receive
or compensation for organ donation. Right? And and
I I just said that there's an international
law.
Everyone says you're not allowed to sell organs.
Right? The reasoning behind it is they don't
want the rich being privileged over the poor
when it comes to selling organs.
But
when there's, you know, there's legal loopholes.
And what a lot of people don't know,
even people who are, like, hardcore, you know,
we're gonna sign up everyone on the organ
donor list and, you know, they're very active
in politics and all that stuff, what they
don't know is that there's a legal loophole
in America,
in American law,
about selling organs. So you can't sell an
organ,
but you can sell tissue.
So there was an article in 2012 in
the Huntington Post, Huffington Post
that says
the title of the article is abusing the
gift of tissue donation.
So basically, what they wrote was
is that families often don't know that when
they okay donations
to nonprofit
organizations,
such as the California
transplant donor network,
the tissue
routinely,
regularly
goes to for profit companies
in order to feed a $1,000,000,000
industry
that uses those tissues
from everything to repairing a knee
to plumping up a penis.
K? And then he says few states in
America
require companies,
require that companies tell their families
that their loved one's tissue
can be sold overseas.
They can be sent to a for profit
company, or they can be used in cosmetic
procedures such as wrinkle, fillers, and nose jobs.
So what's happening is that boy I gave
you an example, they took everything out. Right?
There is no law in America that prevents
that those tissues from being sold to a
for profit company. In fact,
it is very routinely sold
to a for profit company, and people who
are,
you know, signing up for that don't realize
that their cons they don't realize that because
the California Transplant Donor Network is a nonprofit
organization. So I'm giving it to a nonprofit
organization,
but the nonprofit organization is selling it to
a for profit corporation
and is exporting it to another country or
it's going into people's noses or whatever it
may be. And that is
desecration of the body, because not absolute respect
to the human body, not for a genuine
medical need. So I understand people don't like
wrinkles,
but cutting up someone's body in order to
fill your wrinkles
is not considered to be a valid excuse
according to Islamic law. So that becomes a
problem. Right? And then they said in 2,010,
there was a study by researchers,
Laura Simonoff and Heather Traino, where they said
70%
of donor families
said that they would object to a loved
one's tissue going to a for profit business.
Yet
fewer than 1 in 5 said that they
were told that the harvested tissues is actually
going to a for profit company.
So there's a lack of transparency
in knowledge about this,
and
Muslims should not be naive with regards to
this as well.
So that's when it comes to tissues. But
organs, you cannot sell.
It's not legal to sell that, except in
Iran. So Iran is the only
country or actually sorry. It may not be
the only country in the world. It's the
only quote, unquote Islamic country or country with
majority Muslim population
that not only allows monetary
compensation
of living unrelated donors,
but actually partially funds payments to the donor.
So the government themself will actually partially fund
payments. Now the reason why they do that
again, they're from the Shia school of thought.
They've issued this fatwa. But Ayatollah Sistani from
Iraq is completely against this as well.
But Iran does this, and their argument is
this. Their argument is
people need the organs,
and other people need wealth. And we're trying
to save life. And even though, yeah, you
could talk about potential exploitation of the poor
and this and that, we are intervening,
we are helping, and we put certain conditions
in there. So one condition is no one
under the age of 18 can do that.
No one over the age of 45 is
gonna be accepted for donation.
Right? And then some people will say, you
know, I'm sure a lot of people from
America, as much as they hate Iran,
they would love to fly over there and
get themselves a kidney
or a liver or whatever it may be.
But there's one more problem.
Iran has a rule, and they said that
the donor and the recipient
needs to be from the same nationality,
so
tourist transplantation
is forbidden.
We will not accept anyone from outside. If
you're an Iranian,
you can donate to another Iranian. We don't
want people coming from all over the place
and stuff like that. K? So that is
so so so this becomes an issue now.
Again, we have the Islamic rule. All Muslim
scholars, right, from the mainstream Muslim scholar, they
say you're not allowed to sell that. It
should be for goodwill purposes and all of
that stuff.
But then you have
Western countries. They say the exact same thing.
You're not allowed to sell that. It's very,
very bad.
But then here we here we have an
issue. Is that
can an argument be made
that
the dictatorship
Iran
actually cares more about the life of people
than the secular liberal democracies who are saying
that we care about life? It's an interesting
question. But, again, all the scholars have said
it's not allowed, so I'll just leave that
for another case.
The idea of religion mattering. Does religion matter
in terms of the transplantation
and all of that? There are this is
an an issue in the Muslim world. I
know Americans, people who are Muslim minorities, you
know, they're probably like, oh, religion shouldn't matter.
That's discrimination, this and that. Okay.
Get out of your western mentality for a
moment. Right? When you're in a Muslim majority
country, right, it matters. So you have Sheikh
Qaradawi.
You have many other scholars. They say that
if an organ is being donated, it needs
to go from a Muslim to a Muslim.
It should not be going to a non
Muslim. And they have all of their explanation.
And they say if there's an apostate, someone
who's left Islam, a Muslim's organ should not
be going to that apostate
or or or to a non Muslim who
is at war with Muslims. Sorry. To clarify
that. Right? So the all of these things
play a role. I'm not gonna get into
the issue because it's not so relevant to
the Muslims here, in America or in the
West.
The last one is very important, is brain
death. So the question is, is brain death
absolute death? So what is brain death? Right?
So the ad hoc committee of the Harvard
Medical School
to examine the definition of brain death, they
issued this report in 1960
whatever,
I mentioned before.
They said that brain death is the state
of what we call irreversible coma.
So here's the issue, the way it came
about. People who are in a coma,
can we harvest their organs?
Right? So some people were looking at that
and say, yes. We should. There's other people
lying. We don't know when this person's gonna
wake up from their coma. And some people,
they unplug people when they're in a coma
and they die. Right? We don't want them
sitting on life support. Wait a minute. These
organs are perfect. They can save the life
of somebody else.
There's oxygen circulating. They're still alive. They're still
breathing.
These are the best organs we can get.
Let's get it from a person in a
coma. And you have other people say, wait
a minute. That's unethical because
what if they wake up from their coma
2 years later? What if what if they
have the potential to wake up?
So they defined a new term called irreversible
coma. And they say, if we can figure
out that there is some line and, of
course, it's never 100% clear cut. But if
we can figure out there's some line between
coma and irreversible coma, we're gonna call this
irreversible coma, we're gonna call it brain death.
And brain death is basically brain stem is
not functioning,
and we think
or we have a good reason to believe
that there's no possibility of functioning. So they
said specifically
that
it no longer functions
and has no possibility of functioning again
for all
so it's it's for all practical purposes dead.
So the idea is if the brainstem or
the brain is for all practical purposes dead,
and we're gonna call that brain death.
Now the the problem with the idea of
brain death is,
what does death mean? What is the concept
of death? Right? So medical practitioners,
they're they don't have a clear you know,
we people are like, well, why is so
many you know, some people always come, and
they'd be like, why are so many different
front of us? Why can't the scholars be
clear? All the doctors are not clear on
death. If you ask them when is the
moment of death, they're like,
how do we define that? Right? How do
you define what death is? So the reality
is death is a process,
like birth is a process. Right? Same thing.
When you define when life begins, right, something
is people are not clear on. Medical practitioners
are not clear on it. Medical practitioners and
researchers and scientists and all, they're not clear
on when you define exactly when death happens,
especially now with technology. Right? You keep everything
moving. All your heart is beating. All all
your your systems are functioning.
When are you considered to be dead?
Just like I asked you in the beginning.
Right? When you have robotic parts and you
have a head transplant from another person, when
are you considered to not be you anymore?
Right? When are you considered to be a
a different person? These are very difficult
issues,
and they're not medical issues.
They're actually philosophical issues. So that's why
scholars, Muslim scholars, and Western,
moral philosophers
are actually the people who make this decision.
And one of the problems that happened was,
in many of these councils, the Muslim scholars,
they just said, well, let the doctors figure
out what death is. If they'd said the
person is dead, then he's dead.
Doctors are going and saying, wait a minute.
We don't know what death is. We're not
we're not sure. We're asking you. And the
scholars go back and say, we're asking you
figure it out. So
there's a problem. So in Egypt, this happened.
There's a very interesting quote.
Let me tell you the quote here.
Yeah. So there was a quote,
from one of the papers,
on transplants in Egypt, an analysis of doctors'
discourse,
a journal called Body and Society.
So the the doctors are writing. They said,
when we and our professors, we speak to
the Muftis at the Darul Ifta, which is
in Egypt. It's a place where fatwas are
issued.
They say it's halal.
Organ donation is halal. But it leaves so
much up to the doctors
that we're not certain about it.
So they're saying it's halal, and you figure
out the moment of death and all of
the other stuff. They're like, but we don't
know the moment of death. We have a
problem ourselves. We're trying to figure that out.
It says that the doctors themselves saying we're
not comfortable
with some of the fatwas that are coming
up because they're not clarifying things for us.
Right?
So,
again, here's a diagram of the beginning of
life, end of life. You notice there's a
curve. So there's a death is a process.
So at what moment do you declare a
person dead? It is not,
very clear cut.
So what you have is
a bunch of questions. Right? The first questions
are, what are the vital functions of the
brain?
Who's gonna determine what the vital functions of
the brain are?
Is there a conceptual
basis within Islamic law for brain death? Is
there some basis for that? Right? The idea
that was brain death was basically determined
for the purpose of procuring organs.
It doesn't have any other
medical
function.
It was defined for that specific reason. Basically,
we need organs from people.
We want them to technically be
living in a sense because that's when the
organs are the best.
If they die,
oxygen is not coming to the organs that
begin to deteriorate immediately.
How can we figure out an exact perfect
line where we can get the organs right
at this moment
while maintaining the integrity of the organs so
that they can be used in a proper
manner. Right? So that's what so a bunch
of questions come up. Then the question is,
do physicians or scientists have to determine the
irreversibility
of these brain
functions as a matter of fact
or as a matter of procedure?
And then what level of certainty do you
need to figure out whether this person has
been declared brain dead or not? So there's
a study that was done, and they said,
basically,
in medically,
the prognosis
of death is mistaken for the diagnosis of
death. And if you're in the medical field,
there's a difference between diagnosis and prognosis.
I'm not gonna get into it due to
time. So here is a list of fatwas
which actually talk about
whether or not brain death is accepted.
And what you find is some of the
very prominent Muslim scholar councils accepted brain death
as a definition of real death.
And they said it's okay because that's how
the medical industry
told us. The the scientists and the doctors
told us that brain death is death. They
say, yeah. Sounds good.
So we'll go ahead and accept it. Otherwise,
cardiac
death, cardiac pulmonary, you know, death is the
original definition of death. This new definition of
death called brain death, which was something that
came out, you have a bunch of fatwas
where people are allowing that and saying, yes,
it's gonna be fine.
But remember I said about the Singapore fatwas,
how it changed? In the beginning, they said
organ donation is not allowed.
With the advancement of an when they understood
the issue better
and with the advancement of technology,
they said, oh, no. No. Organ donation is
allowed. Now we understand it better, and now
there's more advancement in technology.
The irony
is that now that technology is developing,
now that Muslim scholars and medical practitioners and
philosophers
are better understanding
what brain death, quote unquote, actually is,
they're reversing
and changing their opinion
and saying brain death is a very problematic
concept. We gave the fatwa in the eighties
nineties that, hey. Well, Harvard said brain death
is brain death and this and that. Now
they're changing their mind, and they're not the
only ones changing their mind. Even Western philosophical
ethicists are changing their mind and saying this
is a very problematic concept. It's something that
we need to go ahead and look at
in more detail. So
with that, I gotta conclude because we're about
to pray. There's this,
body called the Faith Council of North America,
which I'm part of. They issued a in
December 2018,
which basically outlined a summary of these principles.
And I'm gonna summarize them real quick. Organ
donation and transplantation
is permissible
in principle
with conditions.
It's an act of charity
when you have a good intention.
Condition number 1, you cannot sell the organ.
Condition number 2, there should be no harm
to the donor or the patient and needs
to be minimized as much as possible.
Condition number what was that? 4?
3. Condition number 3, you need to have
informed consent of the donor,
not of their family, not of the state.
It has to be of the donor.
Number 4, they cannot take out vital organs
while living, like the heart and stuff like
that. Condition number 5, the deceased donation
after cardiac death
the the deceased donation acumenal acumenal
acumenal. Cardiac death, not after brain death. Right?
This becomes a problem with heart transplantation and
all of that stuff. Number 6,
no reproductive organs, the ova, the sperm, the
uterus, all of that cannot be donated. And
on the last thing, they said, on face
and partial brain transplants,
we have no opinion, and we're calling for
people to do more research.
And on the brain death, we're calling on
people to do more research. So after discussing
for 3 years, I was in all three
of the meetings. This is the final thing
that has been released, and we're waiting for
that. So that's the kind of the conclusion,
and we'll conclude here.
If you want questions, there's questions, stick around.
I'll stick around after the prayer,
and you can, come to the back of
the Musa Allah and ask me questions.