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Islamic Medical Organization Condemns Dutch Euthanasia Approval
contributions by Abdelrahman Saad
KUWAIT CITY (IslamOnline) - A pan-Islamic medical organization on Monday condemned a Dutch parliament decision last week accepting the practice of euthanasia – mercy killing for those suffering from incurable life-threatening ailments - stating it was not acceptable in Islam.
"Any direct interference on the part of a doctor towards terminating the life of a patient is not Islamic, whether this is called mercy killing or dignity death," said Abdelrahman al-Awadi, president of the Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences (IOMS).
IOMS said in a statement released Sunday that putting a patient to death does not conform to the teachings of any religion. "This is first degree pre-determined murder," said the statement.
Awadi said that a doctor's main job is to try to preserve human life and not end it.
"The first oath a doctor takes is to attempt to maintain human life," he said. "How about when this doctor turns into a murderer? Terminating a patient's life is not permissible in Islam even if the patient's family asks for it."
The organization said that putting a patient to death signified a loss of trust in God and said that there were many cases in which doctors had given up hope on patients recovering, where, in the end, they end up recovering from their ailments.
The statement also quoted a verse from the Holy Qur’an, Islam's holy book, which indicates that ending a man's life for no reason and for no crime is a major sin.
Recently, in October, euthanasia came to the international fore after a Dutch judge found no grounds to try a doctor who put an 86-year-old patient to death.
The practice of euthanasia is generally tolerated in The Netherlands but became legal only last week after the Dutch parliament said it approved of doctors helping patients to die. The Netherlands is the first country to legalize the controversial medical practice. Doctors are obliged to report such cases to the prosecutors though.
Elsewhere, in the U.K., a doctor was acquitted in late November after he admitted that he administered an overdose of painkilling drugs to a patient with cancer. Doctor David Moor was charged with murder for giving George Liddel a lethal dose of diamorphine.
Euthanasia is illegal in the U.K., but many British doctors have said in private that they have "mercy-killed" some of their patients.
Moor told the BBC that he has done so many times out of "compassion and care."
"Basically, you address their problems and address their needs and if they have a lot of pain, if they have a lot of suffering, and if the patient's relatives are suffering then you address that with care, compassion and consideration - I would certainly say that over the years I have helped a lot of people to die," Moor said.
There was no word yet from Islam's major scholastic centers, and the statements by the IOMS are the first reaction to the international debate within the Muslim world.
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