End-of-life decisions

These decisions often come suddenly, in a hospital corridor, when someone you love is very ill. This page gives calm background so you know what to ask. It is general information, not medical, legal or religious advice. In a real situation, talk with the medical team, a scholar and, where the law is involved, a lawyer.

Advance care planning means thinking about the care you would want and choosing a person to make health decisions if you cannot. Speak Up, the advance care planning campaign of the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association, calls this person a substitute decision maker. The legal name for the role and the rules differ between provinces and territories.

For a convert, the person who would decide may be a relative who is not Muslim. Think about naming someone who knows your faith and will respect it, and tell them your values. Speak Up notes that your support network can include a spiritual leader, such as your imam.

Ending a life and allowing a natural death are not the same. The Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA), in an answer by Shaykh Mustafa Umar, says treatment that only prolongs dying is not required. That can include disconnecting life support, a breathing machine or even a feeding tube, once expert medical opinion says the treatment will not help and after consultation. The same answer says that euthanasia, deliberately ending a life, is forbidden.

So not every decision to withdraw treatment is forbidden. Ask the doctors plain questions: What is this treatment doing? What happens if we stop it? Then take the answer to a scholar if you are unsure.

MAID is legal in Canada. Health Canada says the request must not come from outside pressure, and a person can withdraw it at any time and in any way. Federal law does not force anyone to provide MAID or help with it. A person whose only condition is a mental illness is not eligible until 17 March 2027.

Mainstream Islamic scholarship, including the FCNA answer above, treats ending a life on purpose as forbidden, even out of compassion. People who ask about MAID are usually in great pain or fear. Meet them with gentleness, not judgment. Ask for the palliative care team, whose work is to ease pain and distress, and for the hospital's spiritual care team.

If you or someone you love is thinking about suicide, call or text 9-8-8. If there is immediate danger, call 911.

Scholars and councils in North America allow donation, with conditions. They differ on when a person counts as dead.

• The FCNA says donation is permissible in principle, with no buying or selling, the donor's informed consent and consultation with the family. Out of caution it does not accept brain death as death, so donation after death waits until the heart and breathing have stopped. It prohibits donating reproductive organs.
• An AMJA answer (fatwa 1881) quotes the Muslim World League's Fiqh Council: donation after death is allowed if the donor gave permission before dying and the recipient's life depends on it, and a living donor must not be harmed. It does not address brain death.
• Another AMJA answer (fatwa 76781) says giving and receiving organs and blood is allowed whatever the religion of the donor or recipient, with one narrow exception.

If you want to be a donor, decide with a scholar which view you follow, and tell your family which conditions matter to you.

Each province and territory runs its own registry or way of recording a donation decision, and Canadian Blood Services links to them. It also asks you to tell your family, because in most places they are asked to consent at the time of death.

Nova Scotia works differently. Under its Human Organ and Tissue Donation Act, if you are 19 or over and have not registered a decision, you are treated as having consented. That is called deemed consent. If you live in Nova Scotia and have conditions, such as the FCNA's position on brain death, record your decision and tell your family.

When a death is sudden or unexpected, a coroner may order an autopsy, and in Ontario that decision is binding. Tell the coroner early that the family wants a Muslim burial and that timing matters. Our guide on when someone dies explains what happens next.