Like many other medical issues, the issue of mercy killing is very controversial, whether in the scientific or religious domains, especially that the word brain was not used in the religious texts, which talked about the heart.

In this article, we view the opinion of the Religious Authority, Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlullah, who clears all misunderstandings regarding this issue, and explains the Islamic position.

The Glorious Quran did not analyze the organic or physiological tasks of the mind. It did not explain whether the brain is where the human being stores the information. The mind in our view is similar to the spirit in being an energy that man stores to organize the information it gets and studies them to produce a feeling here and a thought there… Thus the mind is not an organic matter. It is rather an unseen energy… a spiritual energy that develops through the information and experiences it processes by thinking.

If modern science has associated all the activities, awareness, thoughts and convictions with the brain, the Quran considers them some of the capacities of the heart.

Have they not traveled in the land so that they should have hearts with which to understand.

The Sayyed believes that talking about the heart in this Ayah is figurative, just as when he talks about Allah's face: Everything (that exists) will perish except His own Face. It is not talking about a physical face since Allah does not have a face. It is talking about Allah Himself.

About the jurisprudence view regarding brain death, which is considered by doctors as the real death, His Eminence says: We rule that if the brain without any doubt has died, the support system may not be installed, and it is not prohibited to remove it in case it was installed. But the Sayyed feels that the jurisprudent meaning of death is problematic, since there is no precise definition of death. When does a persona die? Is it when his heart stops or when his brain dies? Does the heartbeats after the death of the brain represent human life or cellular (plant) life? All these questions are the subjects of an ongoing debate.

The naïve public opinion considers death to be the cessation of the heart. Many doctors too, when they want to know if a person is dead or alive, they would take his pulse. If there is no pulse then he is dead. This is the human experience of death that every one knows. As for the brain death, it is only known by specialists.

Thus we ask: Is death the death of the brain, since all body systems have stopped, and therefore, the body is no longer alive? We also ask about the pulse: where does it come from. Does it come from the respiratory system, or because the heart still has some cellular life on its own?

Some jurists say if the pulse is a result of artificial respiration, it means that the person is dead. This point is still a controversial one.

Another point is: the person might die and some cells may stay alive: for example, when we take out the eye and provide for it the necessary requirements it will stay alive for a long time. Another example is the snake that dies but the tail continues to move. This is cellular life or "plant life" .It is an artificial life and not a normal one.

But if we leave this dispute aside, we still have to ask: Is death the death of the brain or the death of both the brain and the heart?

Here a jurisprudent issue is raised: what is it that compels me to install the support system?

And what makes it prohibited to remove it? It might be said that I should install the support system because it is a duty to preserve the life of a living person, as when I see a person's life in danger I have to save this life.

Why is it prohibited to remove the support system? Because this is considered killing. There are some jurists who say that there is evidence in the Shariah that there is a duty to preserve life. What is meant here is the life of the body, the life of the human being, even if he is paralyzed. But this form of life that depends on the support system, in such a way that if we remove, it the person will die is not the life that we should save. Therefore removing the support system is not killing; killing is the killing of stable life, even if only in half the body if the other half is paralyzed.

That is why we do not rule that the support system should be installed and we do not rule that it is prohibited to remove it.

Of course there are many reservations among some jurists. But when we study the issue and from what we understand of the medical information available we find that it is not a duty to install the support system if we are 100 per cent sure that the person concerned is in a state of brain death, and the life he is living is a cellular life. In such case, the installation of the support system is not a duty and removing it is not prohibited, since installing it will not be an act of saving life and removing it will not be an act of killing.