Ethical issues raised by end-of-life care and organ donation will be considered at the first Islamic medicine conference to be held in Australia.
More than 300 Muslim healthcare professionals will gather in Bankstown in Sydney's west this weekend to discuss key challenges in their sector, such as equitable healthcare access, chronic disease prevention and using digital health and artificial intelligence.
Shaykh Dr Rafāqat Rashid, a highly-respected Shariah scholar and London-based general practitioner, will address the conference on end-of-life care.
Co-founder of the Al Balagh Academy in the United Kingdom, he is often consulted by fellow doctors or families grappling with questions about when to withhold life-sustaining treatment.
"Taking somebody off artificial nutrition and hydration, that could be quite a difficult decision. Taking somebody off life support, or should we even put a patient on life support?" Dr Rashid said.
"So these are sort of delicate questions that families sometimes do struggle with, and they expect some kind of expertise to guide them through this."
Each case has intricacies
While some scholars strictly believe everything possible must be done to preserve life, Dr Rashid takes a different view.
"I'm more of the opinion that permanent unconsciousness is a time where ethically it would be permissible for you to actually withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment."
While leaders have issued fatwas — official rulings on a point of Islamic law — on contemporary medical matters, Dr Rashid said those declarations did not take into account the intricacies of each case.
For example, a fatwa says it is permissible to withdraw treatment when a patient is brain dead.
"Now the question that then arises is, which standard of brain dead do we use? Do we use the brain stem standard or do we use the whole brain standard?" Dr Rashid said.
He said Muslim doctors needed access to more guidance on such delicate issues.
"I think there's very little information out there," Dr Rashid said.
"From an Islamic perspective, it's only been in the last, five years, 10 years maybe, where there's been quite a bit of literature regarding this."
Organ donation encouraged
Dr Asif Raza, an intensive care specialist at Blacktown and Nepean hospitals, will provide an update on organ donation processes at the conference.
While support for organ donation has been lower among religious people in Australia, Dr Raza says there is nothing in Islam that prohibits organ donation.
"In Islam, it is very important to save life," Dr Raza said.
He said a key teaching is that "whoever saves a life is like saving all of humanity".
Regardless of religious beliefs, he said the most important thing was for people to register to become organ donors and discuss their intentions with the family.
He said families of registered organ donors agreed to donate their loved one's organs in eight out of 10 cases, compared to four out of 10 for those who had not registered.
Exploring the intersection with ethics
Australian Islamic Medical Association president Dr Muhammad Afzal Kahloon said the inaugural conference gave Muslim healthcare professionals the opportunity to "explore the intersectionality of medicine and Islamic ethics".
Dr Kahloon, who is a senior urologist in Canberra, said since AIMA was formed in 2018, it had played an important role in promoting COVID-19 vaccines, providing mental health services to vulnerable people from multicultural backgrounds, conducting blood donation drives in mosques and Islamic centres, and delivering first aid lessons.
"As healthcare professionals, it is our responsibility to give back to the community and promote the positive contributions of Australian Muslims to society," he said.
Dr Kahloon said his faith supported him in his medical practice, with Islam and western medicine sharing the same ethics.
"You are always mindful that you need to do the right thing. Somebody has put trust upon you, and you cannot let them down," he said.
Where there are clashes between patients or their families with western medical advice, Dr Kahloon said it was often due to misunderstandings.
"Some issues are more cultural than faith issues, so bringing people who are properly qualified from the Islamic point of view and from the medical point of view … they can provide a lot of guidance."
