Determining the moment of human death, a comparative study in Islamic jurisprudence and civil law

Abstract

Determining the moment of a person’s death gains special importance in the legal and Sharia fields, and it differs in the Penal Code from the Personal Status Law, as well as in the Civil Law. Human life usually ends with cardiac arrest, which is immediately followed by cessation of breathing and loss of consciousness. The cells of the body’s organs begin to die gradually, depending on the degree to which those cells are affected by lack of oxygen and food and the degree of their tolerance to acidity. Until recently, medicine has relied in determining death on the criterion of cessation of the heart and breathing, or what is called ( According to the traditional standard) and thanks to medical development, doctors have been able to stop the patient’s heart for several hours in open-heart surgeries, and the progress of human organ transplantation has even reached the point of removing a defective heart and replacing it with a new heart. The general aim of this study is not merely to analyze an aspect of the relationship between law and medicine as much as it is to draw lessons from the implications of medical inventions in the field of law.