چکیده:
Brain death is a newly emerging issue whose determination of resulting jurisprudential effects depends on whether the afflicted individual is classified as a living or dead human being. Inheritance, remarriage of a widow, invalidity of agency, organ transplantation, retaliation (Qisas), blood money (Diya), determining the type of crime committed against the afflicted individual, and dozens of other effects depend on whether we consider brain death as death or life. From a medical perspective, brain death is the end of life; however, no definition for it is observed in the law, although in the single article of the Organ Transplantation Law passed in 2018, the ruling of the end of life has been applied to it. However, in jurisprudence, given the customary nature of the subject of Sharia death, there has been disagreement among jurists regarding the analysis of customary understanding and the application of the reality of the separation of the soul from the body to brain death; therefore, some consider it as death, some wise men consider it the end of life, and others consider it the continuation of life. Some have also distinguished between different states and others between different rulings. In this article, while examining these disagreements, the view of the continuation of life is preferred.
خلاصه ماشینی:
For this reason, it must be asked: Is a person afflicted with brain death, regardless of its medical concept, considered a dead human being in the eyes of jurists so that the rulings for the deceased apply to them, or do they possess life and the jurisprudential rulings for the living are imposed upon them?
Do Shia jurists, in line with the opinion of physicians, consider those afflicted with brain death to be dead humans and apply the rulings of the deceased to them, or do they consider them to possess animal life and make them the source of the rulings and effects of life?
(Ibid 2: 552 and Fiqh al-A'zar al-Shar'iyyah wa al-Masa'il al-Tibbiyyah 198) The late Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani also considers the customary definition as the criterion for death and explicitly states that a person suffering from brain death is not considered dead from a jurisprudential and customary perspective, and the rulings of life, even retaliation (qisas) and blood money (diya), are legally applicable to them.
(Ganjineh Istifta'at Qada'i, question 237) Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi believes in detailing the rulings for those suffering from brain death and says: "Considering that physicians explicitly state that such individuals [suffering from brain death], like a person whose brain has completely perished [or whose head has been severed from the body] and who can continue a vegetative life for a period with the help of artificial respiration and nutrition, are not considered living human beings, yet at the same time, they are not completely dead human beings either.
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