Full Lecture Transcript (Cleaned)
Question and Context — 0:20
For today's q a i am very honored to be able to host dr hathamel hajj one more time this is our second time hosting him and a very brief introduction he has asked me to cut down on his introduction nonetheless you should know that dr hata malhaj alhamdulillah he is both an md and a phd in comparative in islamic studies from jinnan university he is a practicing pediatrician he is the former dean of college of islamic studies at mishka and a permanent a member of the permanent fatwa committee of amiga.
Of the american muslim jurist association dr hatim alhajj as always it's a pleasure and honor to have you on our q a al hamdulillah hello same here so today we're going to be talking about an area that is an actual mashallah lived experience of yours which is medical practices in light of the shadia and i wanted to really discuss some very pertinent and very common questions that muslims ask and we'll try to begin chronologically from pre-birth all the way up until the issue of very end-of-life support systems so we're going.
To go over a number of issues and scenarios beginning from the very beginning which is the inception of life and one of the biggest questions that so many people ask in our times is the islamic ruling on ending uh pregnancies or the issue of abortion and before we even dive into the of uh ending pregnancies let us first discuss what is the islamic position on the beginning of life and the controversy over 40 verses 120. so if you can begin with that insha allah and then let's move on to the.
Issue of the controversies over ending pregnancies well i think that they are very related so it's very proper to start by talking about the beginning of life because it the rooting of abortion uh hinges on the concept of the beginning of life or the beginning of uh human life if we were um to accurately describe it so when it comes to the issue of the 40 versus the 120 the issue has become a little bit more of a controversy nowadays because we know that embryogenesis pretty much finishes around 40 some.
Days of age that's 56 days of the gestational age the way the doctors measure it you know this is extremely important also because this creates a lot of confusion between the medical terminology and the 50 terminology when we talk about the age of the pregnancy in medical terminology it starts from the first day of the last period before conception in the fifa terminology that starts from conception so you have two weeks of difference between the medical terminology and the 50 terminology so when the when the doctors talk about um four.
Weeks like a four week old fetus uh they they're talking about the gestational age so the fetus is actually two weeks not four from a 50 perspective because fec starts from conception which is you know uh more accurate you know conception but for the doctors since this is how they have always measured gestational age because we they did not know exactly when conception took place so the doctors always used the last period before conception and they started counting from the last period before conception so this is to be remembered because.
It will be very irrelevant when we talk about the the uh ruling of abortion but essentially in in um in islam we we count from uh conception we know uh in medicine that embryogenesis pretty much finishes before around 56 57 days uh of gestation which is about 40 42 days from conception it is extremely hard for doctors to um basically it is extremely hard for uh you know perinatologists neonatologists doctors in general obstetricians uh to uh comprehend the hadith of the lab which is reported by al-bukhari and muslim and is.
He is is certainly a towering figure in muslim history like a great fakie and he said that the prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam and he said the trustworthy truthful one so he said that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said foreign the creation of one of you would be brought together in the womb of their mother uh for 40 days in the form of a drop zen for 40 days in the form of alaka which can be translated as klut or leech whatever it is you know a clot of blood uh and.
Then for 40 days in the form of modaka which is a chewed lump of flesh uh and then that the angel would be sent down to breathe the the spirit into him or the soul into uh the fetus uh and then it would be commanded regarding formatters to the end of the hadith now we have another hadith that is reported by a muslim from josefa which provides a different sort of narrative uh and it it talks about the angel descending after 42 days uh so edamame when 42 days have passed.
By then the angel will be sent and then the angels who win basically fashion it and create its hearing site skin flesh and bones and bones and then breathe the soul into it and that is i'm sorry this hadith talks to them about the the writing of the uh destinies uh after after the the creation of everything including the the bones now the the two hadiths uh seem to be conflicting uh because it you know and and certainly scholars like ibn for instance uh goes to like um extreme lens and.
And trying to reconcile between the hadith and he uses his genius and reconciliation but does not honestly uh you know it it's just not possible you know no matter how genius you are to reconcile between those hadiths one hadith is talking about the creation of bones and abnormal claim is just like a very sort of genius idea he says that it is like a pattern that is made the first time and then it will be sort of executed afterwards so you know the first time the angel comes down and makes.
It creates the bones and the flesh and it is like the angel is making a pattern and afterwards all of this will take place now what compounds all of this is that allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in surat in talks about like a certain sequence allah says well it says we've created man from an extractive clay then we made him into a drop in or replace him as a drop into a firm lodging then we made the uh drop into a clot so allah so there is no lapse of time here.
Then there or like immediately thereafter we made the plot into uh here indicates some lapse of time between the last phase and the following one and then we made him into a new creation and alera who said that new creation is the human life you know so ali wanted to say that then here human life starts after all of this so uh the the one way to reconcile between the two hadith is actually to not accept the uh the sort of the obvious apparent implication of the hadith of the lebanon.
And it seems that because of the status of abdullah masroad he had um you know the hadith of josefa took sort of like a secondary uh sort of level of importance or that was not uh considered to be here um what you know the the default uh the hadith was always considered to be the default and everybody is trying to reconcile the hadith of uh so that it may eventually agree with the hadith of 11 or so however we know also that there are different narrations of the hadith of the.
11th masood and one of them may have the answer so so when the prophet salallahu sallam said that the the creation of one of you would be brought together in the womb of their mother as a drop for 40 days then it will become a uh then it will become a alaka in in a similar for a similar duration and then it becomes a moda a true piece or lump of flesh for a similar duration one of the narrations reported by muslim says then it will become a alaka a clot.
In that for a similar duration so uh said that everything happens in the first 40 days because it will become a no it is a not far and then a halal and then a mudra for a similar duration but everything is happening fiesalic in that in that what is that the 40 days not the womb so in that refers to the 40 days to the duration uh not the place and that is sort of linguistically sound uh because the prophet sallallahu alaihi said in so one of you will have his.
Creation brought together in the womb of his mother for 40 days the last thing he mentioned is not the womb the 40 days so when we say that then he will be in that uh he will be a clot in that for a similar duration the similar duration is not another 40 days the similar duration is that it is a not fa for like a period of time within the 40 days and then alaka a clot for a duration similar to that of the nutfa all within the 40 days and.
Then it would become a motherboard still within the 40 days it is extremely hard for anyone who you know it it is extremely hard for for anyone who uh practices medicine to basically accept that the fetus at what at 119 days from conception which is uh 143 days for gestational age is still in the form of a mudra now someone may say that this is all because of you guys uh you tried like the people who sort of um it's all sort of modernist interpretation of the mudra uh whoever told.
You that the is not like a full-blown human being a small human being in the form of a fetus because you know by 119 days you would have everything you'll have all the organs will be complete by 56 days and the baby would have grown and would have fingers and would have toes and would have everything so people may say whoever told you that this is not a mother the problem is that in surat it clearly uh provides a sequence here where the bones come after the mudra then we have.
Created the mudra or made the mudra into bones then we have uh basically covered the bones with flesh then we made him into a new creation so if you want to uh respect the apparent implication of suratul minoon the apparent meanings of surat no which are quite obvious surat i'm sorry which is quite obvious you will not be able to reconcile the hadith of the loving versus therefore the bottom line is we cannot accept the apparent implication of the hadith of abdullah that it will be 40 days of not 40.
Days of 40 days of madhva everything happens in the first 40 days so to you you raise a very very deep point i wish we could discuss this more but what you have done and of course you know i'm very sympathetic to this but what you have done is you have taken external evidence that is definitive and that is the evidence of that we know of embryology of the knowledge of the period of gestation and the development of the fetus and you've then looked at the various hadith and you have.
Made tarjir you have examined these narrations and chosen based upon a knowledge that you know of that is definitive which version seems to be more authentic than other versions and uh of course we can that's a very deep usual discussion discussion but i just wanted to point that out that this is something that one does find uh throughout our history where people are looking at the narrations within a reasonable framework this is not against this is not embracing modernism or progressivism this is actually from within the also that uh sometimes.
Definitive knowledge uh which is outside of narrations uh is used to then interpret or to even make the between uh various narrations that's an interesting point here but the point is that and you know if you look at i know that this this was part like part of your ph. d ceciles but if you looked at the sort of the mayhem both are great imams of harassing or the universal law by rozzi erazi maya did not really refute the it did not really claim that conclusive rational evidence will be denied.
Or rejected he just said that you know that the rational evidence is not one undifferentiated category so we'll have to divide the rational evidence and figure out what is conclusive or definitive and what is not and also the the it's not all conclusive because there could be you know different implications so we have to divide this into conclusive and non-conclusive and we will always favor the conclusive evidence regardless of whether it was rational or scripture exactly so in fact in my phd i actually have a section called ebitemia's modified version.
Of the so it's not as if he rejected uh the entire notion of evidences outside of the quran sunnah rather he had a modified interpretation where he claimed that if there was a definitive or qatari knowledge that is outside of the quran and sunnah that the quran and authentic sunnah could not and would not contradict that cult of evidence which is a slight modification so the bottom line before we move on so we are in agreement there for that it is really the 40-day mark where the spirit is blown in.
Where the rule has blown in and life begins from the islamic perspective uh of around the 40th day of conception so basically well i will disagree here oh okay so what what did i so maybe misunderstood you then go ahead no i agree with you that embryogenesis is completed by 40 days or 42 days but the hadith of josiah does not talk about the blowing of the soul into the fetus therefore um uh you know the blowing of the soul i have a little bit of a problem here with the.
Blowing of the soul at 40 because if we say that the blowing of the soul happens right after the mudra then we are skipping two important uh sort of phases here that are mentioned in surat because lump of flesh into bones then we made the bones in to cover the bones with flesh and thereafter thereafter we made him into a new creation so now it is clear for it is clear from the evidence whether it's rational or scriptural evidence that everything happens in 40 days in terms of the the genesis.
Of the fetus or the embryo genesis but the soul should be breathed into the fetus when it is accepting basically ready to receive it and that should happen later after basically the organs have developed enough uh for the body to be ready to receive this soul now who's making that distinction i don't know many people making that distinction but you know it yeah i just it is okay for me to do this patchwork because i am not i am basically surrounded by imams uh from both sides although this opinion may.
Be a little bit interesting because i am separating between embryogenesis and the breathing of the soul into the fetus if if we're saying that it is uh a drop clot uh chewed a lump of flesh all within 40 days i would have uh a problem believing that the soul will be breathed right after this phase there are two phases here that we did not count for that are mentioned in the quran and then there is a lapse of time some mention and that is when the soul gets breathed into the.
Fetus okay so so you are then positing that uh the embryogenesis takes place after 40 days and the soul is breathing after 120 days is that what you're saying yes which will not be which will sound incoherent because then i cannot scripturally prove it because it is not uh if if i am denying uh the hadith of the apparent implication of the hadith of the misroad and i'm trying to reconcile the apparent implication of the hadith of the masood uh with the hadith then if to be consistent uh you know.
Where am i getting the 120 days from for the breathing of the soul however there is several ad mass that have been reported on the breathing of the soul at 120 days the is it cognitive dissonance to say that i will separate between the two and accept the izmir that is not textually based uh you know at this point this is what i'm inclined to doing i would accept that now that is not textually based because breathing the soul at 40 days is not consistent with the soul uh coming into.
A body that is ready when does the soul leave the body if we look at the other end of life the soul leaves the body when the body is not accepting of it anymore you know because of disease because of trauma because of this or that or because of the divine decree but we should apply this to the beginning as well and i don't think that the body is ready to accept the soul so that we can move from simply sentient life in a sense to human life uh because we.
Don't jump from vegetative life to human life i guess there is a phase in the middle that's called sentient life which applies to the fetus before we can say that human life starts so this is actually very interesting and you are complicating the plot now because as you are aware this is a relatively unique position actually i don't know of anybody else that has that i've heard i'm sure there are but um as you're aware most people are either the 40 or the 120 and now you're making a very important.
Distinction which i find very intriguing it's going to take a while for my mind to think through all the implications but what this does imply is that your positions then are going to be uh slightly modified from those who follow the position that the rule has blown it at 40 days versus those who've learned at 120. yeah interesting okay by the way before i get to the fifth issue i'm genuinely curious you are of course a medical doctor is there anything that happens around 120 days that is different in terms.
Of like the biological development of the child maybe the consciousness or awareness somehow can be detected is there something that like us people who are outside of the medical discipline we can feel a sense of oh aha i see that's the soul we can see pre and post soul being blown in anything that can detect that somehow many things in that neighborhood that happened that could indicate the beginning of human life including voluntary movements not reflexive movements um so many studies have shown that there there are certain developments that take.
Place uh during this time um most notably voluntary movements and if you ask any pregnant woman when did you did you start to feel uh movements they will tell you the fifth month of pregnancy see so for me as you know similar for me that type of evidence is actually it's not of course it's kind of like is you can kind of like get a little bit of uh you know a hope in that your position might have some basis to it because i'm actually very intrigued it's the first time.
I've actually heard this position and it's uh making a lot of sense to me personally that we if we distinguish between the development of the embryo which is clearly taking place where this is taking place at 40 days versus the blowing of the which i've always had a problem with in the sense of before i'm not a medical doctor but still the the notion of being blown in at that early stage it didn't settle with me for multiple reasons but now you come with this interesting distinction and i find myself.
Very.
Core Ruling and Evidence — 26:01
Much drawn to it nonetheless so based on that let's now get to the issue of terminating the pregnancy with the caveat before we get to the nitty-gritty and the harsh realities with the caveat that there is pretty much a a uh unanimous uh consensus or um don't i don't like using the word here because it's not quite but there is the sense of that whether it is uh a living or breathing uh fetus or not whether the blown in or not that there is an element of sanctity to that fetus.
And that we should not treat it as if it is a vegetable as if it is nothing so even if the has not been blown in there is generally feeling uh within our fukaha a discouragement overall and there is a sanctity of life that is brought in that this is going to be a living human being so before we get to the issue of when is it allah was when is it not allowed i just wanted to put this out there that generally speaking our fukaha in fact i've read a.
Number of fatawa that say that that um it is uh by ijuma not allowed uh to uh abort to fetus even in the early stages for absolutely no reason i know that there's not footage but i've read that scholars have said this so i wanted to give that caveat out there now with that overall notion that we respect the sanctity of something that might become life now that you've given us this distinction can you summarize for us your position about uh ending pregnancy voluntarily well i i think that there is.
A lot more strictness nowadays than used to be early on and even in the sort of the establishment that had the four establishment of sunni islam uh i think this notion that there is agreement about the prohibition of abortion um there is as you said there is a agreement about the sanctity of the fetus to some extent certainly if someone causes abortion uh to a woman that is a crime uh but is the woman or um is the sort of the woman and her husband uh do they have any uh.
Right to terminating the pregnancy um then you know let's start by talking about the position of the form as i had in the authorized view within the form of there is a disclaimer here that there is always disagreement within the form of ahead about your eyes of you sometimes uh but you know oftentimes there is this agreement so if we say that they all agreed about the prohibition of abortion after 120 days because they all agreed that the soul is breathed into the fetus at one time what at 120 days.
So it's natural for them that it is a crime uh to abort to the fetus after 120 days the exception here will be one which is that uh if the mother's life is in danger then to preserve us or to preserve the the tree uh would be sort of uh would take priority over preserving the branch where this is how they expressed it so the mother is the asleep the mother is basically uh the the the tree and then this branch you cut off the branch to save the tree if.
There is a sick branch you cut off the branch to save the tree so our fukaha do not accept any form of abortion after 120 days except if it is sort of if it basically poses danger to the mother's life now before 40 days before 40 days you will find when it comes to the authorized of you in the different mazaak now because in every in all the matzah there is in turn of this agreement before 40 days uh the hanbalis said that you can have abortion uh upon mutual agreement.
Of the parents before 40 days and lakhmi of the malikis who are the strictest in this regard agreed with the hambalis the view and you could always you know am i more shy than uh remember allah certainly not well imam al-ghazali you know does not agree to any abortion uh at any time and he you know and the hanafi's also uh some of the hanapis also they cite the example of baidu haram or the eggs of the game birds of the haram and if the game birds of the haram are.
Sacred and you cannot kill them you can't break the eggs of those sacred game birds of the haram so decide this example to say if this is the beginning of human life then it is sacred because human life is sacred but the the you know the established view according to the latter chapter shafi's and hanafis when they mentioned the disagreement to the internal disagreement with enzo mazda they still confirm that the established view is that it is permissible in the hanafi and the shaft to have abortion all the way up.
To 120 days upon mutual agreement of the parents now some of them because it sounds a little bit like too hard to accept some of them say that there must be a good cause and we agree with them there must be a good cause but it is basically the mutual agreement of the parents that will determine if there is a good cause or not the hanafis or some of them go as far as saying that the paternal sort of agreement is um not required it is the mother's decision regardless of.
The father's opinion that's what some of the hanafi said so if we want to fairly and honestly present the positions within the form of before we come to the contemporary discourse and the sort of the automa of the modern times uh we will say that uh before 40 days the majority agreed to uh you know the permissibility of abortion before 40 days and that would be the authorized position within the hanafi mezhab the authorized position within the shattering lakhmi of the malikis and the position of the hambari mazhab between 40.
To 120 that is still the authorized position that it is allowed to have abortion upon mutual agreement of the parents in the hanafi and the shattering even though there is much disagreement internally within the two mothers and then after 120 days no one would agree so the malikis would not approve of expulsion of the semen after it goes inside basically the womb uh they do not agree with with any form of birth control that is uh beyond coitus interruptus which everybody agrees with uh as or cuitis interruptus but they do.
Not agree with even the expulsion of this theorem uh i'm sorry of this uh of this semen um after intercourse so that so that's what what the the sort of the classical uh discourse is about nowadays part of it is is warranted you know because nowadays with our developed understanding of embryogenesis even though they had the same sort of concerns before because they would see the fetus coming out after 80 days completely formed like complete human being so they have the same concerns and and you know i wrote something about.
This and there is like so much that they questioned you know so many of the scholars had questioned it but anyway nowadays people have become stricter uh and that they say that uh you know the the magma for for instance islami and the majority of muslim scholars nowadays they sort of accepted the humble position that it is okay in the first 40 days only because many of the scholars have accepted the fact that the salt gets sort of breathed into the fetus at 40 days and because many of the scholars.
Still believe that it is still a drop for 40 days so it is okay basically to have abortion within the first 40 days between 40 uh to 120 days and they all presume that you have some cause you know for for doing it they all presume that you have a cause for it but between 40 to 120 days the cause must be a very valid cause a very pressing cause such as uh rape uh according to some of the majama they consider this to be a valid cost to have abortion.
Between 40 and 120 days such as uh deformity that is incompatible uh with a sort of normal life uh incompatible with a sort of dignified life uh and when they talk about dignified life the you know the the the scholars of madam islami or the international islamic uh the islamic assembly that belongs to the muslim world league they said that if his life will be bad and a cause of grief for himself and his parents then it is allowable to terminate the pregnancy between 40 and 120 days severe congenital diseases.
Or deformities and and things of that nature uh and then they say that after 120 days as we said before it is never permissible except if the mother's life is in danger that is the modern discourse i accept this despite the fact that this does not really reflect uh the the classical discourse this classical discourse was more permissive than this uh when it comes to abortion but i accepted the modern discourse because of our understanding of embryogenesis and so on uh so this is what i believe in uh so shaytan.
A number of points are raised firstly if i'm not mistaken the hanafis didn't they not have the 120 they said as long as the features aren't formed so they have a different caveat right or something of this nature so wouldn't that bring it back just to be pedantic so that we don't miss the scribe to the hanoves yes but but but the majority of the hanafis do not necessarily make this condition they talk about 120 days the permissibility within the 120 days without making this condition some of the hanapis will.
Make different conditions some of the hanafis do not accept the whole thing some of the hanafis do not accept the permissibility of abortion to begin with at any time and this is also by the way even tamiya's position he's very strict on this regard as well that he does not uh uh view abortion so he's actually not following the me the mainstream humbly view uh in this regard uh but the point being now so a number of questions about so so therefore what you said was to reiterate up until 40.
Days uh from conception uh not from the last you know the period but the actual conception up until 40 days any type of reasonable excuse let's say and if you look at the lists given generally speaking if the lady says i'm too tired to take care of another child or you know i don't have help in the house and this is going to be an issue for me or i have to drop the kids i already have three kids etc uh generally speaking if the fatawa that are there they seem.
To suggest within the 40 days this would be permissible however if she or the the husband feels that we cannot afford the child then it would never be allowed because obviously this is now a theological issue that you are infringing on the rights of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and impeding the generosity of allah with your misconception so that is uh uh you do would you agree with that summary for the first 40 days yes i would agree with that summary but i just wanted to add also to the to the.
Hanafi issue that when the hanafi's talked about malamia tahala they explained this to the the breathing of the soul because even says and it is obvious that that that genesis happens before this the khal look happens before this time but they meant the breathing of the soul so even malam yate khalak that the hanafis mentioned they disagreed over what this mean whether it means the emperor genesis or the insolvent personhood or whatever okay valid part okay but i agree with you your sort of depiction of the sort of the first.
40 days okay there is a good reason that is not the fear of poverty uh then it is permissible now from 40 days to 120 days you mentioned severe congenital to disease or a pregnancy that is really uh outside of marriage that's going to be problematic from that regard are these the only reasons that you would allow or are there other uh mobile reasons that would be permissible during this time frame yeah and and the the scholars who allowed it for in the case of rape they don't didn't they did.
Not talk about out of the wedlock they talked about rape in particular they did not talk about consensual sex they talked about a woman who has been raped and now and and the issue came up you know uh during the the time of the bosnian war and and things of the like like that so it has a very special application here um but uh congenital diseases like severe congenital diseases congenital severe deformities and rape uh are the uh indications that are mentioned by the scholars in that window between 40 to.
120 days that is between 54 to 134 days according to the doctors gestational age between 50 and 120 days from conception so you would not add anything to that list that's that's your restrictive list yes okay uh again i really have to ask these questions i apologize to our viewers if um you you this is uh it's a very awkward question but i'm asking this because every sheikh knows we get bombarded with these questions and it is awkward but i've gotten my these questions emailed to me as well and i've.
Always deferred to authorities in this regard when you say congenital disease does that include for example down syndrome does that include the quality of life being impaired so to what level of difficulty would constitute a congenital disease well you know in in their fourth conference the the islamic assembly of the muslim world league in their fourth conference they said so that his life will be hard and it will be a cause of grief for him and his parents and can we just say that we should allow people a little bit.
Of room here to uh to make that determination and we should talk to them about you know severe issues that would cause we're not talking about the loss of one sense we're not talking about the loss of one limb how many blind people who have given enriched the life of their parents and humanity a lot more than uh their counterparts uh without disability and how you know so we're not talking about things of that nature but we're talking about a severe mental handicap we're talking about as sort of a severe.
Physical handicap severe uh that will make life you know um sort of difficult and a cause of grief for the person and their parents that there will be some room for subjectivity and for so for me i believe that conditions that are associated with uh severe mental disability uh may cause uh hardship and grief for the person and or and or their parents or their parents so um i i respect that this isn't there's just a part of me that really feels very uncomfortable leaving this open-ended simply because there are.
Plenty of children born that might have slight impediments mentally speaking and yet the lives of the parents are enriched in ways they never expected a child might have in down syndrome or something of this nature but allah's blessings comes upon the family with love and the child brings about an element of happiness and joy even if it doesn't live that he or she does not live till they're 50 or 60 or whatever i i would just say to the parents that this is a human life and definitely if the congenital.
Disease is such that there is no quality of life whatsoever perhaps the fatwa is applicable but if it's a gray area i i definitely hope to er on the side of caution and expect allah's rewards and blessings insha allah will be uh better for you uh in this world than the next and i hope you're gonna agree with that uh generic statement no absolutely you know what what makes me a little bit more uh uh i guess audacious here is uh is the fact that i i have seen that for.
The hanafi's and shaffer is and that would be represented like a very large uh sector of muslims traditionally and classically things were a little bit more lenient in the past than they are nowadays so um even if if uh if someone says you know and we just have to be honest here like let us say if someone says it is based on mutual agreement of the two parents full stop uh up until 120 days i believe that they can find a validation for this in the classical sources in two of.
The of the former uh easily despite the disagreement within the masaheb but they would not even need to go to unauthorized uh positions they can find authorized positions in two out of the four mazar yet like i said our understanding of embryogenesis our you know seeing on ultrasound the baby inside the womb makes it makes us uh more inclined to uh being a little stricter than the traditional discourse or the classic of this course so you know we're we're just limiting this to severe congenital diseases deformities that will uh basically.
Cause grief and uh to the child or to the parents and just to underscore uh so again uh remember that the legend of da'ima and the maj and a number of major councils around the globe have been quite strict and i i would like to point this out that because of our knowledge of science because of our knowledge of even i would say even because of the ease of life the of living that we have now that we find this this more strictness and i agree with this that we should.
Er on the side of caution when it comes to human life and allah azzawajal uh knows best so the majamer by and large from 40 to 120 they say very very extenuating circumstances not just that you know oh life is going to be slightly difficult so i again perhaps there's a slight difference here but i'm more on the side of caution in this regard and i fully understand where you are coming from as well but this leads us and i i just want to confirm that i i am not about.
Blindness the lawsuit has senses the law of the lamb or things of that nature these would not qualify okay or congenital deformities okay now let's get to now past 120. and you said that and of course this is what the standard andy fatawa from classical and from modern times is that only if the life of the mother is in danger can the fetus be aborted after 120 days okay frank question given our modern uh technological achievements and advancements is there ever an actual either or situation nowadays either or in this.
In what sense you have to choose between uh the pregnancy or the mother can we not uh so there are there are situations where you cannot extract the baby you cannot do a cesarean you can extract the baby but you'll extract the baby too early to to be viable so the earliest caesarean is five months and something correct you you correct me you're the doctor yeah yeah no we're talking about 120 days like after 120 days we're talking about four and a half months of gestation or like four and months.
Of gestation in a few days and that basically is uh not a viable fetus so if if the if the pregnancy will be uh sort of pose danger to mom and that pregnancy has to be terminated after 120 days you still don't have a viable fetus no so after when is the earliest uh caesarean uh generally speaking when can you do a cesarean and save the baby you could do cesarean at any time but you will not need to do a cesarean uh you know this early because the baby can.
Be.
Practical Guidance and Caveats — 50:13
Uh if you if you're talking about taking the baby out uh a living child ability like when is the fetus when people yes that's what i'm asking the shortest duration of pregnancy well unlike what you know what uh unlike the what is sort of traditionally known the shortest duration of pregnancy is not six months it is rather about five months because the shortest duration of pregnancy to have a viable fetus is 21 and 22 weeks some baby was born in miami uh a little bit less than that you know around.
10 ounces of weight and a little bit less than 22 weeks so we're talking about 20 weeks from conception so we are talking about 140 days from conception that is the earliest you can have a viable baby but that's still extremely risky so the baby may or may not survive uh yet you could you know uh have the baby you could have the delivery at that time and see if the baby would survive so i guess that's what i'm asking for is that rather than just immediately jump to termination surely.
If it's possible we should advise uh uh the the the couples out there that are in this situation that obviously the first choice would be to see if they can save both lives only if it is an either or situation then obviously the mother's life has priority that's what i'm trying to get that would you agree with that with that sentiment yes of course okay so this now leads us to uh the issue again and i i had this question emailed to me i think last year by a lady uh.
By again a couple that was facing this situation where uh the doctors said and this was i think a month before a month before the delivery date that uh the they had they went for their annual checkup a regular checkup sorry and they discovered that uh the child would basically um whatever the the the the congenital deficiencies were the child would be born and not be able to live at all like it would not be able to breathe on its own etc etc and so the doctor basically said it would.
Be easier for you to terminate at that late stage it's not a matter of life and death it's just a lot of pain and you're going to go through an entire delivery and the child will not be able to live on its own anyway it's not going to have any even if it lives maximum just like a few hours or a day or something and then that's it so they were asking in this case that is it allowed for us to abort uh simply because it's going to save the mother.
The pain the emotional pain as well that was her main point like i'm literally going to carry a fetus or a child that i know is not going to survive the doctors have whatever it was so you get the scenario here what are your views on that type of very rare scenario may allah protect all of our viewers from this i mean well after 120 dies we will not just have to uh wait until delivery um if delivery can be induced uh earlier um we're not talking about abortion here we're.
Talking about induction of delivery then we can induce delivery as early as possible but that is not abortion that is induction of delivery so i would be it would be okay to induce delivery early if if that is what we know about the fetus but not abortion because after 120 days if the mother's life is not in danger then uh no abortion now if the fetus have died it is a case of feet of demise inside the uterus then certainly the fetus will be brought out uh if the doctors have.
Determined that the fetal had already expired in neutral then the fetus will uh in this case uh uh need to come out and we're not talking about induced delivery here we're talking about extraction of the fetus okay okay we only have a few minutes of marshall we spend so much time on this one topic i guess we're going to have to come back for a round two but two quick questions and i don't know are they quick or not so let's see how quick we can do this uh obviously it.
Goes without saying pretty much everybody knows that in vitro fertilization uh generally speaking uh pretty much all the majami all the the councils have allowed this with the simple condition that uh obviously uh the husband and the wife it is their uh uh sperm and the the of the husband and the uh the embryo of the the wife that is used even if the actual fertilization takes place outside uh of the body as long as it is within the the marriage the confines of the marriage now the question to you.
Is nowadays it is getting possible to choose maybe even the gender of the child and in fact i'm pretty sure you're the medical expert but within a few years or decades you can do more than the gender you can choose other things you know based on your based on the sample that you have in front of you so to what level would the parents be allowed to make such decisions given the caveat that it is between the husband and wife it is the semen of the husband uh and of course.
The embryo that is being used uh and the the the pregnancy is gonna be taking place within the body of the we're not using a surrogate uh mother for this so just in terms of choosing a little bit more specifying uh the type of child the gender of the child what are your thoughts on this no that's not short that's not short okay yeah but uh but is it okay to wish for a specific gender yes it is okay as long as that does not involve contempt of the other gender.
But it is okay for people who had three or four boys to want to have a girl it is okay for people who have three or four girls to want to have a boy uh it's natural it's it's a natural human tendency so it is okay to make dua it is okay to eat certain foods if someone recommended for you to eat certain foods you know there are some indications that is possible for things that are high in potassium and sodium for instance to bring about you know a boy and.
Uh magnesium magnesium and calcium uh girl and stuff like this or to use like some people may suggest to you and all of these things are not uh basically cut and dry these are things that have some evidence some studies have suggested them they have not been sort of mainstreamed in medical practice but some studied studies have suggested that certain types of food may may uh help in that regard um some said that vaginal douching whether you make the the environment more alkaline more acidic some said that this may be.
Harmful certainly this we're not talking about medicine here or not only talking about 50 issues so anyone who needs medical advice they need to basically consult their doctor um so those measures that the time of ovulation uh if you're like uh male sperms don't survive that well like female sperms um and the closer you are to the time of ovulation the more likely that you have a boy uh and the further away like within two three days you'll have to have you know uh basically um intercourse within two three days.
Before or after ovulation for conception to take place or fertilization to take place so the closer you are to the time of ovulation the more likely to have a boy people who do these things it's okay for them uh given one one one condition here uh is that it's not harmful so it is okay to make it it is okay to to to do to go about you know doing some of those measures or like uh techniques uh now in vitro fertilization there is one case where in vitro fertilization you.
Know in vitro fertilization let's say uh what are we talking about here people who needed to have ivf because they cannot naturally conceive and now that they had uh their ivf they have the ability to choose the gender of the baby there is no problem there they needed to have ivf and they have their ivf and now they have the ability to choose the gender of the baby or they are given the option to choose the gender of the baby if this is legal and it's not even in all places.
But if this is fine this is legal i guess they can choose the gender of their baby the other scenario where it is quite obvious that they can choose the gender of the baby is that when there are certain congenital diseases that are gender-specific so if you are prone to certain congenital diseases and those diseases are gender specific and you wish to have a baby of the opposite gender that is not prone to the to this disease then that would be also allowable now the one issue that is controversial is.
A is whether people who can naturally conceive uh may have ivf for the purpose of choosing the gender of their baby and this would be like a technique called intracytoplasmic uh sperm injection to inject the right sperm um centrifugation of the sperms will you know push out the main sperms out to the peripheries because they're lighter you examine the sperms you inject the particular sperm into the ovum whether you want to the male or the female sperm the x or the y sperm i should say into the ovum and and.
To have the the gender that you want now this is controversial the majority of the scholars forbid this there are very honorable scholars like sheikh karadawi and sheikh mohammed rafarthas man who used to be the the dean of the college of sharia and lazar allah dr muhammad but some of the you know great scholars of our times allowed this the majority forbade it and the for the majority forbade this not because we have sort of like um clear-cut evidence from the quran and sunnah uh but because of many assertive factors.
That they considered um the natural equilibrium between the genders that you know allah the that there is divinely decreed and so on uh certainly the scholars who allowed it they said that no one can defy the vine decree even if you do whatever you want that's not in defiance of divine decree because divine decree will come to pass anyway so it is a controversial issue and for me i don't believe that the evidence against it uh is strong enough to say it's haram i do say it is my crew but.
I uh i'm just like uh too uncomfortable saying it is haram to choose the gender of the baby by having ivf when you can naturally conceive and like you say the main point is that you are not doing so uh out of a a negative feeling towards the other gender because we don't obviously our sharia is very clear that we are not like people who preferred boys over girls we are not like that allah says in the quran so like you said as long as there is not that notion the.
The level of taharim uh to call it haram is very uh perhaps very difficult in this regard final point and again i don't know how long this is going to take if it's going to take longer then we will have to ask you to come back next next week but i wanted to finish up everything to do with at least the main questions you have about pregnancy and whatnot and that is that sometimes the issue is that uh the lady is not able to carry the child herself and uh and.
She does have of course uh the the the the the the embryo she has the egg of course the husband has the sperm but she's not able to carry the pregnancy and of course in our times as you're aware the technology is there to have a surrogate mother a third party to carry the child up until delivery and then of course the child is then given over to the original quote-unquote parents obviously we are all aware as far as i know no islamic scholarly committee no majm has allowed this in.
Our sharia as far as i'm aware please correct me if i'm wrong that having been said the question arises by many couples who are in this situation that if allah azzawajal has allowed foster mothers and if there is a maharamia established simply by giving milk to the child five times or ten times or however many times according to the medallion then apriori minba why couldn't we use that scenario and basically allow this i'm just asking you why couldn't this be allowed that some fukah would allow and say okay just like.
There is a foster mother let us now also consider the surrogate mother to be a mother and to have maharamiya established but the child will be raised by the the original parents what do you say to that and your comments on surrogacy overall yeah but the the issue here is that there is a difference between the two scenarios because when you breastfeed a child you're not uh basically having the sperm of a foreign man into your body versus the surrogate mother the surrogate mother would have the uh sort of product.
Of conception which is this basically the sperm and the ovum uh fertilized uh go into uh her body or be you know um get uh sort of planted into her womb and um that that's a a huge difference um the sperm of the man uh should not be or the products of that the sort of the fertilized uh uh zygote should not be uh inserted into the womb of a foreign woman and that's certainly you know made some of the scholars question whether in the case of co-wipes uh sort of.
There's there can be some uh flexibility there and uh this was raised as a question at the end of one of the meetings of the assembly um of the assembly of the oic as far as i remember but they came back the next year and they ruled it out also completely but at least some of the scholars have the salt that if if the problem here is having this sperm of a man or you know or the fertilized oven and planted into the womb of a woman foreign to that man.
What about if they were co-wives and uh and so so it it didn't you know it did not survive that sort of uh preposition was not accepted and it did not survive so what is uh basically mainstream and accepted now and i don't know if anyone uh disagrees is that all forms of surrogacy because of this concern are forbidden so the advice then to such couples is really allah we have to accept allah and allah will give them a reward for for their patients and obviously the door to adoption is.
Always open and as i have said many times this notion that adoption is haram we need to remove it from our vocabulary adoption is a hundred percent halal what is haram is tabani which is something that nobody does anymore you may take a child you may raise a child and you may love it as your own you simply cannot call it your own you cannot consider it biologically to be your own but of course it is of the highest good deeds to take an orphan or to take a child that.
Does not have any uh parents or has been abandoned in some place and you raise that child with love with care and you consider it like your own but you do not call it your own and your close family and friends know that this is a child that you have adopted adoption the way that it exists in the west is completely halal what is haram is a jayadi type of adoption that is called tibenni and as i explained in previous lectures we should not say ever that adoption is hard on.
Because it has raised a lot of misconceptions so the advice therefore to this couple would you would you agree to call on it open adoption i think the concept of open adoption may make it a little bit that's fine my point though is that tabani as it existed in pre-islam is pretty much gone in the modern world and nobody claims the child is biologically mine they might even give the child the last name for legal purposes but the notion of tabani which was the notion as you're aware of claiming that.
A certain person basically shall be considered for all intents and purposes i am taking this child and i am considering this child to be my biological child so that notion does not exist by and large in the western culture the claim that we love the child in the same manner the claim that you know is going to be raised in a family this is not quite the notion of tibet but if you give him all the if you don't tell him about his lineage you can see this that's why exactly.
My point we make sure that the family and friends and the child knows of the lineage right so the knowledge has to be there and you don't have to advertise everybody somebody comes hey that child is adopted of course but the close family and friends should know and the child himself or herself you know as he grows up and there's simple you know there you should read about the the psychological realities of raising such a child it's very simple that from the beginning you know the child should be told baby.
Stories about where it came from and they should automatically just know uh there and there are nice books that you know instead of instead of the child you know coming like it's basically it's simple psychology yeah so it's it's very easy to have this done my point is as you're aware is that the average couple that is struggling they have the notion that it is haram to take another person's child an adopted sorry an orphan child and raise it in their own household and that notion needs to be gotten rid.
Of in the minds of the muslims so that's why i'm a bit shock and awe when i say we need to stop saying that adoption is haram adoption is halal the way that is understood and then you give the caveat that the child should know who the parents are and the close family and friends should know uh other than that obviously it is very rewarding to to do that so uh now we have come to the end of our uh q a for uh pregnancy and termination of pregnancy but we.
Still have end of life issues so insha allah we have to continue this conversation maybe in two or three weeks insha'allah is that a good time for you that we come back and talk about and we talked at the beginning of life okay now we're going to jump to next session in sha allah or whenever we get back where we talk about end of life scenarios and pulling the plug and those types of issues so i'm going to ask you live on on air basically that insha allah we agree to.
Come back uh soon and talk about those issues of end of life inshallah from you and i have to say that was the first time i heard from you this distinction of 40 to 120 and i'm very very intrigued and it actually is making a lot of sense to me so i will become your mukhalid in this regard and i will always say our shaykh has this position and i will then give the fatwa based upon your verdict because it actually solves a lot of issues so jazakum for that foreign.
Foreign.