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Abstract

The widespread use of mechanical ventilators that prevent respiratory arrest can maintain vital functions artificially after the brain has ceased to function. There has been a general consensus among medical community and members of clergy, and laypeople that a person is dead when his or her brain is dead. But in some part of world including some Islamic countries, cessation of cardiac function is considered the usual criterion for declaration of death.1 This is despite the acceptance of brain death by majority of Islamic jurists in their meeting held in Jordan, in 1986.2 This is responsible for continued futile treatment, consequently slowing down and hindering the procurement of vital organs for transplantation.