Religion/Politics

Blood donation question

Naoko Kensaku12 Comments

This darling little question came up while I was half-asleep yesterday (followed by one hell of a nasty nightmare).

How do the major religions with food rules deal with blood donation? Hindus don’t take beef, Muslims don’t take pork etc. In a country like Malaysia, how do you deal with the blood donation issue? Are Muslims only given blood from Muslims? Hindus only blood from Hindus?

Just curious about this. Links and discussions welcomed!

PS: Twitter friends, please reply here and not on Twitter. Easier for me to keep track of things. 😀

12 thoughts on “Blood donation question”

  2. I’m not 100% sure about this (as each state has different fatwas, which makes things confusing), but I recall two or three years ago it was ruled that Muslims can receive organ transplants “tanpa was-was” and that it was a virtue to donate organs, because it was based on that hukum agama where it’s ok if it’s majorly beneficial or a life/death situation.

    So I’d assume blood would be placed in the same category. After all, the blood is processed prior to it being used for transfusions. However I think in cases where a person requests it and it’s possible without too many complications, hospitals here do take religious concerns into consideration: my uncle recently had a bypass operation and he requested for his own blood to be used for transfusions. It delayed the operation for a few days but the hospital complied.

      • Depends on the Muslim 🙂 I can’t donate blood because I’m anaemic, but I’d readily receive blood if needed regardless of the donor’s race/religion – that being said I’m pretty liberal as far as Muslims go. For very conservative Muslims, I think there would be some hesitance if not all out resistance to the idea of taking “darah kafir”, or even in extreme cases blood from people of a different gender (as that would negate a marriage with the donor if by some bizarre stroke of luck that were to happen).

        The comments on this page might help give you an idea on differing opinions – http://halaqah.net/v10/index.php?action=printpage;topic=1084.0

        And for random fatwa wonderings – http://halaqah.net/v10/index.php?topic=8349.msg83039#msg83039

  3. From the site above, the rulings by majlis fatwa kebangsaan

    There are also some interesting POV here

    Basically blood donation is for a greater good and it doesn’t matter the religion /practice of the donator/receiver as in the end we all come from the same place (paraphrasing a bit)

  4. See the thing is…WE know whose bag is whose blood. YOU, as the recipient…DON’T. All donor information is anonymous so if you want your received blood to be pure and whatnot then I’m sorry man get your own damned donors. I would like to note though that especially for heart op people the surgeon always requests fresh blood, and these people really just bring whoever they want. Strange meat in your blood? WELL THANKS FOR BRINGING IT UP MAKE OUR LIVES MISERABLE WHYDONCHA.

    We’re not going to sort through a hundred bags a day according to religion; we lack time to do our normal blood bank work as it is.

  5. I ain’t never heard of Muslims having any ish with blood. Whatever food they’ve eaten has already been processed into the bloodstream and if the food was so poisonous, the non-Muslim would probably be dead and not donating.

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