Where “compassion” would claim the right to end life, we must return to Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben—the solemn knowing that “I am life which wills to live, in the midst of life which wills to live.” The physician’s calling is to ease pain and guard the will‑to‑live with patience and wisdom; “Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.”

Know, O seeker, that the end of tibb is to preserve health and remove disease—to guard the mizāj and the quwwat al‑hayāt; to appoint the healer as agent of death is to invert the telos of the art. Rahma is not the hastening of the soul’s parting, but the easing of pain and the right ordering of imbalance with hikma until the appointed term. When intention is disordered, compassion unmoored becomes a sharp blade.

Medicine ought to heal and ease pain; when it is turned to hasten death, we tread a perilous path. I learnt early that good intentions, mishandled, do great harm—“the thoughtless person playing with penicillin is morally responsible.” Let compassion be married to sound science, stout palliation, and reverence for life.