The last breath (ramaq): repentance, retaliation and eating forbidden food to sustain life

الرمق

Ramaq means the remnant of life: in the lexicon it is the last of the breath, and some say it is strength. The technical sense is the same as the lexical one. ¹ The jurists give it several rulings. First, repentance at the last breath: the majority hold that the repentance of someone at the point of death, who sees the angel of death, is not accepted, because hope has ended and repentance requires a firm resolve never to return, which is not possible once choice has gone; some say it is valid while hope remains. ¹ Second, retaliation for a killing at the last breath: if one person brings another to the state of a slaughtered animal (no sight, speech or voluntary movement) and a second person then strikes him, the first is the killer and the second is disciplined for violating the dead person's inviolability; if the second strikes before the victim reaches that state, the second is the killer and the first owes retaliation for the wound or its blood money. ² If the victim reached the last breath through illness rather than a crime, the killer owes retaliation, since such signs are not certain and the patient may recover. ² Third, sustaining life with forbidden food: the jurists agree that a person in necessity may eat carrion, swine and other forbidden things enough to keep him alive, citing verses from the Surahs of al-Baqara and al-Ma'ida without quoting them here. They differ on whether eating is obligatory for one who fears death, and on the amount: whether it is enough to keep him alive or he may eat to satiety, and whether the traveller and the resident are treated alike. ^{2 3} Fourth, slaughtering an animal at its last breath: lawful slaughter requires stable life at the moment of slaughter, real or presumed from signs; if an animal fell ill from a cause that does not lead to death and was slaughtered in its last breath, its meat is lawful, but if it sickened from eating a harmful plant it is not. ³