Islamic preventive strategies against Coronavirus (I)
An Ayat in the Quran reads: “…and none knows the forces of thy Lord, except He and this is no other than a warning to mankind (Quran 74: 31). It is, like thousand others in the glorious book, full of symbolisms. It is loaded with signifiers and metaphors the exploration of which have engaged the […]
An Ayat in the Quran reads: “…and none knows the forces of thy Lord, except He and this is no other than a warning to mankind (Quran 74: 31). It is, like thousand others in the glorious book, full of symbolisms. It is loaded with signifiers and metaphors the exploration of which have engaged the attention of scholars and exegetes across times and climes. When I contemplated the current challenges facing the world over the outbreak of coronavirus, the semiotics of the unknown hinted at in the above Ayat becomes more intriguing. As at today, over 90,000 people across the world have been infected while over 3000 deaths have been reported from the outbreak of the epidemic. If there ever had been a threat to the welfare and wellbeing of humankind in recent history, the coronavirus outbreak has become the most alarming.
When the news of the epidemic which is (may He prevent same) threatening to become a pandemic first broke out, I took two postures in regard to its cause. My first reaction was to say that we are the cause of this virus the same way we caused AIDS, Ebola and countless other epidemics that have assailed humankind in the contemporary period. In fact, of all these diseases it is only the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) that has been, in my opinion, most appropriately designated and labelled. In other words, AIDS is originally the disease of the ‘modern’, the ‘happening guys and babes’ in town. Apart from innocent victims of the disease – those who have contracted the disease not as a result of their deliberate infractions of the divine- others have ‘acquired’ HIV through sexual promiscuity.
Thus, when video clips of wild-life markets in parts of China were shared with me, when I watched, with much trepidation and consternation, the apparently bizarre and ludicrous feeding habits of some Chinese citizens, when I beheld the beastly ingestation of life chicken by those Chinese as if they were foxes, the egregious munching of life-crawlers like lizards and other animals that Islam has forbidden, I could not but reach the conclusion that if indeed China is World’s Super power in-waiting, that country might actually self-destruct ahead of time. This is because hardly has there been an instance in history when humans descend to this level of oddity in food consumption that it does not witness diseases of immeasurable proportions. The Almighty says: Whatever affliction befalls you, it is because of what your hands have earned… (Al-shShūrā 42:30)
But yet caution is a necessity particularly given the divine ministrations that are evident in the Ayat cited above. Towards the end of the Ayat, the Almighty says- ‘and none knows the forces of thy Lord, except He and this is no other than a warning to mankind (Quran 74: 31). In other words, when epidemics such as coronavirus breaks out and humanity finds itself at a loss as to what exactly might be its cause, one way to make sense of the situation is to return the cause to the First Cause, to the only One without a preceding cause. In other words, when the question becomes urgent, as it has been since late December “what is the origin of the coronavirus?”, the believer would find solace in the Almighty; in the knowledge that nothing happens either in the heavens or on earth except that they conform with His knowledge and permission. He says again: “With Him (the Almighty) are the keys of the Unseen; the treasures that none Knows but He! He Knows whatever there is on the earth and in the sea. Not a leaf doth fall but with His Knowledge: there is not a grain in the darkness (or depths) of the earth, nor anything fresh or dry, but is (inscribed) in a Record Clear (with Him). (Quran 6: 59). But the above Ayat (I refuse to reference it as verse for methodological and exegetical reasons) should not be read fatalistically; it should not be construed to mean we should resign ourselves to fate and, like the passengers in Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot, expect death and Armageddon. The Ayat should not be read to mean that believers are expected to not take action and prevent this disease as much as we can.
Evidences in Islamic history compels the above assertion.
Here, epidemics such as coronavirus are known either as al-Ta’un and al-Waba’. Literally, the word Waba’ is literally refers to a “quickness and commonness of death among men”, as “a corruption happening to the substance of the air”, and as “an unwholesomeness in the air, in consequence of which disease becomes common among men”.