Vaccination Isn’t Merely a Permissible Choice for Muslims It Is a Fard Kifaya – A Collective Obligation
By
Sadakat Kadri
18 Feb 2021
As the UK’s
Covid-19 vaccination programme has accelerated, optimism about its
effectiveness has been rising. According to the Office for National Statistics,
more than nine in 10 people are now keen to get a jab, up from 78% in December.
But there are significant racial disparities. The Royal College of General
Practitioners reports that enthusiasm within Asian and black communities dips
by between two-thirds and a half, and – as many imams have acknowledged – the
suspicion of vaccines is disproportionately high among Muslims.
Indonesia’s Ulema Council has called Sinovac “holy and halal”, while
scholars in the United Arab Emirates and Egypt endorsed Sinopharm with
observations that dietary restrictions matter less than human lives.’ Covid-19
vaccination for health worker in Indonesia. Photograph: Donal
Husni/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock
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Why?
Influential traditions warn that innovations sometimes come with danger, and a
fear of God can produce fatalistic attitudes towards disease: even viruses are
part of creation, after all. But the most distinctively Islamic concern is much
simpler. Lots of believers worry that vaccines contain pork.
The belief
isn’t as far-fetched as it might sound to non-Muslims. Chemically purified
gelatine (like the gooey albumins found in salmon and egg whites) is useful to
stabilise the active ingredients of many drugs. Manufacturers have been
stepping up the search for substitutes, but animal products are therefore
common in injectable solutions.
That’s led
Muslims sometimes to worry that they might be haram, forbidden. Indonesia’s
most authoritative religious body denounced inoculations for meningitis in 2008
(which, quite counter-productively, disqualified thousands of unvaccinated
Muslims from hajj later that year), and a similar condemnation in 2018
contributed to a major measles outbreak. In parts of northern Pakistan, Somalia
and Nigeria, false rumours about polio vaccines haven’t just endangered
children’s health; hospitals have been torched and clinicians have been
murdered.
The fear of
life-saving medicines is ironic – not least, because Arab physicians such as
Ibn Sina once made Islamic culture synonymous with scientific progress – but
mercifully, hardline opposition is confined to ultra-cautious conservatives and
reckless extremists. There’s a lot more support for vaccinating children in
south Asia and north Africa than in Europe (the rate in France is lowest of
all), and anti-vax sentiment is consistently high in only two Muslim-majority
states: Indonesia and Nigeria.
Most sharia
scholars, meanwhile, justify haram ingredients by invoking a concept known as
“transformation” (Istihala) – essentially, a recognition that things can
change – which has been loosening things up ever since it explained 1,200 years
ago why the Qur’an’s disapproval of wine didn’t rule out cooking with vinegar.
Jurists have also reminded Muslims that necessity and public welfare take
priority in emergencies, and stressed Islamic law’s five goals (the maqasid
al-sharia) – which include the preservation of life.
These
traditions inspired muftis in Moscow to declare last week that even if
scientists had used gelatine in Russia’s Sputnik vaccine (which they deny),
inoculations would be permissible. Though Chinese vaccine manufacturers have
been vague about what’s in their products, Indonesia’s Ulema Council has called
Sinovac “holy and halal”, while scholars in the United Arab Emirates and Egypt
endorsed Sinopharm with observations that dietary restrictions matter less than
human lives. Sharia-compliance has been even smoother with the Pfizer/BioNTech,
Moderna and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines. All three manufacturers say they
contain no animal derivatives, and stamps of approval have come from the
British Islamic Medical Association, the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America
and the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia.
That’s
important. It’s helping imams allay community concerns, and encouraging sheikhs
to get jabbed on television. But fine points of Islamic jurisprudence also
distract from a bigger picture. It isn’t humility before God that’s fuelling
doubt. It’s an uneasy suspicion of powerful figures whose hostility to Islam is
presumed. Iran’s supreme leader has forbidden vaccine imports from the US and
UK, regardless of ingredients, simply because he distrusts both countries.
Egypt’s retired grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, hasn’t worried about gelatine, but he’s
suggested on his TV show that Covid-19 might be a biological weapon linked to
5G technology and 100,000 orbiting satellites. In the name of “anti-Zionism”,
people are rehashing the familiar slur that Jews spread disease, while a
petitioner to Pakistan’s high court has alleged that Muslims are being injected
with not just pig and chimpanzee DNA, but trackable microchips too.
Political
scepticism is endemic in the Muslim world, and it isn’t always unjustified. At
least one conspiracy theory involving the vaccination of Muslims was certainly
real: the 2011 operation to locate and kill Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad
started with a CIA intelligence-gathering operation disguised as an inoculation
drive. But it’s no accident that the plots now being imagined by some Muslims
resemble fantasies associated with secular cults such as QAnon. Global
communications networks are enabling anxious people everywhere to share ideas
they might ordinarily dismiss as paranoid or ridiculous. That illustrates the
crucial challenge posed by this pandemic: though it presents a universal
threat, heightened alarm is obscuring the value of joint action.
That’s
inherently narrow-minded. Vaccines owe their very existence to multicultural
collaboration. The experimental treatments that culminated in Edward Jenner’s
first inoculation in 1796 grew out of smallpox precautions learned from the
Ottoman empire and China, which reached America independently through a north
African slave. And the medical benefits of multiculturalism aren’t just
historical. The couple who synthesised the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are both
Germans of Turkish Muslim origin.
At the risk
of emphasising the obvious, no one can sensibly maintain therefore that it’s
Islamic to oppose vaccination. Too many people who contract disease for want of
immunisation already live in Muslim-majority states, and though Covid-19
doesn’t have a religion, it discriminates by race. Research has established
clearly that black and Asian people are disproportionately infected and
hospitalised, and mortality statistics suggest they are more likely to die. As
sharia scholars have said many times, vaccination isn’t merely a permissible
choice for Muslims. Because it helps to protect others, it is what they call a
fard kifaya – a collective obligation.
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Sadakat
Kadri is a barrister and author of Heaven and Earth: A Journey Through Sharia
Law
Original
Headline: For Muslims wary of the Covid vaccine: there's every religious reason
not to be
Source: The Guardian, UK
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-society/vaccination-isn’t-merely-permissible-choice/d/124346