Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on June 1, 2020 - June 7, 2020

Practically any issue or phenomenon nowadays invokes a religious response. Sometimes, perhaps all too often, that response is irrational, resulting in problems that a community or society would have to face. An example is the phenomenon of Covid-19. Earlier this year, the head of a community health centre in Sulawesi, Indonesia, was reported to have said: “None of us have a fear of corona. We are afraid of God.”

In Malaysia, at the end of February, during a long weekend, 16,000 pilgrims gathered at the Seri Petaling Jamek Mosque. As a result of that event, Malaysia experienced a mounting spread of the coronavirus that would have had disastrous consequences for our healthcare system had the authorities not instituted a lockdown in the form of the Movement Control Order.

The religious event in question was organised by the Islamic missionary movement, the Tablighi Jama’at, and was attended by people from all over Asia. Of those participants, about 14,500 were Malaysians, while the rest were from Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore and other countries.

Some weeks later, many of these participants were responsible for having spread the coronavirus to at least half a dozen nations, the largest known viral vector in Southeast Asia.

Meanwhile, in India, the Tablighi Jama’at organisation in New Delhi’s Nizammuddin area had organised an event in mid-March that resulted in the biggest coronavirus spike in that country. This was despite pleas from various sectors for the event to be cancelled. To be sure, it is not the majority of Tablighi Jama’at members who are irresponsible or careless. The blame has to be placed on their leaders.

This is an example of irrational behaviour. To be irrational means to not listen to reason, logic or common sense. The consequence of this is that the irrational person may engage in behaviour that is dangerous to his or her own, as well as the interests of others. Related to this irrational view is the belief that the current pandemic is God’s punishment, or that there is no reason for us to be afraid of the coronavirus because Allah would ensure that Muslims are safe.

Such irrationality is not restricted to certain circles of Muslims. Some Christian evangelical leaders in the US consider the coronavirus to be the agent of Satan. Refusing to be stopped by Satan, they insisted on continuing with face-to-face Easter services. In fact, one pastor from the Life Tabernacle Church in Louisiana is reported to have said that he did not believe his congregation was in danger of infection as the virus is “politically motivated”.

India was also not spared the irrationality that often accompanies disasters and catastrophies. After the outbreak of Covid-19, a party worker from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the state of West Bengal claimed that cow urine consumption could protect people from infection. This view was endorsed by many others. In fact, one Hindu group, the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha (All India Hindu Union), actually hosted a cow urine drinking party in March in order to combat the virus. Advocates of the practice believe that cow urine has medicinal properties, and is said to also cure illnesses like cancer, diabetes and heart attacks.

Irrational behaviour is indeed something difficult to deal with. When combined with religion, it has the potential to give rise to accusations of religious bigotry directed against those who are actually combating irrationality rather than religion per se. Irrational thought basically entails the abandonment of scientific inquiry. Those who are irrational may think they are being loyal to their religion, but are actually alienated from their religious traditions. Let us take the example of Islam. While there are some Muslims today who have adopted an irrational attitude towards the Covid-19 pandemic, it was actually the pre-modern Muslims who discovered the idea of contagion, not willing to simply take the view that diseases were punishments from God or agents of the devil.

The context was the Black Death, or bubonic plague, a destructive global pandemic that struck Europe and parts of North Africa and Asia in the mid-1300s. It is said to have arrived in Europe in October 1347. Twelve ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. What met people when they gathered to receive the passengers was horrifying. The majority of the sailors on board the ships were dead, and the rest were gravely ill. One of the symptoms of the plague is the appearance of buboes, which are swollen and painful lymph nodes under the arms, in the neck or in the groin, hence the term bubonic plague.

Living during that time was the Andalusian scholar, Lisan ad-Din ibn al-Khatib. An Arab polymath, poet, writer, historian, philosopher, physician and politician, he was a contemporary of the Arab social theorist, Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), as well as his friend and mentor.

Both men had experienced the plague. When Ibn Khaldun was 17 years of age, the Black Death reached his city, Tunis. His parents and many of his teachers died. Ibn Khaldun noted the traumatic effects of the plague. He said, “Civilisation both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish. It swallowed up many of the good things of civilisation and wiped them out. It overtook the dynasties at the time of their senility, when they had reached the limit of their duration. It lessened their power and curtailed their influence. It weakened their authority. Their situation approached the point of annihilation and dissolution. Civilisation decreased with the decrease of mankind. Cities and buildings were laid waste, roads and way signs were obliterated, settlements and mansions became empty, and dynasties and tribes grew weak. The entire inhabited world changed.”

As Ibn Khaldun was reflecting on the devastating consequences of the pandemic, Ibn al-Khatib was developing the idea of contagion, that is, the view that disease was spread from one person to another by close contact. He did this centuries before the idea was thought of in Europe.

According to Ibn al-Khatib, "The existence of contagion is established by experience [and] by trustworthy reports on transmission by garments, vessels, earrings; by the spread of it by persons from one house, by infection of a healthy seaport by an arrival from an infected land [and] by the immunity of isolated individuals.

“It becomes clear to anyone who has diagnosed or treated the disease that most of the individuals who have had contact with a plague victim will die, whereas the man who has had no exposure will remain healthy. A garment or vessel may carry infection into a house; even an earring (al-halak) can prove fatal to the man who has put it in his ear. The disease can make its first appearance in a single house of a given town, then spread from that focus to other persons-neighbours, relatives, visitors … Many people remained in good health who kept themselves in isolation from the outside world, for example, the pious Ibn Abi-Madyan in Sale. He believed in contagion; therefore he laid by a store of provisions and bricked up his house, sequestering his large family. The town was severely stricken, but no one in his household took ill. There are many accounts of communities remote from highways and commerce that remained unscathed.”

Here, Ibn al-Khatib resorted to empirical evidence, rather than relying solely on literal and narrow readings of religious texts. His position was squarely in line with Islamic tradition, which regards reliance on the intellect and five senses to be not only legitimate but part of the creed or religious belief.

The traditional view was that the plague was a scourge or punishment sent by God. The result of Ibn al-Khatib’s views of contagion led him to impart an important lesson to us with regard to how we should approach tradition. According to Ibn al-Khatib, “a proof taken from the traditions has to undergo modification when in manifest contradiction with the evidence of the perception of the senses”. This is a lesson that we would do very well to heed as we deal with contemporary problems but wish to hold on to our religious beliefs at the same time.


Syed Farid Alatas is professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore

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