Trusting Western Medicine Doesn’t Contradict Islamic Belief!

There is a well-known folktale that tells the story of a government official who travels to a remote region of the Iraqi countryside, where people of different sects peacefully coexist, to attend the memorial ceremony of a local religious figure who was killed in an argument with a neighbor of an opposing sect. As the guests gather around the gravestone, the official asks the master of ceremonies not to mention how the figure had died, so as to not further exacerbate sectarian strife. The man, baffled by the request, stood silent. Then he looked back at the government official and asked: Do you want me to tell the crowd that the man was electrocuted? Allow me to bring us back to our day and time. Today, I’d like to ask all anti-vaxxers and those spreading conspiracy theories that the COVID-19 vaccines are a plot against Muslims, the following simple question: Are the nearly 6 million global deaths attributed to COVID-19 also a result of a random electric shock? Since the first day of the pandemic, the governments of the developed world, international pharmaceutical companies, and advanced university laboratories have raced to produce a vaccine against the deadly coronavirus. The US government took the lead and spent more than $10 billion in taxpayer money to speed up the creation of an effective vaccine. And yet, there are people who refuse to abide by science and modern medicine. Dr. Adel Al-Hunayan, acting dean of the College of Medicine at Kuwait University, tweeted that “God’s immunity” is better than getting vaccinated against COVID-19. The distinguished doctor failed to mention two important things. First, no governmental or international health authority, or even a single laboratory, supports the view that divine protection is better than a vaccination. Second, of those who died from COVID, the percentage of unvaccinated individuals far exceeds the percentage of vaccinated individuals. Also, the recovery and healing process of unvaccinated COVID patients comes at a very high cost to the public, in the form of medical care and treatment – including the use of intensive care beds, oxygen and medication, nursing care, and so on and so forth. If there is nothing in medicine that cannot be provided by the Almighty, then can someone kindly explain to me why all newborns receive vaccines immediately after birth, before even leaving the hospital? And if we’re already talking about divine immunity, what happened to the fundamental principle according to which every religious Muslim must first pay his debt to society before relying on the help of others (or the help of the Almighty)? There is no doubt that the doctor knows very well that the prayers of religious believers and their sacrifices, of all religions, were not the reason behind the plummeting daily cases of COVID-19. Rather, life is slowly returning to normal thanks to science and the billions of dollars spent on developing a vaccine and effective treatments. The doctor also knows that the West invented the early warning device for the tsunami, the majority of whose victims are Muslims. Is this invention, which is similar to taking a vaccine, also a violation of Islamic law in his view? – Ahmed Al-Sarraf (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)