Is the vaccine haram? Doctors dispel myths among Muslims

Speakers at a webinar suggested that all leading seminaries jointly issue a call that vaccination is safe and necessary. Representation pic

Concerned about the low turnout in vaccination centres, two ideologically differing organisations - the Jamaat-e-Islami and lesser-known Sufi Minhaj Interfaith and Welfare Foundation headed by Pakistani-Canadian Dr Tahir ul Qadri - on Sunday hosted webinars to dispel myths about the Covid-19 vaccine, with doctors, scientists, Islamic scholars and the ulema clarifying common misconceptions.

Speakers Haji Syed Salman Chishty Ajmer Sharif and Dr Mumtaz Naiyer

Besides the common fears like after-effects, WhatsApp forwards predicting death after two years of getting vaccinated, and religious conviction that God's (or the Ganga's) chosen people will not be harmed, there are two fears peculiar to Muslims.

The first is whether the vaccine's ingredients make the vaccine haram. The fear got compounded after some ulema, led by Mumbai's influential clerics Saeed Noorie of the Raza Academy and Moin Miya, declared in December that the Chinese vaccine was haram because it was said to contain gelatin derived from pigs. A decision on the two vaccines manufactured in India was then deferred till their ingredients were known. (When mid-day contacted him on Sunday, Maulana Noorie said the two vaccines manufactured in India were halal.)

But most Islamic scholars who spoke at the webinars felt the Mumbai ulema were wrong. The scholars asserted that the Quran specifically said that if medical experts prescribe a particular medicine as the only means of saving a human life, then even if it had haram ingredients, it must be taken.

Prof Syed Aleem Ashraf Jaisi of Maulana Azad National Urdu University said the primacy given to saving a human life in Islam made it a religious duty for Muslims to take the vaccine, because they will be saving others' lives too.

The second fear affecting Muslims follows the death of a few influential ulema during the second wave, particularly that of Maulana Wali Rahmani, 86, general secretary of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, who had taken both doses.

Many speakers felt the community's low literacy rate contributed to these fears, though that doesn't explain vaccine hesitancy on the AMU campus, which saw a disproportionate number of deaths. Privately, some social workers told this reporter that an additional factor was the mistrust in the BJP regime, and the conviction that it was ‘out to eliminate Muslims'. Hence the misconception that the vaccine will make the recipient infertile or cause cancer.

Come together

Given the community's trust in the ulema, speakers suggested that all leading seminaries should jointly issue a call that vaccination was both safe and necessary. Also, imams of masjids should be educated on the issue so that they could exhort the community in their Friday sermons to get vaccinated. Karnataka's influential Mulana Sayed Tanveer Hashmi, spoke in Bijapur about the benefits of vaccination during last Friday's sermon.

Haji Syed Salman Chishty, whose family is the hereditary custodian of the Ajmer Sharif Dargah, narrated how Ajmer's Muslims got enthused after senior members of the Chishty family got vaccinated. The Dargah has already held one vaccination camp. If all dargahs were to hold vaccination camps, he said, the fears of worshippers will be assuaged.

In the UK, pointed out Dr Mumtaz Naiyer, who researches viruses in the University of Cambridge, masjids had opened vaccination centres.

Other speakers feared that the community would be left behind while the world got vaccinated, as had happened in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where polio vaccine workers have been shot.

"If they refuse vaccination, Indian Muslims will be the ones not only contracting Covid-19, but also spreading it," said Maulana Hashmi. "Imagine the consequences."

Maulana Dr Zishan Misbahi of Jamia Aarfiya, Allahabad, added: "The world will get one more reason to mock our religion and our Shariat, though it was the Prophet who had recommended lockdowns and social distancing during epidemics 1,400 years ago."