Minding the pandemic

Abstract

This article analyses clusters of Muslim responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in a theoretical framework provided by the cognitive science of religion. The responses include theological reflections on the origin, nature, and religious significance of the disease, religious justifications for restrictions on communal worship, apologetics in the light of COVID-19, and how aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic relate to issues of purity, impurity, and contagion. This article places the responses in a wider theoretical context that contributes to explaining their emergence as cultural representations, and, as a consequence, may promote further comparative research into responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in other religious traditions.

“You Are All Soldiers in the Battle against the Corona Virus and Your Commander Is the Prophet Muḥammad”: The Fatwās of Sheikh Rāʾid Badīr Regarding COVID-19

“…Badīr chooses to view the pandemic as a trial. In his opinion, the COVID-19 pandemic is not a divine punishment ( " uq ūba), as other religious people in the Muslim world claim (e.g., Käsehage 2021;Altiordu 2021;Svenson 2021). In Badīr's eyes, COVID-19 is a trial of faith for humanity, as the Qur " ān says: "We shall certainly test you with fear and hunger, and loss of property, lives, and crops.…”