Our Creed
By Dr. Maulana Mateen A. Khan
At the time of writing this article, we find the world
swallowed by a pandemic. Never has the world been as
interconnected as today, and never have Muslims been
as dispersed around the world as they are today. For this
reason, our exposure to Covid-19 seems inevitable. As a
part of al-Madinah’s Our Creed Series, we’ll digress from
our subject matter to explain the aqeedah (doctrine) of
illnesses.
Whenever discussing disease, the Ulama took it upon
themselves to delineate the aqeedah related to disease
and contagions first and foremost, their paramount
concern being protection of the aqeedah of the believers.
They followed the footsteps of the Prophet a regarding
disease vectors (disease causing agents such as bacteria and
viruses) when he said, “There is no inherently contagious
illness.” Naturally, a bedouin asked for an explanation
saying, “Don’t you see how camels are like gazelles on the
sand until a mangy camel comes to them and they all get
infected?” Even at that time, it was common knowledge that
illnesses spread from one host to another. That knowledge
was based on observation and perhaps early permeation
of Greek science. This idea would later be extrapolated by
Muslims from the Greek medical sciences, most notably
in the time of Harun al-Rashid Dols, Michael. Medieval
Islamic Medicine, p. 6. Regardless, the blessed Prophet a
countered the bedouin with the question, “Who gave the
disease to the first one” (Bukhari)?
As an aside, I’d like to point out that the wording of the
Prophet a is reminiscent of a solid, logical aqeedah
proof for every contingent object needing a Creator. The
reader will recall in the last article in the Our Creed Series
entitled, On the Universe and Its Creator, we introduced the
idea of proof by infinite regression. Briefly, this is the idea
that everything must have a beginning (i.e., a Creator),
otherwise, it would not exist at this point in time. Please
refer to that article for a thorough explanation.
Now, one can write a book that expands on the Prophet’s
a rhetorical statement (i.e. ‘Who gave the disease to the
first one?’), but let’s refocus on the aqeedah of illness. In
the time of Jahiliyya, as the bedouin’s statement indicates,
people believed diseases had the inherent capability to
move from one host to another. This was a process of
self-replication and transmission requiring no outside
(read: divine) force. Sure, they lacked the sophisticated
knowledge of microscopic vectors as a cause, but the idea
of contagious spread existed. Some thought it was a result
of tainted elements inherently able to cause illness. Some
22 May - June 2020 | AL-MADINAH