**4. Obedience to Authority**

One of the titles of an Islamic leader is *am¯ır al-mu'min¯ın*, or "commander of the faithful". The word *am¯ır*, "commander", is indicative of a leader's authority. "O you who believe", instructs the Quran: "Obey God and obey the Messenger and those in authority among you. And if you differ among yourselves concerning any matter, refer it to God and the Messenger" (Nasr 2015, 4:59). This verse contains layers of meaning for Muslim communal life and political thought. The sensibilities that it generates are directly relevant to understanding Islamic responses to the pandemic.

The "authority verse", as we might call it, would have been unambiguous within the lifetime of Muhammad. Since the prophet speaks in the name of God, obedience to him is obedience to God. Obedience to anyone who the prophet appoints as a leader, by implication, follows the same logic. Several questions arise on a plain sense reading of the verse in this manner for later generations: What if the leader were to issue an immoral command or order something that obviously stands against a known ruling of God and His messenger? Who are legitimate leaders after the prophet dies? Can leaders have legitimacy if they have not been directly appointed by the prophet? Can usurpers who seize political power ever be considered legitimate? These are the kinds of questions that have occupied the scholarly tradition through the ages.

Because of the eventual fragmentation of Muslims into many legal and theological sects after the passing of the prophet Muhammad, it is impossible to speak of "the" Islamic position on most issues. One can nonetheless attempt to identify general principles that most would consider representative. Among these principles is a reluctance to rebel against established rulers, even if the rulers are personally immoral, so long as they do not openly command other believers to disobey the sharia. In cases where a ruler prefers a moral opinion different from one that is held by a believer, the believer must comply in the public realm, so long as the believer does not consider the ruler's position a sin. A believer may openly disagree with the ruler but, nonetheless, be required to legally comply with rulings intended for public welfare.

After a meticulous study of the scholarly tradition on "Commanding Right, Forbidding Wrong" in Islamic thought, Michael Cook distills: "[W]ith regard to forbidding wrong in the face of the delinquency of the ruler, there is a clear mainstream position: rebuke is endorsed, but rebellion is rejected" (Cook 2001, p. 479). As *The Study Quran* summarizes:

Some commentators cite a h. ad¯ıth that indicates that one will be rewarded for obeying those in authority, regardless of the virtue of their character and rule ... The general statement this verse makes about obedience to authority has led some Muslims to view obedience, even to unjust rulers, as preferable to the chaos and social harm that may result from a revolt, and a well-known tradition states, "One day of anarchy is worse than a thousand years of tyranny". (Nasr 2015, p. 219)

The right to dissent is built into the pledge of allegiance that believers offered the prophet: "We gave our pledge to the Messenger of Allah [may the peace and blessings of God be upon him], pledging to listen and obey in times of hardship and times of ease, willingly or reluctantly, and when others are shown preference over us, and that we would not dispute the order of those in charge, that we would speak the truth wherever we are, and that we would not fear the blame of anyone when acting or speaking for the sake of Allah" (Ibn Majah n.d.a ¯ , 2866).

Islamic political thought would eventually extend legitimacy to any ruler who accepted the mandate to govern within the limits of the sharia, so long as the ruler ceded interpretive authority of the law to put the collective body of scholars. This arrangement placed ultimate authority to make the law in the hands of jurists, who remained, in principle, independent agents in civil society. It also provided a high degree of flexibility within Islamic law by enabling state appointed-judges to adjudicate legal matters while remaining mindful of local customs. One legal maxim states: "custom binds" (*al-'ada al-muh ¯ . akkamah*) (Abd-Allah 2007).

Muslims living as permanent minorities have recently begun to translate the principle of obeying authority as law-abiding citizens by developing a "jurisprudence of minorities" (Shavit 2016). The approach bears striking resemblance to the Jewish principle of *dina de-malkhuta dina*, "the halakhic rule that the law of the country is binding, and, in certain cases, is to be preferred to Jewish law" (Encyclopaedia Judaica 2008). The Shi'ah, having endured minority status through most of Islamic history, permit what is known as *taqiyyah* typically translated as "dissimulation"—when they are in danger of persecution (Stewart 2012). *Taqiyyah*, etymologically related to the term for "protection", permits Shi'ahs to conceal their true faith identity in order to ward off unnecessary attention and possible harassment, or worse. Far from being a license to lie or deceive in order to gain an advantage—a highly negative stance, as some critics have wrongly argued—*taqiyyah* is based on two positive motivations: the protection of oneself and the preservation of public order.

Normative Islamic thinking in the jurisprudence of minorities is far from uniform. Uriya Shavit outlines two broad trends: a *salaf¯ı* approach that hems closer to the plain sense of scripture in line with the relatively conservative approach of scholars from Saudi Arabia, and a *wasat.¯ı* approach inflected by the more rational principles of interpretation (*us.ul al-fiqh ¯* ) of scholars from al-Azhar. The *wasat.¯ıs* "broadly apply *mas.lah. ah* (safeguarding primary objectives of the shar¯ı'a) and cross-searching within and beyond the four schools of law", justifying "radical accommodations of religious laws" in new contexts (ibid, p. 3).

In one case study on the banning of the *h. ijab¯* (headscarf) in French public schools, the *wasat.¯ı* approach revealed the extent to which Muslim scholars are willing to compromise in order to facilitate peaceful coexistence:

Sheikh al-Azhar Muh. ammad Sayyid T. ant.aw¯ ¯ı distinguished between the case of *h. ijabs ¯* in Muslim lands and outside them. He declared that the French have the right to ban *h. ijabs ¯* in their country and that it is permissible for Muslim women who live in France to respect such a law if compelled to do so. (ibid, p. 243)

Part of the reasoning for such accommodationist thinking, as Andrew March points out, is the acceptance of citizenship as a kind of "social contract," obligating individuals to participate in society under the implicit terms of that contract (March 2009) Hamza Yusuf, president of Zaytuna College, America's first accredited Muslim liberal arts college, exemplifies the approach of this kind of traditional Islam in the College's COVID-19 policy announced at the start of the pandemic. Yusuf's letter announcing the move to remote learning draws on the framework of the higher objectives of Islamic law and obedience to authority. "Our sacred law," writes Yusuf,

holds preservation of life among the highest of divine objectives. During the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, the Bay Area was spared much of the harm that afflicted other parts of the country, largely due to the precautionary measures taken. Erring on the side of caution in our current pandemic seems prudent until we better understand what we are up against. Following the advice of local authorities regarding coronavirus, we have moved all Zaytuna College classes online. (Yusuf 2020)

Among other things, such testimony underscores the degree to which public policy and religious authority are understood to be compatible. Not only is there nothing "essential" about Islam by way of authoritative resistance to the prevailing public health wisdom of the state, but ideally, as in the case Yusuf comments on, local authorities enjoy the backing of Muslim leaders.

Yusuf presents an excellent example because his letter accepts the authority of science and the mandate of local rulers, especially since both are aligned with Islam's higher objectives. In 2014, Yusuf participated in a conference on Vaccinations and Religion in Senegal (Vaccinations and Religion 2014). The chair of the scholars committee was Yusuf's Mauritanian mentor, Shaykh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, who reminded the conference attendees of "the Muslim community's leadership in disease prevention throughout history and the critical importance of being on the cutting edge of research and development moving forward".

#### **5. Acceptance of Science**

As medieval science evolved into modern science, with one manner of assessing and legitimizing knowledge eventually giving way to another, both epistemologies never stopped sharing a common foundation, namely, a commitment to a systematic inquiry into the natural world. The Quran refers to nature as an *ayah ¯* or "sign" of God. Muslims across the board revere nature as God's creation and respect its systematic study. The aforementioned Vaccinations and Religion conference report includes the "Dakar Declaration on Vaccination", which emphatically affirms trust in science: "Vaccination remains to date the most effective method of protection against a variety of mankind's illnesses and epidemics, and safeguards the wellbeing of the body, which is God's gift to us". The source of knowledge for the efficacy of vaccines is not scripture; it is empirical evidence and experience. A well-known hadith implies that knowledge of nature and its workings are accessible independently of revelation:

The Messenger of Allah [may the peace and blessings of God be upon him] passed by some people who were at the top of the palm trees. He said: "What are these people doing?" They said: "They are pollinating (the trees), putting the male with the female". He said: "I do not think this can help in any way". They were told about that and they stopped doing it. News of that reached the Messenger of Allah [may the peace and blessings of God be upon him] and he said: "If it will benefit them, then let them do it. It was only a passing thought. Do not blame me for a mere thought, but if I tell you anything about Allah (may He be glorified and exalted) then accept it from me, for I will never tell a lie about Allah". (Ibn H. anbal n.d., 1395)

According to this hadith, it is not the role of the prophet to instruct people on how things work in the natural world. Specialists—in this case, farmers who are familiar with productive patterns of pollination for favorable yields—exercise independent authority in their respective domains. Muslims are thus likely to go with the general consensus in scientific matters, despite its potential fallibility. Probabilistic reasoning is central to Islamic jurisprudence or *fiqh*, where "an agreement to disagree" based on a kind of underdetermination of evidence across different schools of thought eventually came to be the status quo (Walbridge 2011).

An alignment of natural science with political authority thus strengthens the likelihood of public policy compliance for faithful believers. However, because science is fallible, an accepted scientific theory being the best explanation of a phenomenon at any given time, believers naturally resist theories that contradict their beliefs in an attempt to hold reason and revelation together, hoping that future developments in science may confirm their faith perspectives. There are hadith about natural phenomena that the prophet did not get a chance to retract in his lifetime, such as the healing power of honey or the so-called hadith of the fly: "If a house fly falls in the drink of anyone of you, he should dip it (in the drink) and take it out, for one of its wings has a disease and the other has the cure for the disease" (Al-Bukhar¯ ¯ı n.d.b, 3320). Fortunately, modern science mostly corroborates some therapeutic properties of honey (Mayo Clinic 2020). As for the latter, how can believers make sense of this today?

For one, such hadith have actually spawned scientific research projects spearheaded by faithful scientists (Claresta and Sari 2020). Expert exegetes, however, inevitably find ways to make sense of scripture regardless of its plain sense meaning. For example, the act of dipping the fly could be interpreted as an act of humility that, at the same time, alleviates the consumer of any doubt, thereby preventing needless waste. The disease of the first wing, then, is suspicion or pride; the cure in the second wing is reassurance or humility. The end result is pragmatic: Instead of discarding an entire vessel of food by dumping it out, one proceeds to consume it with gratitude.

On contagion, the prophet is reported to have said: "If you hear of an outbreak of plague in a land, do not enter it; but if the plague breaks out in a place while you are in it, do not leave that place" (Al-Bukhar¯ ¯ı n.d.c, 5728). It is fortuitous that the report conforms well to the idea of isolation and quarantine. As one of many articles on the topic affirms: "As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to kill tens of thousands of people across the world, the prophet Muhammed's advice on how to respond to a pandemic offers a motivation to people to stay put in their homes and protect themselves from the deadly virus" (Sofuoglu 2020). The Dakar Declaration corroborates with another related hadith and well-known Muslim council: "Do not mix those who are sick with those who are healthy."

Consequently, while a general acceptance of the need to quarantine or isolate is undeniable, both according to science and according to a plain sense (even if somewhat selective) reading of the sources, its modes and practices can remain contested. Is it better to prioritize care for one's mother or father at the risk of one's own life? Should the psychological need for companionship—which is tangible and immediate—be prioritized over potential risk to the body by a nebulous virus? Personal convictions in such matters ultimately create space for divergence in public policy, resulting in grudging compliance or outright dissent. The fallibilism of science combined with suspicion of authority makes for a combustible mixture for public policy.

## **6. Right to Dissent**

Alongside the tradition to "listen and obey" is a parallel tradition to dissent, rooted in countless scriptural sources and developed in robust scholarly literature (Kellison 2013). One hadith says: "The best of jihad is a just word spoken to an unjust ruler." (Ibn Majah ¯ n.d.b, 4011). While primarily couched in terms of opposition, the right to dissent, first and foremost, promotes human responsibility. It affirms that human beings are not only capable of, but also have a duty to exercise, independent moral and prudential judgment. "Though dissent can often be understood in negative terms," writes Rosemary Kellison, "in the Islamic tradition dissent can also be construed as a positive duty." (Kellison 2013, p. 134).

"Each of you is a shepherd", instructs the prophet (Al-Sijistan¯ ¯ı n.d., 2928). Believers have a duty to counsel others, regardless of whether they are rulers, subjects, members of a family, or fellow citizens (Al-Nawaw¯ı n.d., 7). The mandate of executive citizenship is perhaps best represented by the scriptural imperative to "command what is right and forbid what is wrong" (Cook 2001). Although this phrase appears multiple times in the Quran, the "three modes tradition", as Michael Cook calls it, is a helpful window into systematically reflecting on the implications.

"Whoever sees a wrong (*munkar*)", says the prophet, "and is able to put it right with his hand (*an yughayyirahu bi-yadihi*), let him do so; if he can't, then with his tongue (*bi-lisanihi ¯* ); if he can't, then with [or in] his heart (*bi-qalbihi*). Which is the bare minimum of faith". (ibid, p. 33)

This hadith has been interpreted in many ways. Some scholars consider the charge to use "the hand" (a metaphor for force) reserved for the ruler alone, while the scholars are charged with use of the tongue (a metaphor for the power of the pen and the pulpit). The heart is reserved for the powerless in society, women and slaves. Others apply each of the three modes of every individual to the individual's capacity. "[T]he biographical and anecdotal record," chronicles Cook, "is full of sympathetically presented examples of pious Muslims harshly rebuking rulers, governors and their henchmen, often at great risk to themselves" (ibid, p. 476).

Believers who do not trust a government's motives are likely to follow the tradition of dissent by speaking out against lockdowns, social distancing, mask mandates, and vaccines, as the case may be. Pew research data indicates that public trust in government is at an alltime low in a place like the United States (Pew Research Center 2022). When disaggregated by race and ethnicity, the trust of the government on the part of the Black population reached an all-time low in 2019, right before the advent of the pandemic. Americans of color have good reason to suspect the government on account of its inglorious past, most notoriously on display in what was originally called the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male." (Vonderlehr et al. 1936).

One article on vaccine resistance concludes that "the epidemiological and social crises brought about by COVID-19 have magnified widely held social anxieties and trust issues that, in the unique circumstances of this global pandemic, have exacerbated skepticism toward vaccines" (Pertwee and Simas 2022). In this light, the results of the Nigeria study may in fact be an epiphenomenon of a trust deficit in government overall. Among all the nations of Africa, Nigerians trust their government the least (Bikus 2022). Likewise, Black American Muslims with historically antagonistic relations with the U.S. government strongly dissent against government issued COVID-19 guidelines. For instance, a warning against vaccines was posted by the Nation of Islam in the summer of 2020: "The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan warns the Black community against taking the COVID-19 Vaccine with the US Government's treacherous history of experimentation, medications and vaccines" (Nation of Islam n.d.).

Rooted in the experience of enslaved Africans seeking true emancipation, the Nation of Islam has taught that "Islam, the true religion of the black men of Asia and Africa, would liberate black people from white oppression" (Curtis 2010). It is vital to distinguish between the trust-related anti-vax positions among African-Americans and naturalistic anti-vax positions of prominent figures like the professional tennis player Novak Djokovic. While Djokovic tethers his stance to a certain view of science and nature, Farrakhan, the current leader of the Nation of Islam, bases his skepticism on the untrustworthiness of government (Pugh and Savulescu 2022). Farrakhan is by no means anti-science: "I say to those of us in America," he proclaimed, "we need to call a meeting of our skilled virologists, epidemiologists, students of biology and chemistry, and we need to look at not only what they give us. We need to give ourselves something better" (Nation of Islam n.d.). As such, although standing at the fringes of Islam, Farrakhan's position vis-à-vis COVID-19 is entirely coherent from the perspective of normative Islam.

Abdullah Ali, a faculty member at the aforementioned Zaytuna College, where Hamza Yusuf serves as president, has expressed opinions that are skeptical of mainstream government narratives. Ali runs "The Lamppost Education Initiative", an online forum that provides "a window into the rich Islamic tradition through the eyes of contemporary American Muslim scholars, intellectuals, activists, and leaders" (Lamppost Education Initiative n.d.). On 30 August 2021, the website posted a "Fatwa Against Forced Vaccinations", which is a translation of an opinion issued by scholars from Mauritania (Fatwa Against Forced Vaccinations 2021). The post is a textbook case demonstrating the balancing act between

obedience to authority, trust in God, and the right to dissent. It is prefaced by the following assertion: "There is no doubt that the refusal of medical treatment, placing one's reliance upon Allah and acceptance of what He decrees, is among matters endorsed by the revealed law". Having asserted the right to refuse medical treatment, which forms the substance of the legal opinion, the post offers the following disclaimer: "The translation of this fatwa is not intended to oppose or discourage anyone from taking the COVID-19 vaccination" (ibid). While the right to dissent is upheld, whether that dissent is grounded in lack of trust in public authorities or an unflinching faith in God, there is a reluctance to endorse the non-compliance of public policy.

## **7. Trust in God**

In the early days of the pandemic, the Tablighi Jama'at ("Society for Spreading Faith") received widespread attention for flaunting government guidelines. As a group originating in India in 1926 whose purpose is the revitalization of faith through missionary activity across the Muslim world, with massive, crowded gatherings (*ijtima'*), the Tablighi Jama'at's very existence relies on human contact. Although the group eventually complied with mandates and restrictions to limit the spread of the virus—mainly to avoid mounting social stigma against the movement—one study focusing on the group's activities in Lombok, Indonesia, notes that the "leadership still teaches that COVID-19 is not a serious health risk but rather a global conspiracy created to weaken the Muslim community" (Hamdi 2022).

Given the background above, from where does the impulse to be noncompliant arise? In order to answer this question, the sources that have been cited in favor of trusting science must be historicized. Our contemporary understanding of disease is governed by an "etiological standpoint," which may be "characterized as the belief that diseases are best controlled and understood by means of causes ... that are *natural* ... *universal* ... *and necessary*" (Stearns 2011, p. 4). Causality is among the central concerns of Islamic theology, closely associated with cosmological debates on the nature of human actions, the omnipotence of God, free will, and accountability. With God being the primary cause for all things and the creator of all acts, many Muslim theologians dismissed the idea of *necessary* secondary causality in the natural world as imposing a limitation on God's omnipotence.

While debates on this topic are intricate and positions by no means uniform, they influence the thinking of groups like the Tablighi Jama'at on plagues and contagion. Such positions have resonance in classical theology, rooted in alternative scriptural sources. For example, the prophet is also reported to have said: "[There is] no contagion" (Stearns 2011, p. 15). In order to reconcile apparent contradictions between prophetic reports, worldviews come to play a major part. A contemporary worldview may privilege the achievements of modern science. But there are other possibilities.

For the deniers of contagion, the hadith counseling us neither to enter a plague-stricken area nor to flee from it is interpreted in other ways. For example, there is no point in fleeing because you can't escape God's decree. There is no point in entering, for why would you want to put your faith on trial by potentially attributing your fate to a cause other than God? Life and death are solely in the hands of God. One's lifespan has been preordained. "Truly", says the Qur'an, "the death from which you flee will surely meet you" (Nasr 2015, 62:9). Not least, why take any measures at all, for death by widespread contagion results in martyrdom, as in another hadith: "Plague is the cause of martyrdom of every Muslim (who dies because of it)" (Al-Bukhar¯ ¯ı n.d.a, 2830).
