Emily Jane O'Dell - Associate Professor, Pittsbutgh Institute, Sichuan University, China. Assistant Professor, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. Islamic Law & Civilization Research Fellow at Yale Law School. The author of The Gift of Rumi (St. Martin’s Press). Whittlesey Chair

This paper surveys Covid-۱۹ fatwas issued in Iran and around the world to consider how the pandemic has shaped and produced Islamic knowledge in a global context. Drawing from the fields of Islamic legal anthropology, public health, medicine, and religious studies, this research seeks to consider how Islamic jurisprudence has addressed general concerns about Covid-۱۹, such as vaccines (their safety, efficacy, and ingredients), funerals/burials, mass gatherings, haji, animal slaughter, communal prayer, social distancing, as well as more specific and local questions related to the virus and treatments of the virus. Incorporating landscapes of Islamic jurisprudence from the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas (and fatwas written in Persian, Arabic, English, Turkish, Urdu, and Indonesian, Malaysian), this research highlights the cultural, social, and demographic aspects of global fatwa production and how Islamic legal jurisprudence has been mobilized to help fight the virus and save lives. Special attention is given to what hadith and Islamic legal principles in particular have been cited in Covid-۱۹ fatwas and to the ethical and religious obligations referenced that recognize the sanctity and necessary preservation of human life. The paper also explores how the ethics of finance have been considered and adjudicated in relation to the production and distribution of vaccines. Due to a lack of juristic precedents in Islamic lassical jurisprudence on vaccines, Islamic legal scholars have charted new paths in Islamic law to help preserve Muslim communities and human life in general during this global pandemic. Thus, the pandemic has led to new historic horizons of fatwa production and Islamic jurisprudence has helped to guide millions of Muslims around the world through bodily, communal, and medical concerns related to the virus-likely saving countless lives. This will be the first paper of its kind on Covid-۱۹ fatwas in a global context.

anthropology, Covid-۱۹, Islam, law, medicine, public health