Religious Debates on the Coronavirus Pandemic in Iran
Examination of their Discourses, Rationales, and Implications
Keywords:
COVID-19, Islam, science, Islamic medicine, IranAbstract
Iran was one of the first countries that was severely affected by the COVID-19 outbreak in the Middle East in February of 2020. What is unique about Iran is that religious leaders from the early stages have been involved with debates concerning its cause, preventive measures, and moral significance. Relying on textual analyses of media coverage, herein we examine religious debates in Iran that are increasingly gaining public attention amid the pandemic. Our analyses illuminate the styles of reasoning used by religious leaders to situate their understandings of the pandemic that are principally organized through the language of science. Our findings include that religious leaders are receptive to modern science, but not unquestionably. The status, application, and development of modern science is contingently shaped by the discourses and practices of Islam that religious leaders find compelling based on what they regard as a proper understanding of Islam and Islamic medicine.
References
Abe, Satoshi. 2016. ‘Management of the Environment (mohit-e zist): An Ethnography of Islam and Environmental Politics in Iran’, Japanese Review of Cultural Anthropology 17: 63-81.
Adelkhah, Fariba. 2000. Being Modern in Iran (New York: Columbia University Press).
Ahmed, Irfan. 2017. Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press). Doi: https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469635095.001.0001.
Arjomand, Kamran. 1997. ‘The Emergence of Scientific Modernity in Iran: Controversies Surrounding Astrology and Modern Astronomy in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, Iranian Studies 30: 5-24. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00210869708701857.
Asad, Talal. 1986. ‘The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam’, Occasional Paper Series 1-22.
Behrouzan, Orkideh. 2016. Prozak Diaries: Psychiatry and Generational Memory in Iran (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804799591.
Chehabi, Houchang E. 2007. ‘How Caviar Turned Out to Be Halal’, Gastronomica 7: 17-23. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2007.7.2.17.
Chelkowski, Peter. 2010. ‘Time Out of Memory: Ta‘ziyeh, the Total Drama’, in Peter Chelkowski (ed.), Eternal Performance: Ta‘ziyeh and Other Shiite Rituals (London: Seagull Books): 1-18.
Deeb, Lara. 2006. An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400840786.
Doostdar, Alireza. 2018. The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Doi: https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691163772.001.0001.
Elshakry, Marwa. 2007. ‘The Gospel of Science and American Evangelism in Late Ottoman Beirut’, Past & Present 196: 173-214. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtm006.
———. 2008. ‘Knowledge in Motion: The Cultural Politics of Modern Science Translations in Arabic’, Isis 99: 701-30. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/595767.
Esposito, John L. (ed.). 2003. The Oxford Dictionary of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press).
Fischer, Michael J. 2003. Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).
Gane, Nicholas. 2002. Max Weber and Postmodern Theory: Rationalization versus Re-enchantment (New York: Palgrave). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230502512.
Hallaq, Wael B. 2009. An Introduction to Islamic Law (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Hamdy, Sherine. 2012. Our Bodies Belong to God: Organ Transplants, Islam, and the Struggle for Human Dignity in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Hirschkind, Charles. 2006. The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (New York: Columbia University Press).
Hoodbhoy, Pervez. 1991. Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality (London: Zed Books).
Khosrokhavar, Farhad. 2004. ‘Report on Science in Post-Revolutionary Iran—Part I: Emergence of a Scientific Community?’, Critical Middle Eastern Studies 13: 209-24. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/1066992042000244335.
Lotfalian, Mazyar. 2004. Islam, Technoscientific Identities, and the Culture of Curiosity (Lanham, MD: University Press of America).
Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Mansouri, Reza. 2013. ‘The History of Science in Iran from a Physicist’s Perspective’, in Abdol S. Soofi et al. (eds.), Science and Innovations in Iran: Development, Progress, and Challenges (New York: Palgrave): 15-38. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137030108_2.
Mireshghi, Elham. 2019. ‘The Unsettled Morality of Kidney Sales’, Science and the Human Person 2019 Series Articles, University of Notre Dame.
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. 2014. Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran (Durham: Duke University Press). Doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11vc8md.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. 1997. Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (Chicago: ABC International Group).
Palmie, Stephan. 2002. Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition (Durham: Duke University Press). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822383642.
Pandolfo, Stefania. 2008. ‘The Knot of the Soul: Postcolonial Conundrums, Madness, and the Imagination’, in Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good et al. (eds.), Postcolonial Disorders (Berkeley: University of California Press): 329-58.
Quijada, Justine. 2019. Buddhists, Shamans, and Soviets: Rituals of History in Post-Soviet Buryatia (New York: Oxford University Press).
al-Qur’an. 1984 (trans. Ahmed Ali; Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Ragab, Ahmed. 2012. ‘Prophetic Traditions and Modern Medicine in the Middle East: Resurrection, Reinterpretation, and Reconstruction’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 132: 657-73. Doi: https://doi.org/10.7817/jameroriesoci.132.4.0657.
Ringer, Monica. 2001. Education, Religion, and the Discourses of Cultural Reform in Qajar Iran (Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers).
Schayegh, Cyrus. 2009. Who is Knowledgeable is Strong: Science, Class, and the Formation of Iranian Society, 1900–1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Stolz, Daniel. 2018. The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Tsing, Anna. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400830596.
Van der Veer, Peter. 2001. Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400831081.
Vinea, Ana. 2018. ‘An Emergent Affliction in Today’s Egypt: Islamic Healing, the Psy Sciences, and What Lies in-between’, Medical Anthropology Theory 5: 50-77. Doi: https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.5.1.518.
Walbridge, John. 2011. God and Logic in Islam: The Caliphate of Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Weber, Max. 1946. ‘Science as a Vocation’, in H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press): 129-56.
