Religious extremists, DOH clash over advisory on MERS-CoV

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Religious extremists and the Health Department are bickering over the issue of protecting Filipino pilgrims to Mecca, Saudi Arabia from a still uncontained viral respiratory disease.

Physician Kadil Sinolinding Jr., regional health secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), on Monday reiterated the national government’s appeal, through local media, for Filipino Muslims to reconsider their intention of performing the hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca after the Ramadhan.

Sinolinding said the intention of the government is to protect the pilgrims and their families from the dangers of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome corona virus (MERS-CoV), which has no cure and has been spreading in the Middle East virtually uncontrolled.

“No one can ever tell who will get infected and who will not. A pilgrim who gets infected can pass on the infection to family members once back at their respective homes,” Sinolinding said.

It was the central office of the Department of Health (DOH) that first issued an advisory two weeks ago, urging prospective pilgrims to reconsider, as a precaution, their plan to perform the hajj, apparently to prevent them from getting exposed to the deadly MERS-CoV.

Sinolinding told reporters the most vulnerable to MERS-CoV are the elderly and those whose immune system had been compromised due to other illnesses.

“It’s not about suppressing our centuries-old tradition of performing the hajj. It’s protecting the pilgrims from MERS CoV and their families and neighbors too when they return to their places of origin,” Sinolinding said.

There are extremists, mostly not even Islamic theologians, attacking the DOH via social media, branding the advisory as un-Islamic and discriminatory.

Many moderate Muslims in the autonomous region did not find the efforts of the DOH central office and the ARMM’s health department against Islamic teachings.

“Prophet Mohammad had taught his followers many times over about the importance of cooperation among people, regardless of religions and races, in protecting mankind from all kinds of harm,” said a 43-year-old Yakan preacher, Adjul Isnain.

Muslim government employees observing the month-long Ramadhan fasting season, which started last June 29, said Mohammad, Islam’s progenitor, had very profound and comprehensive teachings on prevention of diseases.

One of them even cited hadith (religious saying) number 679, stated in Sahih Bukhari Book number 56, "If you hear of its spread in a land, don't approach it, and if a plague should appear in a land where you are present, then don't leave that land in order to run away from it," as a very clear manifestation of Islam’s intent to protect mankind from harmful plagues.

“That preaching alone is full of wisdom and logic,” said a Muslim public school teacher in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao.

The Star tried, but failed to get a comment from the local Darul Iftah (House of Opinions) which is comprised of clerics, some of them graduates of the Al-Azzar University in Cairo Egypt, and the World Islamic Call University in Libya.

Sinolinding said clerics working in the DOH-ARMM did not find the government’s advisory as spiritually offensive.