To return to the question: What, one might ask, has the West done to Allah that he would plague it?
I’ve asked, and the answers are manifold. For starters, a hundred years ago the West initiated the beginning of a century-long Islamic apostasy. Having waged a Crusade against Muslims in the First World War, the West then foisted upon them its empty values. These included capitalism, secular law, the adoption of a forbidden banking system, and a collapse in sexual morality. In short, the Christian West is morally bankrupt and an active corrupter of Muslim values.
It is a complicated story, but the essential parts are simple to understand. Very importantly, World War One ended the caliphate and the self-perception of pan-Islamic cohesion. Christendom then replaced the Islamic dream with fractious secular states led by immoral, hard-drinking stooges dressed in French suits. Setting the template: the reprehensible Ataturk in Turkey, Nasser in Egypt and the Shah in Iran. Next came a rash of despicable dictators, brought to power as Cold War clients. They include the likes of the Assad family and Saddam Hussein, among others. Cruel to everyone who defied them, this second batch even conspired with Christian minorities to gain power. It was all a devilish plot.
Wait for the Lord.
But there is good news! Yes, it was a century of ignorance and humiliation, but this was predicted by Islamic prophecies, and it would end. God would move to restore Islam’s supremacy. COVID-19, it turns out, is part of the plan.
In the view of millions, the tide already began to turn with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s. Established explicitly as a response to the West’s post-World War reshaping of the Middle East, the Brotherhood’s aim was to restore genuine Islamic society. The tide continued to turn through various Islamist movements founded upon Brotherhood precepts, including al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. (Even Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, although a Shiite, bears the clear stamp of Muslim Brotherhood ideology.)
Now, COVID-19 appears not just as another reversal of the West’s plot against Islam. It goes beyond that. Indeed, many Muslims hail its spread across the globe as a heaven-sent plague. It also carries the aura of an End Times sign, a certain mystique that exceeds mere politics. Some of this is due to timing: the germ’s outbreak falls a hundred years after the West’s malicious deconstruction of the Middle East. With the pestilence emerging in late 2019, plausibly in October, the timing appears calculated. This, because the Treaty of Versailles, which drew the despised borders of the modern Middle East, was signed in October, 1919. (The earliest known COVID-19 case in China was mid-November.)
Of course, there is no ill will intended. God’s chastisement is in everyone’s best interest, as only Islam has the answers.
Prophecy fulfilled!
By the time that happy video appeared uninvited on my screen, I’d already started a file. Examples abound, but I will stick to the most significant ones, and to statements that you can easily confirm through reputable news outlets. The following examples, I might add, are mainstream, representing authorities who have social media followers in the millions.
To begin, we have senior Iranian cleric and Hojatoleslam, Alireza Panahian. He announced that the virus is a sign that the Mahdi will soon appear. In Islamic eschatology, the appearance of the Mahdi and Jesus is the crowning event. It will usher in the defeat of Islam’s enemies and judgement day.
Across the schismatic fence, Saudi cleric Saleh bin Awad al Maghamsi made similar claims. The leader of Medina’s important Quba Mosque was asked in a television interview about the virus. He replied with reference to a certified Hadith. In it, Muhammad prophesies “a cold wind from Yemen that catches the soul of believers.” The meaning was now clear, Maghamsi said. “We used to ask how can wind catch the soul of believers. But now we see how the virus has spread across the world unhindered to show mankind its powerlessness and weakness.” This cleric is no slouch, tradition says Muhammad himself founded the Quba mosque.
Soldier of Allah.
Others latched on to a more concise, soundbite-friendly interpretation: COVID-19 is “a soldier of Allah.” My favorite of these arrived in the form of a prayer, when a prominent Syrian opposition leader offered vespers for us benighted heathen via Twitter: “God gave them a soldier (virus). And many of God’s soldiers said, Glory be to Him … O God, increase their suffering and affliction until they stop fighting your religion and worshipers.” Nice!
As for the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Gawady, a frequent spokesman for the movement in exile, who also happens to be a professor of medicine, opined as an authority on both. “God willing after the coronavirus passes, all the presidents of the world will be Muslim Brotherhood as the world has matured.” (This must be true; he is a doctor….)
News of Allah’s latest recruit comes even from Jordan, a kingdom ruled by a monarch whose grandfather the West put on the throne. There, a former Jordanian government minister, Amman University lecturer and current Member of Parliament, Mohammad Abdulhamid Al-Qudah, reiterated in a speech that COVID-19 is a “soldier of Allah.” He stated that Allah sent it to punish the West and discipline wayward Muslims.
Viral.
Like COVID-19, this conceptualization of an infection-becomes-jihadi warrior went viral. Everyone seems to be saying it. Another favorite comes from Bashir bin Hassan, a Tunisian Salafist and member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars. He declared to his 500,000 Facebook followers that the virus began in China as Allah’s punishment for the Chinese government’s treatment of Muslim Uighurs. He too named COVID-19 as one of Allah’s soldiers.
Or there is Kuwaiti sheikh Othman Khamis, who sought to put COVID-19 into context. He reminded listeners of other soldiers of Allah, namely the mosquito that killed evil Nimrod and the ten plagues sent against ancient Egypt in the time of Moses. He cast COVID-19 as the latest of Allah’s weapons, and claimed the plague would continue until all humanity turned to Islam.
Punishment.
Finally for your consideration, listen to the Syria-based Sham Center. This prominent Syrian opposition media outlet played an important role in convincing world leaders of Assad’s chemical weapons use. In an interview conducted by respected researcher Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, the center’s spokesman verified the true source of the virus, and put it in the clearest of terms: it is a punishment.
Q: A lot of people talk in the news about coronavirus. Is this a punishment from Allah subhanuhu wa ta’ala (Exalted and Almight is He) and a sign of the approach of the Hour as some think?
A: Of course, coronavirus is the punishment of Allah Almighty. Statistics show that most people died in China, Iran and Italy. The virus is spreading en masse in those countries that have fought against the Islamic Ummah for centuries and today have deservedly been punished. Due to the coronavirus, not only the population, but also the economy is dying with people, and daily losses reach millions of dollars due to the stoppage of trade and industry.
Strange bedfellows?
As it may not be immediately obvious what Allah specifically has against China, Iran and Italy, I will tease out the subtext: Allah sent his microscopic soldiers to China, for the Chinese persecuted the Muslim Uighurs; to Italy, because it is home of the Vatican, mother of the Crusaders; and to Iran, for it is the wellspring of the schismatic Shiites, who although part of the Muslim world, must be taught a lesson. Most of the Syrian opposition Islamists would agree with this analysis. And these are the people we would have run Syria in place of Assad, mind you.
In any case, the overall tenor was that however much Muslims may have to suffer during this phase, they will come out on top in the end.
(For more background on modern political Islam, have a look at this free chapter of the paradise book.)