Coronavirus and Dajjal

I'll get my coat.

Abū Mu'īn Nasafī in his master book on Kalām, Tabsirat al-Adillah, one of the greatest & most robust books on the correct Aqīdah of Islām, writes about when certain texts seem to go against known realities.

With all of the discussion regarding contagion, I find it relevant. (Speaking about a certain matter,) that which comes from the hadīth about the issue is from the Āhād (narrations tracked in single chains) & is brought in seeming conflict with what is rationally indicated.

Whatever is brought from Āhād hadīth doesn't qualify as a proof in matters of Aqīdah, even if they are rationally possible, because (Āhād narrations are based on preponderance &) they do not indicate complete certainty.

If that is the case, how can it be accepted when it conflicts with that which is even rationally possible?

In such a case (where a hadīth clashes with rational possibility), its apparent meaning is not taken as a point of Aqīdah, rather it is discarded [only in on the context of Aqīdah], or interpreted as metaphorical [in a way that isn't rationally problematic].

"In the context of the claim that prophetic guidance holds there is no contagion, many are irresponsibly bandying his Mubārak Hadīthﷺ as if one who accepts contagion as a mode of transmitting illness is somehow a faith-deficient Muslim.

This is ignorance & incompetence.The fact is even classical Ulamā did not agree that there is no such thing as contagion.

Far from being Aqīdah to them, it was a point of disagreement as to what the hadīth of "there is no contagion" means.

Many held that it meant Allāh initiates cause & effect, like contagion.

Although the initial tract is about when the rational is irreconcilable with the hadīth, the fact is that empirical observation also is a means of certainty affirmed by the Sharī'ah, otherwise miracles are pointless.

Thus in light of actually being able to observe how contagion works in the lab, it is methodologically disingenuous to claim categorically that there is absolutely no such thing as contagion as a point of creed.

There will be anti-Usūlī scholars who will claim their right to hold such a conception, as it is a "difference of opinion."

How ironic, the opinion will be culled from the Ummah through the mechanism of Darwinian survival of the fittest, may Allāh grant paradise to every Muslim.

Summary:

For the rest of us, Islām doesn't demand that we not accept contagion as real.

Not because a Harvard lab monkey told us, but because our own tradition did.