Religious Leaders Affirm COVID-19 Vaccines Compatible with Muslim and Jewish Faiths

Comforted by the statement from the laboratories, the religious authorities have in turn taken the resolution to reassure the faithful. In Indonesia, where the vaccination campaign started on Wednesday, January 13, the Council of Ulemas (MUI) had certified the vaccine from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac as "halal" on Friday, January 8. Thus, President Joko Widodo was the first to be vaccinated, in order to set a good example. In Malaysia, the religious authorities declared on December 23 that the injection of the anti-covid-19 vaccine is authorized, said Zulkifli Mohamed Al-Bakri, the Minister of Religious Affairs, taking into account the opinion of the Fatwa Council of the United Arab Emirates, chaired by Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah, who himself received his first dose of the vaccine, reports saphirnews.

Same reaction from the religious authorities of Singapore, the Islamic Medical Association (BIMA) in Great Britain and the Rabbinical Council of the United States, who issued a favorable recommendation for vaccination, specifying that health is a priority. Same thing on the Jewish side, where in Israel, despite the radical opposition of Orthodox Jews to vaccines, in less than a month, some two million Israelis have already received a first injection of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

However, with or without "illicit" ingredients, and outside the Jewish and Muslim communities, vaccination is controversial, as evidenced by the strong vaccination hesitation in France. But for Pope Francis, who received the first dose on Wednesday, January 13, "from an ethical point of view, everyone should get vaccinated." "It’s an ethical choice. Because you play with your health, you play with your life, but you also play with the lives of others," he argued, declaring that "there is a suicidal denial on this subject that I cannot explain."