Algeria: Religious Affairs Ministry tells people the coronavirus can be stopped with the Qurʼan

Muslims with the Quran

Jihad Watch : “The Qur’an is for the poor and medicine is for VIPs and their families.”  “Algeria: people told the epidemic can be stopped with the Qurʼān,” by Kamel Abderrahmani, Asia News, April 14, 2020:

Paris (AsiaNews) – A young Muslim intellectual slams the use of religion, specifically Qurʼānic chapters (Sūrah), to fight the coronavirus. Recited and broadcast with loudspeakers, this keeps people in ignorance. His criticism underscores the tragic situation of Algeria’s civilian hospitals, which lack everything compared to military hospitals, reserved for the elite, which are well stocked. (Translation by AsiaNews).

Ridicule may not kill but ignorant people can do by themselves what their enemy dare not do. This is what is happening in Algeria right now. Whilst our Mediterranean neighbours are using all medical resources at their disposal to stop and defeat the COVID-19, in Algeria, to achieve this goal, the Religious Affairs Ministry has undertaken two completely outlandish, abject, inconceivable, dishonest, and even laughable initiatives.

Rest assured that the first initiative is not about handing out masks to poor people or providing some of its budget money to help our underequipped hospitals. No, it involves handing out copies of the Qurʼān across the country. This is a way to push people towards irrational and religious arguments, which are useless vis-à-vis the pandemic.

In order to carry out this “important project”, the state has mobilised Islamic associations, local Salafist militants who ensure that neighbourhoods and villages tow the line, and is providing residents with copies of the Qurʼān, inviting them to “deal with” the health crisis through religion. Meanwhile, public hospitals endure severe shortages of the most basic means of protection against the coronavirus, except for the right to a copy of the Qurʼān; whilst military hospitals, which are reserved for the powerful, have proper equipment that cannot be found in regular hospitals.

In short, the Qur’an is for the poor and medicine is for VIPs and their families….