Bill Gates, quarantine and Islam

I wrote this piece before COVID-19; precisely, during the Ramadan (May) of 2019. Facebook recently reminded me of it. I thought it relevant today.

Stay safe!

Exactly 100 years ago, the Spanish flu killed 50 million people worldwide.

Now Bill Gates is worried that the world is not doing enough to prepare for the next epidemic; because “today a flu as contagious and lethal as the 1918 one would kill nearly 33 million people in just six months,” Gates said.

One of the main strategies that Bill Gates feels the world should work on is “think through how to handle quarantines,” he wrote in Gates Notes.

Which got me thinking: does Bill Gates or the world know who invented quarantine?

Because since when we were children, we were taught this Hadith of the Prophet’s (SAW) practice of quarantine:

“If you hear that there is a plague in a land, do not enter it; and if it (plague) visits a land while you are therein, do not go out of it.” Saheeh Al-Bukhari and Muslim

To try to find if the world knew of the Prophet’s first implementation, I asked Google.

So, on the question:  “Who invented the quarantine?” Google answered: “Avicenna.”

Not quite. But close enough.

Avicenna or Ibn Sina or Abu Ali Sina (c. 980 – June 1037) was a Persian Muslim scientist born in Uzbekistan who contributed to the development of optics and modern medicine. Together with Abu Musa Alkwarizmi (algorithm) and a host of other Muslim scientists (such as Al-Biruni, Al-Kindi, al-Farabi, al-Masihi, Rhazes, and Abul Hasan Hankari), they developed modern science to such an extent that their books were the primary texts in Europe for hundreds of years.

But long before Ibn Sina, his Prophet legislated on quaratine. So Google was wrong.

But there is a mention in the Bible too:

“If the shiny spot on the skin is white but does not appear to be more than skin deep and the hair in it has not turned white, the priest is to isolate the affected person for seven days. On the seventh day the priest is to examine them, and if he sees that the sore is unchanged and has not spread in the skin, he is to isolate them for another seven days.” Leviticus 13, Authorized King James version.

However, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, quarantine is not “to separate ill persons who have a communicable disease from those who are healthy” as mentioned in Leviticus.

A quarantine, restricts healthy people too to a geographical area because they may already be carrying the microbes.

Indeed United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) says “Quarantine separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.”

Therefore, what the Prophet did fits the definition:

“In order to make sure that his order would be carried out properly, he (peace be upon him) established a wall around the area of the plague and promised those who are patient and stay in the area of the plague with the reward of the martyrs, and those who run away from it were promised doom and perdition,” explained Qur’an and Science.com.

But the word itself got the name from the “Venetian dialect form of the Italian quaranta giorni, meaning ‘forty days’. This is due to the 40-day isolation of ships and people before entering the city-state of Ragusa” as a preventive measure against the Black Death of 1348 to 1359 which wiped out 30% of Europe’s population.

Due to this history, some people believe that involuntary quarantine was first practised here. But by this time, there were already significant influences of Muslim scientists in Europe because even Liornardo da Vinci referenced one of the Muslim scientists during a surgical procedure.

What’s the point of this again?

The point is if Prophet Muhammad (SAW) could design an effective control of epidemics (that’s still used today ) at the time that there was no knowledge of microbes, can we get more solutions to modern day problems if we examine his life?

After all, it was Prophet Muhammad who first told his companions to cover their faces when sneezing (Mustadrak Haakim) – again at the time when there was no knowledge of microbes. And history has recorded that it was from the Muslims in Jerusalem that the Crusaders learned basic hygiene.

Bill Gates is worried about many things including hunger, climate change and disease control; and he has spent a lot of money on finding solutions. May be it is time to look towards the Prophet of Islam.

When Umar bin Abdulaziz implemented only one of the Prophet’s teachings, there was no poor person left among his subjects to collect Zakah.