Like so much that is has been and is being written about Islam and the Israeli/Palestinian “conflict,” the claim that there is an out break of polio in Gaza and that Islam forbids vaccinations per se is a blatant fabrication.Due to the fact that some vaccines contain porcine gelatine as a stabilizer, sharia law in most Moslem countries considers these vaccines to be “haram,” or forbidden. All other vaccines are considered “halal,’” or acceptable. In fact, according to the UN’s World Health Organization, immunization rates in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, polio vaccine coverage was 99% in 2022 before declining to 89% after the war on Gaza began. So much for the “Islam forbids vaccinations” claim.As for the Gazan “polio outbreak”, to date, NO associated paralytic cases have been recorded in Gaza according to WHO, but the polio virus has been detected in some of the wastewater flowing between displacement camps. Therefore it is not unreasonable that an outbreak of the disease could occur due to the devastation of the Gaza health system (22 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are non-functional and the remaining 12 are only partially so), the constant displacement of Gazans, the shortages of medical supplies, the unavailability of uncontaminated water, and the wide-scale destruction of sanitation facilities.
I’m not sure what you’re driving at here, but I once lived next door to a Hungarian-born Sovietologist. He said that he read the New York Times and the Washington Post like he read Pravda and Izvestia during the cold war, and papers like the New York Post and the Washington Times not at all. Best advice I ever got.
Like so much that is has been and is being written about Islam and the Israeli/Palestinian “conflict,” the claim that there is an out break of polio in Gaza and that Islam forbids vaccinations per se is a blatant fabrication.Due to the fact that some vaccines contain porcine gelatine as a stabilizer, sharia law in most Moslem countries considers these vaccines to be “haram,” or forbidden. All other vaccines are considered “halal,’” or acceptable. In fact, according to the UN’s World Health Organization, immunization rates in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, polio vaccine coverage was 99% in 2022 before declining to 89% after the war on Gaza began. So much for the “Islam forbids vaccinations” claim.As for the Gazan “polio outbreak”, to date, NO associated paralytic cases have been recorded in Gaza according to WHO, but the polio virus has been detected in some of the wastewater flowing between displacement camps. Therefore it is not unreasonable that an outbreak of the disease could occur due to the devastation of the Gaza health system (22 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are non-functional and the remaining 12 are only partially so), the constant displacement of Gazans, the shortages of medical supplies, the unavailability of uncontaminated water, and the wide-scale destruction of sanitation facilities.