Sounds like evolution in action to me.
<ducks and runs for cover under a newspaper while the nuclear attack occurs overhead>
Interestingly, he’s not on their health and medical issues committee, nor on their food standard & chaplancy committee. The Islamic Medical Association is not an afficliate of the MCB.
I wonder whether this “spokesman on the subject of halal meat” was intended to be a sinecure role for a loud crackpot? I know that nonprofits often have irritating people who want to do work, and it’s easier to give them something harmless to do than to risk having a loudmouth enemy who will be insulting you in the press every chance they get. Is it possible that this is why he holds this role in MCB?
Daniel
Without trying to minimize the issue, this is no more nor less important than any other situation in which one group or another objects to a proven, life-saving medical practice purely on religious grounds. I think I’m going to rely on the expectation that people of reasonable intelligence and education are not going to take Dr. Katme’s recommendations as being anything other than what they are: reckless nonsense. It is unfortunate that he is making these claims, but ISTM the majority of people who actually follow his advice are predisposed to avoid things they don’t understand, like, say, the whole concept of vaccination to begin with. I suspect that many of these people, if they did not have Dr Katme’s opinions to hang their hats on, would find another excuse.
Most persons of Islamic faith can see people all about them who eat vast quantities of haram foods with no ill effects or significant reduction in lifespan, and thus presumably question what exactly makes them haram; likewise most educated people could likely reason for themselves that a psychiatrist speaking solely out of a personal interpretation of a religious edict may not be the best person to turn to for advice on immunization.
If they have not already done so, the UK government, or one or more organizations of medical professionals in the UK, should make a public statement repudiating Dr. Katme’s views as having no scientific basis whatever. Short of passing some sort of law banning the talking of utter rubbish in public, I’m not sure there is much else that can be done at present.
What would be even better, of course, would be for another Islamic cleric, or group of clerics, to say that Dr. Katme is full of shit. More politely than that, maybe, but it remains a fact that poo is spilling out his ears. Well, concerning any scientific basis for declaring vaccinations haram. Like it or not, if the vaccines in question use animal tissue in their creation, it seems there is some basis, from a purely religious standpoint, for Dr. Katme’s assertions.
I suppose time will tell if Katme’s pronouncement further dampens British Muslim participation in vaccination programs. He’s definitely far from a loon crying in the wilderness, as previous events have shown.
Certainly you can find extremely nutty viewpoints in America about the supposed hazards of vaccination, and not only among those who think that preservatives in vaccines are responsible for autism. This quack (a naturopath, apparently) seems to be making common cause with the U.S. anti-vax faction.
Interesting mini-debate here from a few years back on Islam and vaccination - from good sense to complete lunacy.
From the islamonline.net article linked to above: "To deal with the haram ingredients in some of the vaccines a Sheik suggested that reciting “bisimillah arrahman arrahim” over the vaccines would cleanse them."
Sounds like a workable compromise to me.
I heard that too. I also heard that if you get ill, it’s always because you didn’t pray hard enough, not because praying instead of taking necessary medicine is a fucking stupid idea.
- No, really, I used to be part of a group that held exactly this view - that you could be immune from disease (and be financially prosperous etc) if you just followed the plan. Anyone who got sick or into money trouble just obviously wasn’t following the plan properly.
Nut jobs, the lot of 'em.
Actually, no. According to my grandmother,
if you get sick it’s because you did something to catch it
and people die just because they give up.
God doesn’t get involved unless you want to have a nice religious parade, with chairs in the front row for women of a certain age.
She reckons that being 93 and in better health than her daughters (who’ve caught things like two cancers) is proof that she’s Doing Things Right.
To be fair, would it be applicable to also pit any abstinence from a potentially life saving medicine/action that is contrary to a set of ideological beliefs? It seems our World is filled with a multitude of these. Linda McCartney comes to mind. Also, “holistic medicine”, spiritual healing and other ideologically based remedies.
Yes, that’d be fair. I’d consider vegetarianism/veganism to be a slightly better reason than religion (and much better than faith healing), but still a silly position to take.
Interesting note: Iran reports very high vaccination rates, despite all the Crusader body parts, sterilants and other Western garbage we allegedly pack into vaccines. Cite.
Pakistan’s vaccination coverage is said to be much poorer.