Last Friday, before the Friday prayer, the muezzin remind the congregation that there will be a 'solat hajat' after the Friday prayer. The purpose is to seek help and assistance from the Almighty in this time of desperation and calamity, due to H1N1 widespread epidemic. On that day, 14 people have died......
A few month ago, perhaps all of us civilian would think, this is just a normal short term outbreak, localized in far country, and won't hurt us or our family. The government issue instruction on media, on how to minimise the risk of getting infection, such as wearing mask, washing hands, stay away from large crowd etc...
Perhaps the best course of action taken is, conduct the root cause analysis of the pandemic or epidemic..... the major culprit is no other than swine. Since the Nipah virus outbreak a few years ago, the major vector or breeding ground for the virus is the swine. That does not count with JE, which also closely related with swine.
One of the main reason why the first outbreak start in Mexico, is because there are many large industrial type pig farming in the country. Mostly operate and invested by giant American company, for the purpose of exporting pork for their own consumption..... not so different from our country, instead of north, the major consumer is in the south.
I watched Natgeo documentary on Nipah virus outbreak not so long ago... scientist found out that the virus spread from the infected fruit bat to the swine (via the fruits they eat) then to human. Once it's jump to human, it began spreading within human. They also found out that the virus have been within the fruit bat for long time, and seem the fruit bat have the ability to suppress the virus. Same case with H1N1, it's a concoction of bird flu virus, human flu and swine flu... all brewed inside swine biological lab.
Swine and human share some common biological system.... any pathogen, virus, bacteria which can infect swine and adapt to the biological system..... have high probability to jump and infect human. In other word, swine is a perfect training ground for these organism to invade human. And swine is bridgging all the sickness or virus which so far limited to other species, with human. Who knows what else lurking, breeding and staying dormant in other animals... just waiting the right time to make contact with the swine, and start other infectious diseases.
People may say, human have consume pig since the beginning of time, why the outbreak just start now. Perhaps they need to read history, there were several outbreak related to swine, but probably during that time the scientist don't have the technology like now, in detecting the virus. And before this pig farming was done traditionally ... not like nowadays, hundred of acres of area for industrial pig farming for the purpose of shareholder profit.
People also may say, this is the good time for us to say that why pork consumption is forbidden in Islam, even touching it. H1N1 outbreak show clearly why pork is haram. And there are many scientific justification I read in the Internet in supporting the above.
I don't agree with this and why...... let say in not so far future, scientist created genetically modified pig, which stop any pathogen transmigration to human, which are very clean and does not produce high toxic waste, which does not have tape worm or any parasite..... Is it during that time pig is OK for us to consume... due to our earlier reasoning is being totally squashed.
Why don't we just said "It's against Islam and God forbid it"..... full stop. No need for justification or scientific proof.... There are always human who like eating pork,... even if their close friend or family died of H1N1 or Nipah.....
Once, my Vietnamese friend asked me, "So you Muslim don't eat pork, because of H1N1".... I answered, "No, I don't eat pork because it's against Muslim religion and God forbid it"..... he silent, and then ask me again "What is God?'......This time, I am the one who silent.. I forgot that most of the population are non believer and don't have any religion....
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