Daily conspiracy

[Fake Messiah]

It's the rise of the "Islamic medicine"

In late January 2020, the Iranian cleric Abbas Tabrizian publicly set fire to a copy of “Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine,” a foundational text for doctors around the world. It was a dramatic gesture to his hostility to modern medicine.

The following month, when Covid-19 began to ravage his home city of Qom, he had an immediate alternative remedy. “Before going to sleep, put a cotton ball soaked in violet oil into your anus,” he told his 200,000 Telegram followers. A year on, he made international headlines by declaring that coronavirus vaccines would “make people gay.” 

Tabrizian is often referred to as the “father of Islamic medicine” by his followers and is known for pushing unproven remedies to believers, with no regard for scientific consensus. Thousands of shops in Iran sell herbal treatments. This has increased since the imposition of U.S. sanctions in 2012, and the country’s internet is full of start-ups advertising “Islamic” oils and potions for every kind of ailment, backed by religious influencers like Tabrizian.

Mehdi Sabili, an “Islamic medicine specialist” with over 60,000 followers on Instagram, runs one such company. In April, he urged Iranians to sip hot camel urine to ward off the virus. Another even more popular figure, with 185,000 followers, is Dr. Hossein Ravazadeh, a conspiracy theorist and promoter of Islamic medicine who considers much of modern medicine to be a “colonial conspiracy” dreamed up by Zionists and the British. His remedy for the virus is simpler than Sabili’s: drop bitter watermelon oil into your ears, morning and night, and “all obnoxious creatures” will be unable to enter the body, including Covid-19. 

Rather than being fringe figures, Ravazadeh, Sabili, Tabrizian and others like them are prominent and powerful anti-science voices in Iran. They regularly appear on state TV stations, and draw the support of members of parliament and religious authorities. 

“These people aren’t necessarily popular among the middle class or educated people, but they are being supported, they are being funded, and they have followers who believe what they’re saying and do whatever they say. It’s obviously harmful,” said Farhad Souzanchi, editor of the Farsi-language fact-checking site Fact Nameh. 

Traditional remedies are a source of national pride in many countries. In China, Xi Jinping is leading a similar drive to leverage traditional Chinese medicine to his advantage, believing it to be an effective soft power tool for the Communist party. Beijing is now proposing a ban on all criticism of such treatments, in order to stop scientists questioning their legitimacy.

Still, scientists in Iran can be hesitant to push back against the clerical endorsement of such treatments. “It’s very dangerous to question Islamic texts — it’s risky. But whenever they get the chance, the scientific community object,” said Souzanchi. 

Last year, three doctors were reportedly sentenced to 60 lashes each after they criticized Tabrizian’s burning of the medical manual.

Iran has experienced a steady rejection of established science during the pandemic. In January, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banned the importation of vaccines from the U.S. and U.K., branding them “untrustworthy” and saying that it was “not unlikely they would want to contaminate other nations.” 

In June 2020, Iran’s ministry of health announced that all students in medicine, dentistry and pharmacology should take Islamic or traditional medicine modules. 26 Iranian MPs have also presented a plan to create an official “Islamic-Iranian medicine organization,” overseen by the health ministry, that would give licenses to sellers prescribing alternative remedies. Last week, the head of Iran’s medical council, the country’s main doctors association, said that such plans were “playing with the nation’s reputation,” and would “undoubtedly cause disillusionment towards both Islam and Iran in scientific and international forums.”

https://www.codastory.com/waronscience/i...cmedicine/