Governments and religious leaders in Muslim-majority countries talk to vaccine manufacturers, investigate manufacturing processes, and provide guidelines to ensure that concerns about products banned by Islam do not interfere with Covid-19 vaccinations.
On Friday, the high church council in Indonesia with the largest Muslim population in the world said that China’s Sinovac vaccine is allowed by Islam, or halal. The decision comes after council representatives visited Sinovac’s factory in China last year and conducted a halal audit.
Part of the challenge of introducing vaccines worldwide is to persuade enough people to take them to achieve herd immunity. In many countries, Muslim and non-Muslim, efforts must be made to overcome security issues, suspicions and conspiracy theories, as well as religious and ethical objections.
Muslim scholars say that gelatin derived from pigs and cells is taken from tissue of human fetuses, both of which are commonly found in the production of vaccines.
Acceptance of vaccinations before the coronavirus pandemic has varied widely between Muslim countries, with great confidence in countries such as Bangladesh and Uzbekistan, according to an opinion poll in 149 countries published in the Lancet medical journal in September 2020. It was found that of the ten countries with the greatest confidence in vaccines during the four years to 2019, seven were predominantly Muslim: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria and Pakistan. The other three were Japan, Georgia and Serbia.