Monkeypox is a viral disease described as a milder form of smallpox.
Besides fever and headaches, some visible symptoms include skin rashes and lesions.
A disease that occurs primarily in central Africa now has outbreaks in the West, mainly in the UK. Cases have also been discovered in other parts of Europe, including Spain.
What’s more, it has been linked to the homosexual community and its sexual practices.
The Print reported:
London, May 17 (PTI) Gay and bisexual men are being urged to be alert to unusual rashes or lesions after four new cases of the monkeypox virus were confirmed by UK health authorities, taking the total number of infections in the country to seven since the first case emerged earlier this year.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said on Monday evening that all of the new cases, three in London and one in the north east of England, self-identify as gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men (MSM).
So this monkeypox is basically a homophobic disease.
But is there any link between homosexuality and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)?
And more generally, is there any link between sexual immorality (such as widespread fornication and adultery) and STDs?
RELATED: [WATCH] The SECRET Plan to Spread LGBT to the Muslim World
Sexual Immorality and STDs: A Prophecy
The link between sexuality immorality and STDs is in fact a prophecy.Indeed, the Prophet ﷺ said, as reported in an authentic narration in Sunan Ibn Majah 4019:
It was narrated that ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar said:
“The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) turned to us and said: ‘O Muhajirun, there are five things with which you will be tested, and I seek refuge with Allah lest you live to see them: Immorality never appears among a people to such an extent that they commit it openly, but plagues and diseases that were never known among the predecessors will spread among them […]
Keep in mind that pretty much all civilizations have taken a stand against sexual immorality.
British anthropologist J.D. Unwin demonstrates in his 1934-study Sex and Culture, how a strong stance against sexual immorality is actually what makes a society. He does this by looking at dozens of “uncivilized” societies and dozens of “advanced” civilizations over many millennia.
So, being against sexual immorality seems to be something “universal.”
What makes the above ḥadīth unique though, is that the Prophet ﷺ makes a connection between sexual immorality and diseases.
Most STDs only appeared during the modern age.
Take chlamydia for instance, considered the most widespread STD – its symptoms including genital pain and discharge from the reproductive organ. In an academic article, we read:
Since the late 1990s chlamydia has been the most commonly reported sexually transmitted infection (STI) in Europe and the United States.
(…)
Public health concern about the disease also derived from its seeming novelty and to uncertainties over its pathology. Chlamydia first became recognized as a specific STI in the 1970s, but it took until 1988 for it to become notifiable.
So it’s literally a “new” disease which was “identified” only decades ago.
Then there’s the human papillomavirus (HPV), which potentially causes cervical cancer. Italian surgeon Domenico Rigoni-Stern had linked cancer with sexual immorality as early as 1842 in a treatise he’d authored. However it’s only in 1985, with advanced research in genetics, that German virologist Harald zur Hausen would make this definitive connection. He was subsequently rewarded with the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2008.
Gonorrhea is a disease that was found in ancient cultures, but it wasn’t something very widespread back then. Apart from gonorrhea though, all other STDs – such as trichomoniasis; genital herpes; and of course HIV/AIDS – had their first confirmed cases during the modern period. This is when sexual immorality became widespread.
Syphylis, another STD, is even considered “modernity’s disease” par excellence, having been contracted by individuals such as influential French poet Baudelaire and US gangster Al Capone. Baudelaire was known to frequent prostitutes, and Al Capone actually died from it. There are also many “suspected” cases, which include the likes of Hitler, Lenin, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche – which according to some, explains the philosopher’s dementia during his final years.
While some people had criticized sexual immorality, only the Prophet ﷺ made such a strong link between widespread sexual immorality and diseases, and specifically – new diseases.
RELATED: Is Liberalism Finally Becoming Obsolete? More Than Just an East-West Divide
To give you a better idea of how widespread STDs are, LiveScience posted an article in 2014 to quantify the extent of STDs in the United States alone, and how much it was costing them. These were the numbers: