Maulana Sami ul Haq's Fatwa on Polio Vaccination

Maulana Sami ul Haq, head of the Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary in Akora Khattak, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, issued a religious ruling in support of polio vaccination — one of a series of fatwas from Pakistani scholars affirming that immunising children against polio is permissible and, in the view of many scholars, obligatory on parents.

Why a fatwa changes what argument cannot

In communities where refusals cluster, the objection is rarely medical. It is that the vaccine is impure, that it is a foreign scheme, or that it causes infertility. A health worker at the door has little standing to settle a question that has been framed in religious terms.

A scholar the family already follows has exactly that standing. This is why the programme has invested so heavily in religious engagement rather than in more persuasive door-step scripts.

The wider body of religious guidance

The ruling sits within a substantial body of scholarly endorsement:

• The Islamabad Declaration, issued by an international ulama conference on polio eradication held in Islamabad in June 2014, declared the polio vaccine free of harmful constituents and fully permissible under Islamic Sharia.
• Pakistan's Council of Islamic Ideology has ratified a large body of fatwas supporting polio vaccination.
• The Islamic Advisory Group, convened under the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, adopted a coordinated plan supporting polio eradication across member states. See the Islamic Advisory Group plan.
• Scholars from across Pakistan's schools of thought have issued rulings to the same effect, which matters because the question is settled rather than contested between traditions.

Where the mistrust came from

Vaccine refusal in Pakistan has a specific history. A fake hepatitis vaccination campaign staged as intelligence cover in Abbottabad in 2011 did lasting damage to public trust in door-to-door immunisation, and made the claim that vaccination teams had a hidden purpose newly credible. Refusals on religious grounds rose from 2014 onward.

Religious endorsement is the programme's most direct answer to that history, because it separates the vaccine from the suspicion attached to who delivers it.

What scholars actually say

The consistent reasoning is that protecting a child's health and preventing avoidable disability are obligations, that the vaccine contains no impermissible ingredient, and that a parent who refuses it exposes their child to permanent, untreatable paralysis without cause.

Related: Muslim ulema dispel misconceptions · religious leaders changing misconceptions · polio FAQs