Quran’s Response To The Global Pandemic: Covid-19 (Contextual Interpretation Of The Word Bala’ And Musibah In The Quran)

COVID-19 is part of Allah's trials on mankind. The global pandemic has changed the order of people's lives. How does the Qur'an respond to this pandemic? What should a Muslim do to deal with a virus that has killed many people? This paper tries to find out the meaning of word bala' and musibah in the Qur'an with contextual interpretation approach then related to COVID-19. Why these two vocabularies? Because these two vocabularies describe trials or tests from Allah SWT to His servants. The words bala’ and musibah are collected thematically with mu'jam al-Qur'an then to seek basic meaning of the words after that, the interpretation on the words from the Moslem scholars and final step is contextualization to bring new meaning and relevance to COVID -19. The result of study as follow: Contextual meaning of word bala' is 1) COVID-19 is part of bala>'an sayyiat, which is a bad trial 2) Bala>' in the form of COVID-19 is interpreted by obedience, namely obedience to the health protocols set by the government. While contextual meaning of mus{i>bah is 1) COVID-19 is part of the musibah sayyiat a severe catastrophe 2) Facing COVID-19 humans must return to Allah SWT "inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un" by implementing health protocols 3). Obedience to leaders (government) by running health protocol is important in dealing with COVID-19 If you ignore it, you will be killed / die because of COVID -19 virus and the Qur’an called it as musibah.