Shi'ite Iraqi Islamic scholar Hadi Al-Modarresi, who is based in Qom, Iran, said in a video that was uploaded to the Internet on February 28, 2020 that the spread of coronavirus is undoubtedly an act of Allah that is divine punishment against the Chinese for their treatment, mockery, and disrespect towards Muslims and Islam. In early March, online sources reported that Al-Modarresi contracted coronavirus.
Hadi Al-Modarresi: "It is obvious that the spread of this virus is an act of Allah. How do we know this? The spread of the coronavirus began in China, an ancient and vast country, the population of which makes up one seventh of humanity. More than a billion people live in that country. The authorities in that country are tyrannical and they laid siege to more than a million Muslims and placed them under house arrest. The journalists in that country began to mock the niqab of Muslim women and they forced Muslim men to eat pork and drink wine. Allah sent a disease upon them and this disease laid siege to 40 million [Chinese people]. The same niqab that they mocked has been forced upon them, both men and women, by Allah, by means of the state authorities and officials.
[...]
"Islam forbade people from eating insects, but [the Chinese] mocked this matter. And there you have it, this disease spread from the world of animals – be it bats, ants, or snakes, the result is the same – to the human world and it has scared humanity in its entirety."