Faith in The Time of Coronavirus: A Corpus-assisted Discourse Analysis

This article explores language used in online writings on the Coronavirus from an Islamic research institution compared to those written for a more general audience. Using the corpus linguistic approach, keywords analysis of a collection of these articles against the Covid-19 corpus on Sketch Engine reveals salient words that are more faith-based in terms of discussing the topic like words referring to God, acts of devotion and martyrdom. Further analysis showed that the main difference in language use between the two corpora is noticeable in the way that there are more words referring to God and the Prophet as well as words related to faith/the religion. Accordingly, these articles "tackle" issues relating to the virus in terms of the concept of Tawakkul, which means reliance on or trust in Allah (or God), whether the virus is a punishment or a mercy, as well as how to deal with grief.