Is it currently forbidden to travel to France, given the spread of the Coronavirus which causes death only in specific cases, and does it take the ruling of the plague?
The prohibition against entering or exiting a land afflicted with plague is a prohibition against fleeing from the plague if it has occurred in a land, and not a prohibition against exiting for any other purpose. Scholars have differed on the definition of plague (ta'un). Some say it is a specific, known disease, while others say it is any general disease that leads to the death of many people. Sheikh Ibn Uthaymeen held that the prohibition includes every general epidemic that spreads rapidly. Therefore, if the coronavirus has not spread in your region and become a general epidemic, there is no harm in traveling from it, as this virus is not the plague explicitly mentioned in the Sunnah. If it has spread in your province, and if we say that the prohibition against fleeing is general for every epidemic, then whoever leaves for another benefit, not to flee the epidemic, there is no harm upon them.
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