In this article I discuss how the pandemic state of emergency has formed a subject field in Islamic biopolitics. By analysing the fatwas and official statements issued by Russian Muslim leaders between March and May 2020, I identify their discursive strategy of ‘interpret-ing’ the language of bureaucracy and medical terminology into the language of Islam, and of providing theological justification for certain governmental decisions. I consider several cases which illustrate the intervention of political and medical discourses of corporality into religious discourse. These include the politicisation of the regulatory functioning of the body, the sacralisation of quarantine as a special time for spiritual activities, the formatting of funer-ary ritual according to medico-administrative regulations and the comparing of victory in the Great Patriotic War to the victory over COVID-19. © The Author(s).