Building mental resilience based on the Quran during pandemic

Covid-19 which spread globally has entered its second year. According to statistics released by Worldometers, as of June 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused 3,906,343 million deaths out of more than 180 million cases. The data shows that from 222 countries, Indonesia ranks in 18th place with 2,033,606 cases and 55,594 deaths. Since the pandemic had spread in various countries worldwide, it has caused mass uncertainty, confusion, and urgency, which continues until today. Covid-19 has increasingly affected various aspects of life, specifically the psychological aspect causing the rise of depression and acute anxiety that damages the community's mental health. Covid-19 has proved to be a stressor that tests human mental resilience in dealing with any problems arising from the crises facing them. This study aims to discover and study the verses of the Quran and its interpretations on the matters of plagues, disasters, and happenings related to such phenomena to identify the religious reasoning behind shaping human mental strength and resilience during this pandemic. This study applies a content analysis approach/method and uses the thematic interpretation method (Tafsīr al-Mawḍū‘ī). The results found that the Quran had shown examples of calamities in the form of plagues, God's promise on the certainty of problems, forms of problems, and human attitude towards said problems and calamities to conclude that the descriptions written in the Quran can be used to build human psychological readiness in any condition, especially during this pandemic.