Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 27, 2020 - May 3, 2020

IT is already Ramadan. Muslims the world over are facing a Ramadan like no other because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A few days before the holy month began, US President Donald Trump was accused of stoking Islamophobia after he raised questions about social distancing in mosques in the US during Ramadan.

He said there “could be a difference” in how the authorities and politicians enforce coronavirus lockdown measures during Ramadan compared with how Christians were treated during the Easter holidays.

It all started when a conservative writer named Paul Sperry sent out a tweet that suggested Muslims could get preferential treatment. Muslims getting preferential treatment in the US?

Sperry wrote, “Let’s see if the authorities enforce the social distancing orders for mosques during Ramadan like they did for churches during Easter.” That, according to Al Jazeera, echoed a theme that has circulated in right-wing circles on Twitter. Trump retweeted Sperry’s tweet.

At one of his daily coronavirus news conferences, Trump was asked by Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett whether he specifically thought that Muslim religious leaders in the US would not follow social distancing guidelines during Ramadan.

Trump responded, “No, I don’t think that at all. I just had a call with imams, ministers, rabbis. We had a tremendous call with the faith leaders.

“I am somebody who believes in faith. It doesn’t matter what your faith is, but our politicians seem to treat different faiths very differently.

“I don’t know what happened with our country, but the Christian faith is treated much differently than it was, and I think it’s treated very unfairly.”

That is when the accusation of stoking Islamophobia kicked in, I suppose. But Islamophobia or no, one thing is clear. Trump, in this instance, was not blaming Muslims for the coronavirus pandemic. Why should he? He has already got China and the World Health Organization to blame, after all.

If not anything else, as I see it, he was pandering to the right wing and rallying the Christian base with an eye definitely on the presidential election in November. That is familiar. We have heard language like Trump’s here, and the very same words used by our own politicians.

However, his labelling Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus” has resulted in frightening and violent experiences for Chinese Americans accused by white America of bringing the virus to the US or having some kind of link to it.

In Melbourne, two young women of Chinese descent — a Singaporean and a Malaysian — were verbally abused before being set upon by people described by Australian police as “skinny Caucasians”, who shouted “Coronavirus” and “Go back to China”.

And in India, according to Al Jazeera, “the Covid-19 outbreak presented yet another opportunity to launch fresh attacks on the Muslim community”. Muslims are perceived to be carriers of the virus.

There are many more incidents all over the world.

In this beloved nation of ours, thank God there is no violence. But we have our share of unfair and hurtful accusations.

We have had some Malays blaming the Chinese for “eating all sorts of things”, referring to the bats that were said to be eaten by people in Wuhan, which they believed had resulted in the virus emerging. Never mind that the Chinese they were blaming are fellow Malaysians.

The Chinese and other communities had, on their part, blamed Malays for, among other things, contributing to the Sri Petaling mosque tabligh clusters. Never mind that there were Malays saddened that a religious gathering became a place where people got infected and who were angry at tabligh members who did not come forward for testing and treatment when it was known that the gathering had become a Covid-19 cluster.

Then, we heard of Muslims angry that mosques had to be closed but not churches, casinos and nightclubs when in reality all the places were already shut down. In the case of churches, services were stopped before the order was issued for mosques to halt all activities.

Once again, thank God such senseless blaming has stopped. The rakyat of all races are not doing that anymore, or not much if at all. We have come to accept the reality of the situation. We are focused on getting through this nightmare we are facing.

The rakyat have stopped the blame game, but sadly, the politicians are still at it.

 

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