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We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled too.

But Muslim-Americans are also approaching Ramadan thoughtfully…

Social distancing forces us to get creative during Ramadan. Challenge accepted.

Muslims are also lucky that Ramadan follows Easter and Passover. They can get inspired by how others are making their holidays special. Virtual Easter egg hunts? Virtual Passover family meals? I think by the end of this pandemic, we will have seen it all.

Will it be easy? Not at all.

But different is not bad. It pushes us to test our limits and capabilities and adapt to new ways of living.

If we all do our part, I do believe we will emerge stronger in our faith and sense of community than ever before. Eventually we will resume our lives of shared communal experiences.

In the interim, look for the silver lining. It is there.

…Even if things are not so calm and thoughtful in other more Muslim countries:

Religious Leaders Who Flout Social Distancing Are Endangering Their Followers—and the Future of Their Faiths

There have been disastrously naive reactions to the pandemic. One of the most dramatic cases was that of the Tablighi Jamaat, an India-based Sunni missionary movement with as many as 80 million members around the world. Despite all the warnings, they held huge dayslong gatherings, first in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and then in New Delhi, soon proving to be a “super-spreader” of the virus in South and Southeast Asia. (The incident led some Hindu nationalists to spew religious hatred and blame Muslims for a #coronajihad, which became a trending hashtag on Twitter. But it was not a malicious conspiracy—just like the case of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus of South Korea, which also acted as super spreader, it was simply catastrophic carelessness.)

In the mainstream Sunni and Shiite world, rational precautions have been taken by most governments, but often belatedly, and despite resistance from the most dogmatic believers. In Iran, one of the worst-affected countries, when authorities finally banned people from Shiite shrines, angry crowds stormed them. In Pakistan, where most clerics refused to limit mosque gatherings, police officers who tried to disperse crowds from Friday prayers were stoned by furious worshippers.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Auntie Analogue April 18, 2020, 1:27 PM

    In short, millions of Moslems flout shelter-in-place in the same way in which quite a few Western commentators, including some right here on American Digest, are urging Westerners to abandon shelter-in-place here in what’s left of what used to be Christendom.

    Decisions, decisions . . . .

  • Stargazer April 18, 2020, 1:59 PM

    No governor, mayor or sheriff is going to try the get Muslims to comply with social distancing edicts, especially on their holiday. Too dangerous.

  • Tom Hyland April 18, 2020, 2:54 PM

    This video contains more explosive information than I’ve encountered anywhere lately. Dr. Rashid Buttar reveals criminal details of Dr. Fauchi’s lifelong career, the true purpose of 6′ distancing, the black flag actions that triggered the first Gulf War, the vaccine that is likely to cause the death of its recipients, and lots more. This is 49 minutes long. Well worth watching.    https://youtu.be/WGbYHJcMbz8

  • Tom Hyland April 18, 2020, 2:55 PM

    This link ought to be active. https://youtu.be/WGbYHJcMbz8

  • Auntie Analogue April 18, 2020, 11:29 PM

    Sorry, my dear Tom Hyland, I’ll not trust anything from Rashid Buttar . . . : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_Buttar

    It’s not just Buttar I would not trust – not just because he’s not an M.D., but because he’s performed seriously unethical, extremely risky treatments on people, I’d also not trust any other osteopath when it comes to a phenomenon as complex as a hitherto unknown, novel virus spreading worldwide among all sorts of people.

    Whenever the feces hit the whirling Vornado blades all sorts of people, from experts to fools, and from con artists to conspiracy theorists, come out of the woodwork. I think that Rashid Buttar is one of the con artist conspiracy-snake-oil-salesmen.

    All that said, I’m no fan of Anthony Fauci either, or of Robert Redfield at the pandemic-bungling CDC, purely because neither one of them, nor anyone else, yet has answers. A great lot needs yet to be learned about the damned Chinese Virus, so I take a wait-and-see approach until I can form solid – knowledgeable – predicates for my own response to it. This means that until the Chinese Virus will have been well-understood, until the best responses to it will have shaken out from facts learned about it, I’ll go along with the present, apparently yet not definitively, prudential regimen of stay-at-home/social distancing. If you think that complacent, if you think that submissive, if you think that irrational, even if you think that gullible, it is simply according to the time-honored maxim that “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” (None of that means I’m a mask-&-gloves-social-distancing scold or finger-wagging and shrieking, “Witch! Look! A Witch!” By my best lights everyone is free to choose how to respond to the pandemic – and I’m free to avoid the ones whom I expect may threaten my health.)

    People, it seems Americans especially, cannot bear to do nothing. Particularly when some obstacle or problem crops up people go into “Let’s do something!” overdrive: “LET’S DO!” But sometimes there is nothing to be done because there is nothing that can be done – and nothing that should be done. The Japanese have an apt phrase for this: Shikata ga nai, literally, “There is nothing to be done.” This isn’t recommended at all times, because in many instances there is something that can be done, something to be done. Yet, again, there are times when . . . shikata ga nai.

    Is that so hard to swallow? Is it false pride that moves some people to bridle against “not doing,” against prudence? Against patience?

    Speculate all you like. But be mindful that speculation is not fact, it yields no answers.

    No one has answers, least of all does Rashid Buttar have answers. No one should listen to anyone who claims, in the absence of solid predicable data, to have answers. I don’t have any answers. I just have common sense, and, in this instance, it tells me . . . : Shikata ga nai.

    One of my favorite joke signs is one seen often in offices and workplaces in the early 1960’s. It consisted of a single word: THIMK! No misspelling. The sign said THIMK! That’s all I ask of every one of us, because this Chinese Virus, or even if this is a Chinese Virus Hoax/Evil Plot, for everyone on earth it is an outside-of-the-box thing. Unprecedented. So we find ourselves scrambling for answers that simply are not forthcoming. In the absence of those answers, and until those answers will have come, I consider it best that for each one of us . . . shikata ga nai. Not. Do.

    In a barnyard on the grip of the well pump three birds sit. One of the birds takes off, lands, pecks at and eats from a pile of manure, then flits back to its perch on the pump. Minutes later that bird flies off about twelve feet and then suddenly folds up, drops dead. The second bird does the same thing: wings its way off the pump lever, eats manure, returns to the pump perch, and a minute or so later takes off for about a dozen feet and then suddenly drops dead. The third bird does what the first two birds did: takes off, eats manure, returns, then wings away from the lever and drops dead. The moral of the story is: When you’re full of shit, don’t fly off the handle.

    THIMK!

    Shikata ga nai.

    Not. Do.

  • ghostsniper April 19, 2020, 6:56 AM

    “…Chinese Virus Hoax/Evil Plot, for everyone on earth it is an outside-of-the-box thing. Unprecedented….”
    ========

    So was the murdering of a president on TV, the destruction of 2 skyscrapers on TV, the annihilation of 2 countries on TV, and much more. ALL unprecedented, and delivered right to your very eyes. None ever proven. All lied about for decades and still.

    Maybe that box of colors sitting in front of you is your tourniquet.
    It gives your life meaning while restricting it’s true meaning.
    At what point is enough enough?

  • jwm April 19, 2020, 8:33 AM

    Part of what makes it all so difficult is that there is a glut of information, and very little truth. There is just no reliable source of knowledge. Like many here, I’m spending a lot of time at the computer these days. You can find tons of validation for whatever it is that you think you want to hear. The only thing that is consistent is the way local “officials” have become petty tyrants overnight. It’s like the worst Nosy Parkers on the HOA have been appointed fuehrer. And they’re diggin’ it!

    JWM

  • John Venlet April 19, 2020, 9:02 AM

    The only thing that is consistent is the way local “officials” have become petty tyrants overnight.

    And that tells you alot right there, doesn’t it, JWM?

  • Tom Hyland April 19, 2020, 9:50 AM

    Ghostsniper: Thank you for stating the obvious. We’ve been lied to. All I’ve ever heard are lies. I turned age 8 one month after JFK’s head was removed and I’ve been lied to ever since. Oswald did it and if you think otherwise then you’re a conspiracy theorist. ANYONE who wields the phrase “conspiracy theory” is massively lazy, unimaginative and will not “thimk” for themselves. Using the phrase is a conspiracy in itself. The WTC fell down because a fire on the 83rd floor… right. I don’t watch TV and haven’t watched TV news about 20 years now.

    Auntie Analogue: I bet you watch TV. That box of sound and swirling colors Ghost described is tightening around your brains. And I bet you did not watch the Dr. Buttar video. You didn’t click that link. The man is an osteopath and they do not believe in cutting people open and/or prescribing voodoo vaccines approved by the WHO, the CDC, the AMA and the Gates Foundation. Buttar was reprimanded by the NC Board of Medical Examiners? That speaks volumes and I applaud his accomplishment. Dick Cavett once said his greatest honor was to be placed on Nixon’s Enemies List. When Big Pharma and Big Government takes you to the woodshed you are standing in the light of honor and bravery. No problem being ignorant… simply open your mind and learn. When you choose to embrace ignorance then the phrase “ignoramus” applies.

  • Veeze April 19, 2020, 10:15 AM

    Auntie, you need to stop making sense! Folks ’round here just don’t put up with that sort of thing.

  • Fluella De Vil April 19, 2020, 12:36 PM

    I share Auntie’s bias against DO’s. Maybe that’s unfair, but that’s just how it is. However, if you take the time to look, there are plenty of highly credentialed “trusted voices” who differ from the experts running this show. The final aftereffects of the response remain to be seen. We already have 22,000,000 unemployed and an assault on our liberty. The fatalities are admittedly being fudged. It’s not looking so good for the mainstream view.