Author: blschrad

The Chinese government has always been a big proponent of surveying their citizens, but the crisis that is Covid-19 has given them an excuse to monitor their citizens even more than they have been in recent times. This CNN article details the current happenings in China. The article describes the story of an Irish man named Ian Lahiffe who lives in China, and the day that he found a camera being posted up outside of his apartment facing straight at his door. The Covid crisis has allowed the Chinese government to justify their incredible invasion of privacy. According to the article, the Chinese government actually does not have any formal laws regarding the use of surveillance cameras, but they are already a regular part of life in China with the monitoring and social credit systems that they have in place. However, I feel that this is a new step of invasion by the government. The social credit system and surveillance in public I feel is very different than putting cameras directly outside people’s houses, or even in them. I do not think that this crisis justifies that amount of surveillance, and China is on pace to have six times as many surveillance cameras than the United States. Even though the addition of these cameras is an incredible invasion of personal privacy, I find it hard to believe that anyone will actually stop the Chinese government from doing this.

I have been blogging a lot recently about the difficulties that Muslim people have been facing in the era of Covid-19 and the holy month of Ramadan. Many Muslims have been conflicted about what to do during these uncertain times and most mosques have closed due to the virus and that makes it increasingly difficult for Muslims to practice their faith during this holy month. Well, a community in our own country is putting together what they feel may be a solution to help keep Muslims safe and allow them to practice their religion as well. This article from WCCO CBS Minnesota tells about the plans that community and city leaders in Minneapolis have to keep those who observe Ramadan safe. “Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says the city worked with leaders in the Muslim community to have the “call to prayer” broadcast by speaker five times a day in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood”. The Minneapolis community is doing their best to make sure that their Muslim residents can properly observe their holy month as well as obey the social distancing guidelines. I think this is some great initiative on behalf of the Minneapolis community leaders and I feel it should be something that gets done all throughout the country.

As I have discussed in previous posts, there have been a lot of developing difficulties for the Muslim community regarding the holy month of Ramadan in the era of Covid-19 and social distancing. The article from the Wall Street Journal details the stories of how several people and communities are trying to cope with not being able to actually physically gather, and what some of the leaders of these communities and events are doing to try to get people together during these important times for the entire Muslim community. These people feel that during Ramadan families and friends need to be able to see each other and be together somehow, even if it is over the internet, or some sort of e-meeting platform. Another idea that the article presents is the idea of BYOI (Bring Your Own Iftar), on the e-platforms so that dinners and dishes can be shared among friends and family in these holy times. Some people are more on board than others as there are some people that are against it, “Not everyone is on board. Some say the lack of sometimes-gluttonous group dinners offers a chance to focus on the spiritual aspects of the month, including special nightly prayers called tarawih and reading from the Quran. Others worry about the risk of iftar envy: wishing you were eating what is on the other side of the screen”. While there are some that are against these ideas, I feel that these are a great alternative to larger in person gatherings, we need to be taking every precaution possible.

As everyone knows, everything in the world seems to be closing down, and some of the most popular holy sites in the world are obviously no exception. According to this Al Jazeera article, “Saudi Arabia has asked Muslims to wait until there is more clarity about the coronavirus pandemic before planning to attend the annual Hajj pilgrimage, the Minister for Hajj and Umrah said on state TV on Tuesday”. I’ve spoken on earlier blogs about the difficult decisions some countries have had to make in closing their mosques, and the difficulties other countries have faced when people have disobeyed those orders and gone to prayer anyway. I can not imagine the amount of difficulty that will be faced by the Saudi government in trying to get people to not go on the Hajj and come to see Mecca. Especially if the coronavirus stay at home and closing precautions continue into the coming months. The Saudi government is going to have an incredibly difficult time keeping people away from their holy cities in my opinion. “Some 2.5 million pilgrims from around the world usually flock to Mecca and Medina cities for the week-long ritual scheduled to begin in late July. The pilgrimage is also a significant source of income for the kingdom”. I think there is no possible way to keep that many people from trying to come, and the economic difficulties that keeping it closed will cause may cause further problems for the nation other than the health of the whole.

I think that the title of this post says it all, but I will go into some more depth. The Covid-19 outbreak has obviously put religious people all over the world into quite the bind, as services in most places of worship are no longer being held with some services being moved to online platforms etc. I wrote on a previous post about Muslims being faced with the most difficult decision about closing, being that we are very close to Ramadan, but most mosques are doing the responsible thing and closing. However, in Pakistan, there is a rift; a large disagreement between the government and the religious officials running the mosques. The article from Al Jazeera details it all, many mosques across Pakistan have decided that they would rather remain open despite the advice of all of the social distancing guidelines and orders from their own government. “[Lockdowns are] not the answer to these problems,” Aziz had told Al Jazeera. “We believe the people should not be made to fear things right now, they should have faith in God at this time, and to place their hope in him … If death is written for you, then it will come”. Pakistan has seen more than 7,000 cases thus far, but in my opinion, if mosques remain open with or without any social distancing protocols, that number will skyrocket in the coming weeks.

On an earlier post I had discussed India’s prime minister Narendra Modi and his support of radical ideas that would tear the nation apart on religious grounds. He as well as many of his staff and many people throughout India believe that India should be a nation with only one religion and Muslims do not belong. However, it has been difficult to find something to pin on them to justify their harsh policies. With Covid-19 they have found the answer they were looking for. This New York Times article details exactly what has been happening lately with the anti-Muslim sentiment in India. Muslims have been being beaten and discriminated against all across India. Hate has been sprouting up all over the internet, and a “wave of apparently fake videos” have been coming up all over the internet, “telling Muslims not to wear masks, not to practice social distancing, not to worry about the virus at all, as if the makers of the videos wanted Muslims to get sick”. All of these things are happening because of the already brimming hate of Muslims that the Indian government has allowed to happen, and, “After India’s health ministry repeatedly blamed an Islamic seminary for spreading the coronavirus — and governing party officials spoke of “human bombs” and “corona jihad” — a spree of anti-Muslim attacks has broken out across the country”. Now with this global pandemic sweeping across India and the rest of the world, the people in India that believe Muslims should not be there finally have their excuse to beat them and drive them out of the country, and that is absolutely despicable.

This article from the Al Jazeera Magazine details the extremely sad and difficult decision that has had to be made in Jerusalem over whether or not to close the Al-Aqsa mosque for the holy month of Ramadan. “Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, the Jordan-appointed council that oversees Islamic sites on the sacred compound, called the decision “painful””. This decision will affect the religious lives of tens of thousands of Muslims during the month when Ramadan starts on April 23rd. One sign of normalcy is that the Muslim call to prayer will still take place five times per day at the site, and religious workers will still be allowed in the site in order to make that happen. However, the council has asked that all Muslims remain at their home and pray at home rather than at the site. “It typically draws tens of thousands of Muslims daily to the mosque and the adjoining Dome of the Rock for evening prayers known as Taraweeh”. Tens of thousands of Muslims will be affected by this order, but it is for the good of the whole that no one gets infected by attending the holy site. I think it would be a good idea for religious gatherings across the globe to be stopped as another further way to stop big crowds from being together. Many places have moved to online worships or services, and some have even stopped everything all together, but there are still a great deal of places of worship that remain open and risk the health of us all by doing so.

As I have talked about in previous blog posts, the Chinese government is doing their best to control the narrative around the coronavirus in their country. They are attempting to do it yet again in regards to their economy, but it is not working so well, according to this report from the Associated Press. After visiting Wuhan in March Chinese President Xi Jinping declared the coronavirus situation in China under control and allowed factories and some shops to reopen in order to try to stimulate the Chinese economy that has taken major hits just the same as most of the economies throughout the world. In theory, opening the factories and shops would definitely reignite the economy. However, the Chinese people are extremely wary about even leaving their houses based on what has happened over the last few months. “Data due out Friday is expected to show the economy contracted by up to 9% in January-March, its worst performance since the late 1970s.”. Again, there is no surprise there as most of the world’s economies are suffering. However, the surprising aspect of this story to me is the fact that the Chinese people do not seem to want to go back out even though some shops have been opened. I think this sentiment is wildly different to the way many Americans are feeling at this point in time. I think given the opportunity, most Americans would be straight back out into the shops if they were to open back up today. However, the Chinese people are still very wary to going back out into the opened shops. I think this is a classic example of the Chinese culture of discipline, and many Americans simply do not have that kind of discipline to make sure those around them are able to stay healthy and safe.

A new BBC article that came out today showed a photo and reported on a McDonald’s restaurant in Guangzhou banned black people from entering. The thoughts are that they did this because Guangzhou is one of China’s industrial cities sees many African tradespeople come through their city on a daily basis. According to the article, “Guangzhou is a hub for African traders buying and selling goods and is home to one of China’s largest African communities.”. Also, the article thinks that part of the reason this may have happened is, “Tensions have been running high between Africans and local people in the city. Last week, hundreds of Africans in Guangzhou were evicted from hotels and apartments after online rumors that coronavirus was spreading among African people, community leaders told the BBC”. Of course once McDonald’s found out about the incident they temporarily closed that branch. The Chinese government responded by saying, “It said it attached “great importance to some African countries’ concerns and is working promptly to improve” its way of operating.”.

Being kicked out of restaurants is far from the only discrimination that Africans are facing in China however. “Africans in Guangzhou say that they have been facing more than a week of discrimination. Health workers have reportedly gone door-to-door testing Africans for coronavirus, many say regardless of whether they show any symptoms, have traveled, or have been in contact with Covid-19 patients. Community leaders say that hundreds were forced out of their homes and hotel rooms and into quarantine.”. Regardless of what they are doing, where they’ve been or who they’ve been in contact with, they are being removed from their homes, thrown into quarantine, and tested. All over online rumors that coronavirus was moving through African communities.

I think it is safe to assume at this point that most people know that the Chinese government is not always exactly honest about what kinds of things happen in their country. However, in my opinion these new developments are particularly striking. The Chinese government is actively trying to restrict the academic research of the deadly disease that is currently causing a pandemic on our planet. This CNN article details the efforts by the Chinese government to try to control the narrative around China and the coronavirus. “Under the new policy, all academic papers on Covid-19 will be subject to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts…The increased scrutiny appears to be the latest effort by the Chinese government to control the narrative on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic”. Also according to the article, some Chinese scientists and researchers have published findings concerned with the virus, and those findings seem to contradict the official government account of the outbreak. The Chinese government has obviously seen findings like these and are doing their best to squash them.

I can understand that the Chinese government does not want the PR disaster that would come with accepting that the outbreak began in China, but I think that there are far more important things to worry about right now other than how your country looks. The health of every human being on the planet is at stake right now and China is undermining important research that could help us end this pandemic.