Social distancing has made giving to the poor – an obligation under Islam – harder this Ramadan. Meanwhile Muslim nonprofits are feeling the strain of the economic downturn.
Separated families have to make tough calls over parenting during the pandemic.
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Social distancing can be especially hard when it comes to where children of divorced couples should stay – especially when one of the parents has illnesses that puts them at high risk of the coronavirus.
The roads are open, but not yet the shops.
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What are the moral considerations in making the decision to reopen society while mitigating the risk of infections spreading? We asked a philosophy scholar to walk us through the quandary.
Valley of the Dawn members celebrate ‘Day of the Indoctrinator’ at their temple complex in Brazil on May 1. This year’s event is postponed due to coronavirus.
Márcia Alves
Brazil’s Valley of the Dawn faith is often dismissed as a cult. But many of the group’s fantastical rituals are a recognizable reaction to this harsh world of inequality, loneliness and pandemics.
Remote worship is becoming the norm during the pandemic.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Most Christian churches were relying heavily on ‘collection plates’ to pay their bills before the pandemic struck. And less than half were doing any online fundraising as of 2018.
An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man is arrested by Israeli security forces for resisting efforts to shut down a synagogue in the Me’a She’arim neighborhood in Jerusalem, April 17, 2020.
AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images
Joyce Dalsheim, University of North Carolina – Charlotte
Persecution is central to Jewish collective memory. So when armed police entered ultra-Orthodox areas of Jerusalem to close synagogues due to COVID-19, some residents reacted with fear and suspicion.
Workers wearing personal protective equipment bury bodies in a trench on Hart Island in New York.
John Minchillo/AP Photo
From burial sites targeted by grave robbers to disposing of ashes at sea, the job of disposing of the unclaimed dead has a rich history. Sadly, it still goes on today and is on the rise.
Muslim pilgrims at the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia’s holy city of Mecca, February 2020.
Photo by Abdel Ghani Bashir/AFP via Getty Images
Saudi Arabia is barring international visitors for the hajj. A scholar explains a long history of disease, politics and war that have previously prevented people from making the journey to Mecca.
Some members of New York’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community defied the government’s ban on gathering for Passover and other religious occasions, Brooklyn, April 16, 2020.
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
Given that some people look to religious authorities not health officials in times of crisis, faith leaders can promote hand-washing and social distancing to slow the spread of coronavirus.
Nary a mask in sight at a market area in Bangladesh’s Kutupalong refugee camp for Rohingya, Ukhia, March 24, 2020.
Suzauddin Rubel/AFP via Getty Images
COVID-19 is spreading quickly in Bangladesh. An outbreak in the refugee camps that house some 1 million Rohingya Muslims in cramped, unsanitary quarters would be calamitous.
With a large number of patients with COVID-19, doctors face difficult choices.
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Doctors face difficult choices about rationing medical care. A scholar who studies discrimination argues that those with chronic illnesses and disabilities will be hit the hardest.
He may be praying, but so far the Pope has declined to intervene in Venezuela’s crisis to aid a unified coronavirus response.
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If anyone can convince the Maduro government and the Venezuelan opposition to come together to fight COVID-19, it’s the Pope. But the Church’s power to negotiate an emergency deal is limited.
Social distancing has changed the way people worship. A pastor at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Los Angeles holds a service through his iPhone.
AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
Churches have moved online. But to be able to properly connect with people, they need to find a way to build community, says a scholar who studies digital religion.
Calls for help at Chicago’s Cook County jail, where hundreds of inmates and staff have COVID-19, April 9, 2020.
Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images
In the 1790s, penal reformers rebuilt America’s squalid jails as airy, hygienic places meant to keep residents – and by extension society – healthy. Now they’re hotbeds of COVID-19. What went wrong?
A 14th-century Last Judgment relief from a facade of Orvieto cathedral in Umbria. Italy.
De Agostini via Getty Images
Some people are comparing current times with the apocalypse. In ancient texts, apocalyptic messages cultivated endurance and encouragement through dire circumstances.
A woman wearing a niqab and headscarf, with other shoppers in Istanbul, August 13, 2018.
YASIN AKGUL/AFP via Getty Images
As people everywhere don face masks, scarves and bandanas to protect against coronavirus, Muslim women who wear the niqab, or Islamic veil, are feeling a lot less conspicuous.
Members of an arm of Hezbollah spray disinfectant in a Beirut neighborhood to fight the spread of the coronavirus.
AP Photo/Bilal Hussein
Criminal gangs, insurgents and terrorist groups seek to protect the people in the areas they govern, when a central government’s power is weak or nonexistent.
Baseball fans look through a fence of the stadium following the cancellation of a game in Fort Myers, Florida.
AP Photo/Elise Amendola
All major sports events have been canceled at this time. Two sports philosophers remind people how sports help us bond as a community and why we miss them.
As workers make matzo for Passover, many families will not be able to get together this year.
Guy Prives/Getty Images)
Some of the Passover Seder traditions are occurring through Zoom this year. A historian of the Bible explains how ancient Israelites changed the ways of their worship.
Long lines at a grocery store in Spring, Texas, as people rush to stockpile.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip