JAKARTA: Muslims worldwide began Ramadan on Friday with dawn-to-dusk fasting, but many will have to forgo the communal prayers and family gatherings that make the holy month special, as authorities maintain lockdowns aimed at slowing the coronavirus pandemic.
Ramadan is usually a festive season, with the daylong fast followed by lavish meals and evening get-togethers. But this year many are confined to their homes, travel is heavily restricted and public venues like parks, malls and even mosques are shuttered.
Many are also weighed down by anxiety about the pandemic and widespread job losses resulting from the worldwide shutdowns.
“This is too sad to be remembered in history,” said Belm Febriansyah, a resident in the capital of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
Jakarta is the epicenter of the outbreak in the country, which has reported more than 8,200 infections and 689 deaths. Passenger flights and rail services have been suspended, and private cars are banned from leaving the city.
Mosques in Indonesia’s deeply conservative Aceh province were packed, however, after its top clerical body ruled that it is not a “red zone” area and that prayers could continue. The province is governed by Islamic law under an autonomy agreement.
The virus causes mild to moderate symptoms in most people, who recover within a few weeks. But it is highly contagious and can cause severe illness or death, particularly in older patients or those with underlying health problems.
Muslim-majority countries began imposing widespread restrictions in mid-March, with many canceling Friday prayers and shuttering holy sites. Saudi Arabia has largely locked down Makkah and Medina and halted the year-round umrah pilgrimage.
Muslim-majority Malaysia extended its own lockdown by two more weeks to May 12, although its daily virus cases have dropped significantly in the past week. The country now has 5,603 cases, including 95 deaths.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said in a televised speech on the eve of Ramadan that the “jihad,” or holy war, against the pandemic has shown results but must continue.
Malaysia, along with neighboring Singapore and Brunei, has banned popular Ramadan bazaars, where food, drinks and clothing are sold in congested open-air markets or roadside stalls. The bazaars are a key source of income for many small traders, some of whom have shifted their businesses online.
In Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan has bowed to pressure from the country’s powerful clerical establishment and allowed mosques to remain open, even as the number of new cases has recently doubled to between 600 and 700 each day. Some clerics have ordered their followers to pack into mosques, saying their faith will protect them.
Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, however, banned Ramadan prayers after the Pakistan Medical Association pleaded with authorities to close mosques nationwide.
A key element of Ramadan is charity, with the fast partly intended to cultivate empathy for the needy. But many countries have imposed bans on communal meals, forcing charities to organize home deliveries instead.
In Turkey, authorities have banned the tradition of setting up tents and outdoor tables to provide free meals to the poor. It has also forbidden drummers from going door to door to wake people up for the pre-dawn meal in exchange for tips — another Ramadan tradition.
Last month, Turkey also banned communal prayers in mosques. Health Minister Fahrettin Koca tweeted that the month of Ramadan should not be “an excuse to relax precautions.”
“The month of blessings should not result in illness,” he said.
In Istanbul, Esat Sahin, the chief imam at Fatih Mosque, said it’s a very “lonely situation.”
“Our mosques are deprived of their congregation, like a child who has been orphaned,” he said. “Our hearts are very heavy because of this.”
In war-ravaged Afghanistan, lockdowns have compounded the suffering of the poor.
“The landlord wants rent and the children ask for food, and I don’t have answers for any of them,” Ahmed Shah said as he stood outside a supermarket with a one-wheeled cart, hoping to make money by helping people with their groceries.
Ismatullah, another Kabul resident, said he and his family of five had some bread and tea before the start of the fast. “We do not have anything for tonight,” he said.
More than 1,300 people have tested positive in Afghanistan, and 43 have died.
Ramadan in India, which begins on Saturday, has been marred by the rising Islamophobia following accusations that a surge in infections was tied to a three-day meeting in March in New Delhi of an Islamic missionary group, the Tablighi Jamaat.
Some leaders of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party labeled the meeting as “corona terrorism.” As a result, many Muslims have faced renewed stigma, threats and the boycotting of vendors who venture into Hindu-dominated neighborhoods.
The lockdown in India, the world’s most draconian, has multiplied their troubles.
A group of over two dozen Indian Muslim scholars have appealed to their communities to strictly follow the lockdown and pray at home. They also asked Muslims to refrain from organizing large parties held for breaking the fast and “taraweeh,” the extended evening prayers traditionally held in mosques.
“Families should use this unprecedented situation for spiritual guidance and purification,” they said, while asking local volunteers and elders to look after the needy and destitute.
India’s 200 million Muslims, 14% of the population, are the largest minority group in the Hindu-majority nation, but they are also the poorest.
Muslims begin marking a subdued Ramadan under coronavirus closures
https://arab.news/m6275
Muslims begin marking a subdued Ramadan under coronavirus closures
- Ramadan in India has been marred by rising Islamophobia
- In Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan has bowed to pressure from the country’s powerful clerical establishment and allowed mosques to remain open
Germany faces uncertainty as Syrian doctors weigh returning home amid Assad’s fall
Germany became a leading destination for Syrian refugees over the past decade, and some politicians were quick to start talking about encouraging the return of at least some after rebels took Damascus earlier this month. Others noted that the exiles include many well-qualified people and said their departure would hurt Germany — particularly that of doctors and other medical staff.
“Whole areas in the health sector would fall away if all the Syrians who work here now were to leave our country,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said last week. “For us it is important that we make the offer to the Syrians who are here, who have a job, who have integrated, who are crime-free, whose children go to school, to stay here and be there for our economy.”
Syrians have become a factor in a health sector that struggles to fill jobs, part of a wider problem Germany has with an aging population and a shortage of skilled labor.
The head of the German Hospital Federation, Gerald Gass, says Syrians now make up the largest single group of foreign doctors, accounting for 2 percent to 3 percent.
An estimated 5,000 Syrian doctors work in hospitals alone. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, who puts the total number of Syrian doctors at over 6,000, says they are “indispensable” to health care.
Gass said the picture hospital operators are getting from Syrian doctors so far is “very varied.” Some — particularly those with many relatives still in Syria — are considering a quick return if the situation proves stable, while others feel at ease and well-integrated in Germany and want to stay. But “no looming mass movement toward Syria is recognizable” at present.
“It’s certainly not the case that patient care would collapse in Germany if all Syrian doctors returned now,” Gass said. “But of course we have the situation that these people often work in smaller groups at individual sites” — whose quick departure could force temporary local closures.
“We are well advised to treat these people respectfully,” Gass said. “And yes, hospital owners are giving thought to how they could fill these jobs.”
Many Syrian doctors have made Germany their home
Dr. Hiba Alnayef, an assistant pediatric doctor at a hospital in Nauen, just outside Berlin, said she has been asked in the last 10 days, “what if the Syrians all go back now?”
“I don’t know — some want to, but it’s very difficult and uncertain,” said Aleppo-born Alnayef, who has spent much of her life outside Syria and came to Germany from Spain in 2016. She said it’s something she thinks about, “but I have a homeland here too now.”
She said she and other Syrian doctors and pharmacists would like to build cooperation between Germany and Syria.
“The Germans need specialists, Syria needs support ... renovation, everything is destroyed now,” she said. “I think we can work well together to help both societies.”
Alnayef said the German health system would have “a big problem” if only part of its Syrian doctors decided to leave — “we are understaffed, we are burned out, we are doing the work of several doctors.” She said Germany has offered “a safe harbor,” but that discrimination and racism have been issues and integration is a challenge.
Dr. Ayham Darouich, 40, who came from Aleppo to Germany to study medicine in 2007 and has had his own general practice in Berlin since 2021, said that “as far as I have heard, none of my circle of friends wants to go back.”
“They have their family or their practices here, they have their society here,” Darouich said. German concerns that many might return are “a bit exaggerated, or unjustified.”
But he said Germany needs to do more to persuade medical professionals it trains to stay in the country, and that it could also do more to make itself attractive to foreigners needed to fill the gaps.
“We see that the nurses and medical professionals in hospitals earn relatively little in comparison with the US or Switzerland,” Darouich said, and poorly regulated working hours and understaffed hospitals are among factors that “drive people away.”
France’s Macron arrives in cyclone-hit Mayotte to assess devastation
- Officials have warned that the death toll from the most destructive cyclone in living memory could reach hundreds, possibly thousands
- Besides declaring ‘exceptional natural disaster measures,’ authorities have also imposed a nightly curfew to prevent looting
MAMOUDZOU: French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday arrived in Mayotte to assess the devastation wrought by Cyclone Chido on the Indian Ocean archipelago, as rescuers raced to search for survivors and supply desperately needed aid.
His visit to the French overseas territory comes after Paris declared “exceptional natural disaster” measures for Mayotte late Wednesday night to enable faster and “more effective management of the crisis.”
Located near Madagascar off the coast of southeastern Africa, Mayotte is France’s poorest region.
Macron’s plane landed at 10:10 a.m. local time with some 20 doctors, nurses and civil security personnel on board, as well as four tons of food and sanitary supplies.
Officials have warned that the death toll from the most destructive cyclone in living memory on French territory could reach hundreds — possibly thousands — as rescuers race to clear debris and comb through flattened shantytowns to search for survivors.
“The tragedy of Mayotte is probably the worst natural disaster in the past several centuries of French history,” Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said.
Macron was expected to travel with a small delegation to minimize the use of law enforcement resources needed elsewhere on the archipelago.
After an “aerial reconnaissance of the disaster area,” Macron will go to the Mamoudzou hospital center, according to an itinerary released Wednesday, to “meet with the health care staff and the patients being treated.”
He will also visit a neighborhood razed by the storm, meet with Mayotte officials, and outline a reconstruction plan.
A preliminary toll from France’s interior ministry shows that 31 people have been confirmed killed, 45 seriously hurt, and more than 1,370 suffering lighter injuries.
But officials say the toll could rise exponentially.
Besides declaring “exceptional natural disaster measures,” authorities have also imposed a nightly curfew to prevent looting.
In response to widespread shortages, the government also issued a decree freezing the prices of consumer goods in the archipelago at their pre-cyclone levels.
Products affected include mineral water, food and beverages, batteries, as well as basic hygiene, everyday and construction products, and animal feed.
Cyclone Chido, which hit Mayotte on Saturday, was the latest in a string of storms worldwide fueled by climate change, according to meteorologists.
Experts say seasonal storms are being super-charged by warmer Indian Ocean waters, fueling faster, more destructive winds.
An estimated one-third of Mayotte’s population lives in shantytowns whose flimsy, sheet metal-roofed homes offered scant protection from the storm.
At Mamoudzou hospital center, windows were blown out and doors ripped off from hinges, but most of the medics had taken to sleeping at their battered workplace on Wednesday as Chido had swept their homes away.
“It’s chaos,” said medical and administrative assistant Anrifia Ali Hamadi.
“The roof is collapsing. We’re not very safe. Even I don’t feel safe here.”
But staff soldiered on despite the hospital being out of action, with electricians racing to restore a maternity ward, France’s largest with around 10,000 births a year.
“The Mamoudzou hospital suffered major damage,” said the hospital’s director Jean-Mathieu Defour. “Everything is still functioning, but in a degraded state.”
In the small commune of Pamandzi, sheet metal and destroyed wooden structures were strewn as far as the eye could see.
“It was like a steamroller that crushed everything,” said Nasrine, a Mayotte teacher who declined to give her full name.
With health services in tatters, and power and mobile phone services knocked out, French Overseas Minister Francois-Noel Buffet on Wednesday night declared “exceptional natural disaster” measures for Mayotte.
Under a new emergency system for overseas territories, the measures will hold for a month, and can be renewed every two months after that.
It will “enable the local and national authorities to react more quickly while streamlining certain administrative procedures,” Buffet said.
Much of Mayotte’s population is Muslim, whose religious tradition dictates that bodies be buried rapidly, so some may never be identified.
Assessing the toll is further complicated by irregular immigration to Mayotte, especially from the Comoros islands to the north, meaning much of the population is unregistered.
Mayotte officially has 320,000 inhabitants, but authorities estimate the actual figure is 100,000 to 200,000 higher when taking into account undocumented migrants.
French military planes have been shuttling between Mayotte and the island of La Reunion, another French overseas territory to the east that was spared by the cyclone.
A “civilian maritime bridge” was launched between both island groups, said Patrice Latron, the prefect in La Reunion.
As of Wednesday, more than 100 tons of food was to be distributed.
“We’re moving to a phase of massive support for Mayotte,” he said, adding that around 200 shipping containers with supplies and water would arrive by Sunday.
Kite-making picks up in India’s Gujarat as harvest festival nears
- People in Gujarat celebrate Uttarayan, a Hindu festival, in mid-January that marks the end of winter by flying kites
- At least 18 people died from injuries related to kite flying across Gujarat during this year’s Uttarayan festival
AHMEDABAD: Huddled over piles of colorful paper, Mohammad Yunus is one among thousands of workers in India’s western state of Gujarat who make kites by hand that are used during a major harvest festival.
People in Gujarat celebrate Uttarayan, a Hindu festival in mid-January that celebrates the end of winter by flying kites held by glass-coated or plastic strings.
“The kite may seem like a small item but it takes a long time to make it. Many people are involved in it and their livelihoods depend on it,” Yunus, a Muslim who comes to Gujarat from neighboring Rajasthan state to make kites during the peak season, told Reuters.
More than 130,000 people are involved in kite-making throughout Gujarat, according to government estimates, many of whom work from homes to make kites that cost as little as five rupees (6 US cents).
At the start of the two-day festival, people rent roofs and terraces from those who have access to them, and gather there to fly colorful kites that criss-cross each other in the sky.
Gujarat is a hub of the kite industry in the country, boasting a market worth 6.50 billion Indian rupees ($76.58 million), and the state accounts for about 65 percent of the total number of kites made in India.
While the kite flying season in the state is limited to almost just 2 or 3 days in January, the industry runs year-round providing employment to about 130,000 people in the state, according to government figures.
But these paper birds are also harmful and can be fatal, especially kites that have plastic strings, which can cause serious cuts to birds in the sky, killing and injuring thousands of them during the festival.
At least 18 people died from kite related injures across Gujarat during this year’s Uttarayan festival, including being cut by a string and getting electrocuted while trying to extricate a kite from an electric pole, local media reported.
Five suspected militants killed in Indian-administered Kashmir
- The disputed region is home to a 35-year insurgency in which tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and militants have been killed
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government canceled the territory’s partial autonomy in 2019, bringing the region under its direct rule
SRINAGAR: Security forces in India-administered Kashmir on Thursday killed at least five suspected militants in ongoing clashes, the army said, the latest outbreak of violence in the disputed Muslim-majority Himalayan region.
Kashmir has been divided between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since their partition at the chaotic end of British rule in 1947, and both countries claim the territory in full.
“Five terrorists have been neutralized by the security forces in the ongoing operation,” the Indian army’s Chinar Corps said, adding that two soldiers had been wounded in the firefight.
Half a million Indian troops are deployed in the far northern region, battling a 35-year insurgency in which tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and militants have been killed, including at least 120 this year.
Separatist groups demand either independence or the region’s merger with Pakistan.
New Delhi regularly blames Pakistan for arming militants and helping them launch attacks, an allegation Islamabad denies.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government canceled the territory’s partial autonomy in 2019, bringing the region under its direct rule.
The territory of about 12 million people has since been ruled by a New Delhi-appointed governor who oversees a local government that voters elected in October in opposition to Modi.
5 suspected militants killed in Kashmir fighting, Indian military says
- India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety
- Militants in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989
SRINAGAR, India: Government forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed five suspected militants in a gunbattle on Thursday, the Indian military said.
Soldiers and police launched a joint operation after receiving a tip that rebels were hiding in a village in southern Kulgam district, the military said in a statement. The militants opened “indiscriminate and heavy volumes of fire” at the raiding troops, leading to a gunbattle, it said.
Five militants were killed in the fighting, the statement said, adding that two soldiers were also injured. Troops continued to search the area. There was no independent confirmation of the battle.
India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety.
Militants in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.
India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and many Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.
