The Challenge Of Managing The Corona Crisis Trauma: Religion Has A Positive Role To Play! 

By Mohamed Harees –APRIL 1, 2020

Lukman Harees

This Coronavirus pandemic is a disaster of seismic magnitude of our times; a world-shattering event whose far-ranging consequences cannot be fathomed yet. Perhaps more than any disease in living memory, it chimes with our society’s fears. If ever we needed reminding that we live in an interconnected world, the novel corona virus has brought that home. It is thus a test not only of our healthcare systems and mechanisms for responding to infectious diseases, but also of our ability to work together as a community of nations in the face of a common challenge. It is also fact that this global, novel virus that keeps us contained in our homes—maybe for months—is already reorienting our relationship to government, to the outside world, even to each other. Thus ,if the shock of corona virus disruption isn’t enough for us to recalibrate and reflect on our values and life priorities, what will be? 

In the hopes of ‘flattening the curve’ of the pandemic, a coronavirus culture has emerged, spontaneously and creatively, to deal with public fear, restrictions on daily life, and the tedious isolation of quarantine. Traditions have developed because they fit the ecology and biology of the times. This crisis has also raised serious medical, ethical and logistical questions too. But, for faith communities who are among those most affected by this virus simply by virtue of the fact that they gather in person frequently, it raises additional questions and challenges. 

There is a point of view, that COVID-19 crisis poses a challenge to faith and religion, thereby losing its potency in the lives of people, as ‘science and medicine’ is said to be working out to be a more reliable solution in fighting this pandemic. However, it is naïve to make this comparison as faith/religious values and science is not in contradiction with each other. Each plays important, significant and complementary roles in our lives. Faith in the Divine and prayers hold us together in hope and community as a distraught world is losing its sense of direction and purpose at these difficult times, while ‘science and medicine’ is effectively tackling the virus in practical ways. Thus, down on earth, as this pandemic has been felling lives, livelihoods and normalcy, on the contrary, billions of the faithful, are drawing even closer to religion, which has become the solace of first resort for them!

During the  course of history, faith in the Divine power, has been the glue that holds people together in moments of crisis like this and also a purveyor of hope in moments of immense anxieties and fears. It has been a remedy against despair, providing psychological and emotional support that is an integral part of well-being. At a time when the people are exercising social distancing and are facing lockdowns and curfews, religion also acts as antidote to loneliness, which several medical experts point to as one of the most worrisome public health issues of our time. At a deeper level, religion, for worshipers, is the ultimate source of meaning. Besides, the most profound claim of every religion is to make sense of the whole of existence. Thus, when the religious needs of practicing people aren’t met, it leads to a tension between physical health and spiritual comfort, which in some ways becomes an irreconcilable one- a dilemma which inevitably generates some sort of interior starvation. Thus, for the faithful, religion becomes a fundamental source of spiritual healing and hope for human kind, and will in fact complement the efforts of the scientific and medical community in helping  them to manage this crucial time phase in their recorded history. In this context, the role of religion in helping to manage this crisis; even its post-phase, will expand rather than diminish as some may naively think. 

Already religion has been playing a positive role in the containment exercise of this virus. Many changes and adjustments are already evident in the practise of faiths in the face of this global pandemic. Around the world, many faiths have been adapting to the new reality surrounding the Corona crisis. Heeding public health warnings, churches, mosques, Hindu Kovils, Buddhist temples and synagogues are changing rituals in an effort to contain the spread of the virus. Houses of worship have already faced closure or have gone empty. Many religious leaders have made fervent appeals to the faithful to stay at home and engage in worship, while making unprecedented and drastic moves to change their routines, such as cancelling worship services, closing religious schools and holy sites. For Muslims for example, congregational prayers on Friday is a religious obligation. But as congregations across the country and the world weighed whether to stay open, experts in Islamic law stepped in, entreating the faithful to follow government guidelines and avoid the mosque even for these weekly congregational Friday prayers and instead pray at home. Saudi Arabia closed both sacred mosques in Makkah and Medina. Other religious leadership too made similar moves. Sunday Mass and Easter services cancelled too. The imperative need to avoid public spaces in hoping to contain the spread of coronavirus, was impressed upon on believers of all stripes knowing that God helps those who help themselves and others around them, with thoughtful prudence.

How significant will the role of religions be, during this difficult phase and its post-phase? The interaction between religious and scientific communities can however be inhibited by a perception that they don’t share the same worldview. But in fact, both religion and science basically work around a same core value- to heal mankind and the world around them in different ways.  Thus, if ever religious and scientific communities need to join together in pursuing wholeness and healing for the world, it’s now, when mankind is facing an existential threat.

The coronavirus pandemic is affecting all nations and all classes of people, redrawing global priorities and disrupting economies in unprecedented ways not known in recent history. Each country needs every other country and everyone within its borders in its fight against this deadly virus. The wizardry of modern technology is overwhelmed and the advanced medical systems of the super powers have palpably become idle boasts in the face of a shock of this magnitude. Even the US despite being a great power, in the wake of this COVID-19 transnational threat, like climate change, has come to realize that it cannot protect its security by acting alone. This crisis will reshuffle the international power structure in ways we can only imagine, as it provides a seismic shock that permanently changes the international system and balance of power as we know it. The pandemic itself is proof of our interdependence. Every nation, and increasingly every individual, is experiencing the societal strain of this disease in new and powerful ways. Amidst this, there is also a conflicting reality that all countries are turning inward and saying, ‘I am going to do what is good for me’. 

Be it as it may, isn’t Corona Pandemic a great leveller of sorts? The world, particularly the powerful nations, in its on-going and Post corona phase ought to realise their inherent weakness in the wake of  this invisible enemy and therefore realize the imperative need for humility and  inter dependency and support without engaging in futile shows of macho power. The mirage of dignity and the reality of inequality in the lives of people are exposed like never before. The religion has a role to play in taking this message to the grass root level of the society and encourage them to think and compel their leaders to think about all levels of humanity whether within or outside their borders. There is also a need for the institution of Religion to provide leadership along with the HR activists to force the hands of their governments as well as international agencies to initiate sustainable and realistic programs of action to help the poor and the needy across the globe, and stop the hypocrisy around the human rights regimes used by the powerful nations as a tool to control the developing world.    

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