Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, many people have been spending less time socializing and a lot more time staying at home glued to their digital devices. The act of obsessively checking the latest news updates during coronavirus has even garnered its own term: “doomscrolling.”
But consuming more information doesn’t necessarily result in being better informed. A 2019 report from the Digital Democracy Project studying misinformation in election coverage in Canada found that consuming high amounts of news through social media or traditional news outlets was also associated with higher levels of misinformation. For media to be as effective and accurate as possible, it also needs to be of high-quality and backed by strong reporting that includes perspectives that represent the full breadth of Canadian experiences.
We’ve already discussed the importance of fact-checking and the need to prevent harmful stereotypes when consuming news, but how can media structures themselves change to ensure their reporting is as accurate as possible?
One solution is to begin effectively addressing the issue of diversity in Canadian media. When it comes to COVID-19, diversity in how stories are sourced and reported helps to make sure all communities are being represented and served by health authorities. As it stands, Canadian media still has a long way to go.
Currently, very few recent metrics measuring diversity in Canadian media exist, and many news organizations have been unwilling to share their own data. In 2016, Canadaland reached out to 18 newspapers across the country asking them to participate in a diversity survey. Only three news organizations agreed.
What little information we do know shows that Canadian media is overwhelmingly white. A 2019 Ryerson University study found that white op-ed columnists were overrepresented in Canadian media outlets relative to the population of Canada, and that the gap had increased over time. An earlier 2004 study of 37 Canadian daily newspapers found that “racial minorities are more than five times underrepresented in daily newsrooms” across all sections.
Fighting misinformation also means allowing diverse voices to tell their stories in their own terms. Toronto-based filmmaker Sherien Barsoum is a founding member of the Racial Equity Media Collective (REMC), tasked with advocating for BIPOC media creators. REMC works mostly in film, documentary, and television, where BIPOC creators may face barriers when trying to break into the industry. “Newsrooms and boardrooms and executive suites are sadly not filled with diverse voices. They are overwhelmingly homogenous. And, you know, I think that means that we often get stories that are repeated and that are told from just a handful perspectives,” says Barsoum.
Diversity needs to extend beyond the journalists who tell the stories, and also include the experts, researchers, and community members interviewed for the stories themselves. When it comes to COVID-19, drawing from diverse sources at the reporting level will provide more accurate insight into what is happening on the ground.
Early-on in the pandemic, before the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention was tracking the racial disparities of COVID-19 infection rates, Black doctors raised concerns that communities of colour were not being given adequate testing and treatment. They turned out to be entirely correct: data now shows that Black and Hispanic people in the United States are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
Black writers were also at the forefront of highlighting these issues. CityLab writer Brentin Mock laid out the long history of racist beliefs behind the myth that Black Americans were somehow immune to COVID-19. Back in April, Ibram X. Kendi, an author and the director of the Antiracist Research & Policy Center, wrote in The Atlantic about the need for more data on the demographics of COVID-19 infections and deaths in order to understand the “racial pandemic within the viral pandemic.”
More diverse newsrooms make it less likely that perspectives like these fall through the cracks. The Canadian Association of Black Journalists and Canadian Journalists of Colour have recommended increasing “representation and coverage of racialized communities by hiring more editors and reporters of colour,” in a recent list of calls to action for increased diversity in Canadian newsrooms. “A more diverse news team translates into more diverse coverage,” the organizations stated.
There are some signs of change. The media landscape’s shift to digital has, in some ways, made it possible for a greater plurality of voices to come to the fore through a variety of methods, like making it possible for writers to grow their audience through Twitter or using online resources to connect to new opportunities. The recent worldwide protests surrounding racist police violence have also had an effect, forcing media publications to have difficult conversations about the diversity of their staff and how they report on race.
“I actually am really hopeful,” says Barsoum, citing promising progress in the media’s view on how diversity can add to their programming. “It’s not just essential so things become better for people of colour, it’s for all of us — we all benefit. It makes for a more human experience of the world.”
On March 17, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, any travel related to refugee resettlement would be suspended, including government-sponsored and privately-sponsored refugees to Canada.
The suspension of resettlement, along with stay-at-home orders and border shutdowns, have important ramifications for refugees who, by definition, have been forced to leave their home countries to find safety. With many refugees remaining displaced for years in camps or urban settings, resettlement is a vital tool that allows families and individuals to find stability in a new country. Canada, a global leader in resettlement, was set to bring in over 30,000 refugees in 2020. However, there have been less than 10,000 refugees resettled worldwide so far this year.
Though some right-wing outlets have suggested that refugees pose too much of an economic burden, research suggests that countries tend to actually benefit economically once refugees are resettled. Not only that, but Canada may be ignoring its international obligations by turning away asylum seekers who arrive at the border seeking safety.
Earlier policies in response to COVID-19 barred entry to all refugee claimants attempting to come to Canada, but a more recent policy has allowed for certain exceptions: some claimants can enter Canada from the United States at official border crossings before being made to quarantine for fourteen days in hotel rooms reserved by the Canada Border Services Agency. This exemption only applies under specific conditions, such as when claimants have close family in Canada or face the death penalty in their home country.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, asylum claimants were also able to enter at unauthorized border crossings, such as the Quebec-New York crossing at Roxham Road, and make an asylum claim once in Canada. Now, those entering at unauthorized border crossings are being turned away and sent back to the U.S. where they risk being deported back to their home country.
The Canadian Council for Refugees has called the new ban “wrong and unnecessary,” and Amnesty International has said that the measure violates the rights of refugees seeking safety, citing Canada’s obligations under the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention. Advocates have even argued that the Canadian government could face legal consequences for violating “non-refoulement,” the principle that individuals cannot be returned to a country where they will face persecution or torture.
Reverend Scott Jones, the executive director of Micah House, a refugee shelter in Hamilton, Ont., says he’s seen a noticeable reduction in the number of referrals his organization handles, from between 60 and 70 in a typical month to between five and 10 since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Micah House offers short-term stays to refugee and asylum claimants, as well as assisting them with resettlement and connecting them to other services.
But services for refugees and asylum seekers who are already in Canada have also been restricted. The Canadian government has instructed resettlement service providers to only “focus on providing critical settlement and resettlement services,”, and in-person appointments with the Immigration and Refugee Review Board of Canada — which determine permanent residency claims for some refugees — have been temporarily suspended.
For now, guests at Micah House are in limbo, as many of the aspects of resettlement, like beginning school and accessing housing, remain out of reach. But, so far at least, they’ve been able to stay healthy. With more than 600 cases of COVID-19 in Hamilton, Micah House has managed to avoid any positive cases in their facility. Refugees in other centres have not been as fortunate.
[icc_block_quote quote=”I do know, at least a couple of our clients are suffering pretty greatly because of this. They already have barriers of language, barriers of culture, they don’t have access to family.” author=”Reverend Scott Jones” border_colour=”#000000″]
Willowdale Welcome Centre in Toronto had the largest COVID-19 outbreak in the city’s shelter system, which includes 72 other facilities. More than a dozen staff members and 185 clients at Willowdale tested positive for COVID-19, according to reporting from the Toronto Star. So far, no deaths related to the outbreak have been reported.
Beyond just the health effects of COVID-19, refugees in Canada also need to cope with the psychological impact of living in isolation. Being in a new country — sometimes without the ability to speak English or French — and away from their support systems, often after having lived through considerable trauma, refugees are already in a vulnerable position. Add to that lockdown measures and isolation in an unfamiliar place, and the effects can be even more severe.
“I do know, at least a couple of our clients are suffering pretty greatly because of this. They already have barriers of language, barriers of culture, they don’t have access to family,” says Jones. “There’s a level of discomfort for them that’s added on.”
Not only does Canada have a legal and, arguably, moral responsibility to assist these groups, the country also stands to benefit from doing so. Contrary to some right-wing discourse that casts refugees as an economic burden, research shows that newcomers actually have a net positive benefit economically.
One recent study tracking newcomers over 30 years across 15 countries in Western Europe found that increases in migration “significantly increase per capita GDP, reduce unemployment, and improve the balance of public finances,” and that “the additional public expenditures, which is usually referred to as the ‘refugee burden,’ is more than outweighed by the increase in tax revenues.”
Newcomers to Canada, says Jones, are more likely to be essential workers, especially during the first few years after they arrive, making them even more vulnerable to the risks surrounding COVID-19. “They’re working at slaughterhouses, they’re working in fields, they’re working in greenhouses, they’re taxi drivers, and so forth. It’s a group of people that have one more area of marginalization,” he says.
As the pandemic continues, Canada has the opportunity to provide more resources to this underserved group and uphold its international obligations. Meanwhile, the situation for refugees around the world remains uncertain: the UN has stated that it will lift resettlement travel restrictions “as soon as prudence and logistics permit.” Currently, no plans have been announced.
Canada’s health-care workforce has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 3,600 health-care workers testing positive for the virus so far. Early on, the pressure that COVID-19 was expected to put on the health-care system forced policymakers to consider new measures to increase their supply of doctors. One of those measures was the introduction of a certificate that would allow internationally trained doctors without Canadian medical licenses to practise in Ontario temporarily under certain strict conditions.
The new temporary licensing policy, called the Supervised Short-Duration Certificate, dips into Ontario’s supply of international medical graduates (IMGs), many of whom are currently unable to work in their fields. (IMGs also include Canadian citizens who studied medicine abroad.) A similar measure in British Columbia also allows internationally trained doctors to practise during the pandemic.
But these new measures highlight the long-standing difficulties internationally trained doctors face when trying to gain their full medical license in Canada. In Ontario alone, there are 13,000 internationally trained doctors who are not currently working in their field according to statistics from HealthForceOntario. The new measures seek to use the untapped potential of these IMGs, but they also raise the question: Why wasn’t Canada employing this skilled workforce already?
For an IMG to become a fully licensed doctor in Ontario, they need to have graduated with a medical degree from a university recognized in the World Directory of Medical Schools, pass a series of written and practical exams, and complete a residency program. While Canadian-trained graduates have a similar licensing process, IMGs sometimes encounter more barriers along the way.
One of the main obstacles IMGs face is at the residency stage. Provinces set aside a limited number of residency spaces for IMGs — far fewer than the number who apply — creating a bottleneck of qualified applicants and making it difficult for graduates to proceed to the next step in their medical licensing qualifications.
[icc_block_quote quote=”I think at some point we need to ask the question: Shouldn’t residency seats go to the individual who is going to make the greatest contribution” author=”Deidre Lake” border_colour=”#000000″]
“I understand that, as a medical system, we invest in our Canadian medical graduates,” says Deidre Lake, executive director of the Alberta International Medical Graduates Association (AIMGA). “But we also have IMGs coming with training and experience that we haven’t paid for, and that has been really, in some sense, a cost savings, and yet we’re only letting them apply for a limited number of seats.”
“I think at some point we need to ask the question: Shouldn’t residency seats go to the individual who is going to make the greatest contribution and shouldn’t IMGs have a fair chance applying for residency seats alongside Canadian medical graduates?” she says.
Even after the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada could help address its low number of doctors by tapping into this reserve of international medical graduates waiting to practise. Canada currently ranks twenty-fifth among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries when it comes to the ratio of doctors to population, with 2.8 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants. Austria, first on the list, has nearly double that figure, with 5.2 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants.
Canada also has comparatively long wait times for specialist appointments and emergency room care compared to other industrialized countries, as well as a lack of family physicians in some provinces — which could be linked to the country’s shortage of doctors, according to a 2018 report from the Fraser Institute.
Current trends suggest we will see only “a small increase in the physician-to-population ratio” between now and 2030. And, if we factor in the current rate at which IMGs are entering health care, “the ratio will only improve from 2.74 physicians per thousand population in 2015 to 2.97 in 2030” without considerable increases, the report states.
In addition to policy issues, potential bias toward immigrant IMGs could also pose a barrier to those trying to practise in Canada. One study published in the medical journal Canadian Family Physician found that, though immigrant IMGs tended to have more years of training and clinical experience, “a relatively greater proportion of Canadian IMGs” were successful in obtaining residency positions.
Not only that, the limited number of immigrant IMGs who are eventually accepted into residency programs are more likely than their Canadian counterparts to experience discrimination on the basis of their background. A 2011 study of discriminatory behaviour experienced by family medicine residents in Alberta found that “a significantly greater proportion of [immigrant] IMGs perceived ethnicity, culture, or language” to be the basis of the discrimination they experienced, mostly in the form of “inappropriate verbal comments.”
Despite the issues IMGs face because of the country they come from or where they have studied, having a diversity of experience in health care can have many positive effects — and some IMGs have been able to put their cross-cultural and multilingual skills to use during the COVID-19 pandemic, including those who haven’t gained short-term certification. AIMGA has put together videos, written material, and digital information sessions about COVID-19 in several languages, translated by its diverse group of over 1,000 members from more than eighty countries.
AIMGA also assisted Alberta Health Services by calling 500 workers in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak at a meatpacking plant in order to give them more information about the virus. Sixty percent of the calls were to Filipino workers, conducted with the help of four Filipino AIMGA members who were able to communicate with them in their native language about the risks and symptoms associated with COVID-19.
[icc_block_quote quote=”We have members who are working as Uber drivers, who are working as health-care aides, or at a warehouse, or in a security position, and that’s certainly not what they had in mind when they chose to immigrate to Canada” author=”Deidre Lake” border_colour=”#000000″]
The volunteers engaged in this work do so, says Deidre Lake, because being a physician is their calling, and the urge to help others — especially during a medical crisis — is hard to ignore. “It really is detrimental to the individual, to the community, and to society when you have a highly educated, highly skilled individual who is unable to utilize their skills and knowledge,” she says.
But is asking IMGs to put themselves in harm’s way during a pandemic without also allowing for more long-term licensing options fair? Seventy-six physicians in Ontario are known to have contracted COVID-19 so far, and as the health-care system continues to be affected by hundreds of new cases in Ontario each day, the strain on the province’s physicians will likely continue to grow.
Meanwhile, a significant supply of IMGs — some of whom specialize or have experience in fields relevant to COVID-19, like ventilation and infectious diseases — languish in a state of unemployment or underemployment.
“We have members who are working as Uber drivers, who are working as health-care aides, or at a warehouse, or in a security position, and that’s certainly not what they had in mind when they chose to immigrate to Canada,” says Lake. “It’s heartbreaking, really, when we as a country can’t utilize the skills and knowledge that they’re coming with.”
Canoo member Joy Abasta became a Canadian citizen in February 2020. She says she chose Canada because of the country’s diversity, move towards inclusion, and the high respect for others’ rights and freedoms.
As a new citizen, Joy is actively and continuously learning about the Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and she knows it is both a privilege and a responsibility to be learning and living in the unceded Coast Salish Territories. She also believes that while immigrants and new citizens have much to contribute to Canadian society, it is also important to acknowledge that we all have to work together towards decolonization and reconciliation with the Indigenous Peoples to be a truly inclusive and progressive country. As a public health leader, she is an advocate and an ally in achieving culturally competent and gender-sensitive communities in British Columbia, and hopefully, in all of Canada.
Joy’s favourite place in Canada is Whitehorse, Yukon. “A week after my oath of citizenship in February 2020, my partner, Wesley, and I flew to Whitehorse, Yukon,” she explained, “There, we chased the Aurora Borealis, we met a Canadian ranger, and experienced dogsledding and snowmobiling. I learned more about trapping and got to feel and try on clothings made of real arctic fox, mink, and wolf pelts. The most unforgettable of them all was when we visited the Beringia Interpretive Centre where we learned more about Indigenous Peoples, human migration theory through the Bering ice bridge, and admired the remains of woolly mammoth, giant sloths, and saber-toothed cats.”
When travel restrictions due to the pandemic are over, Joy plans to visit other provinces and use her Canoo membership in museums and art galleries. She hopes to see the beauty and hidden gems of Winnipeg, Toronto, and the Maritimes.
Joy believes that cultural places and public art installations play a major role towards awareness and inclusivity: “These cultural places serve as a medium where we learn the country’s history, its traditions, cultures, and even the dark past. Social inclusion will only be achieved if we learn from history and that we truly welcome everyone regardless of their skin colour, race, gender, and social class.”
In the 20 years since Vincent Lam became a physician, he has experienced two widespread viral outbreaks: first SARS, which hit Toronto in 2003; and now the COVID-19 pandemic, which has left the city in a state of total shutdown since mid-March.
Lam is the co-author of the book The Flu Pandemic and You, and the medical director of the Coderix Medical Clinic, an addictions medicine centre in Toronto. He is also an accomplished fiction writer — his book Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
We spoke with him about what it’s like to work on the frontlines, how to manage the fear and anxiety surrounding pandemics, and the subtle ways that racism functions and flourishes during a crisis.
Sejla Rizvic: I wanted to discuss your previous experience working as an emergency room doctor during the SARS outbreak and now as a medical director during the COVID-19 pandemic. How do those two experiences compare?
Vincent Lam: It’s interesting because actually, as a physician, it isn’t that different. Many of the things that we were doing as precautionary measures are in fact the same things that we’re doing now. So in terms of screening, in terms of using personal protective equipment, that is all exactly the same. I think the biggest difference is just that the COVID-19 situation has had more of an impact. There have been more cases in the health-care system itself, and in the community at large things have been seriously affected.
During SARS, I remember feeling like we were in a bit of a parallel world, in the sense that in health-care we were taking care of people who were potentially sick and we were taking all these precautions and everything was really different. But in the city itself everything was pretty much business as usual. I mean, there were news stories, but there weren’t the same kinds of widespread public health interventions. The work was really the same, but the big difference was just the sense that we were in our own little bubble doing all this stuff. And now we’re all impacted.
I want to discuss your book The Flu Pandemic and You and some of the insights you offer about the anxiety that tends to surround pandemic events. How does anxiety affect our experience of this time?The principles that my co-author, Colin Lee, and I discuss in that book are almost entirely parallel between an influenza pandemic and the novel coronavirus pandemic. I think what we really need to understand as a society is that anxiety is normal. And the function of anxiety, as human beings, is to get our attention and to alert us to threats.
So it’s actually an incredibly useful role. Once we understand this is the role of anxiety, then we have to think “Okay, anxiety is supposed to function as this warning system so that I do something. What should I now do?” If people are able to formulate useful actions and figure out what they can do to help to protect those around them, to keep themselves and their families safe, then that’s really, really useful. If people have less productive reactions to anxiety, and of course we see some of that, then that’s not going to be helpful.
In an article for the Globe and Mail that you wrote in January, you state that: “Our minds are biased toward overestimating the significance of novel risks and nonchalantly accept familiar ones.” But what happens when the novel risk becomes the familiar risk, and governments and people begin to loosen lockdown restrictions prematurely?
One of the things that we can do with risk is to come to terms with it and still understand that it’s there, without it being the only thing that we’re paying attention to. But at the same time, we should modify our behaviour.
I remember getting into cars that didn’t have seatbelts in the back when I was a child. Now we think that’s really bizarre. Now our reflex is to put on a seatbelt when we get into a car. There’s a reason for that: if the car is going to crash, then we’re less likely to be injured or killed. But it’s not as if everytime we get into a car we sit there for ten seconds and imagine a horrific crash, right? We just get in, put the seatbelt on, and drive.
I think that’s really what we have to figure out if we reopen after the pandemic and before there’s a vaccine. It’s this question of what patterns can we change; figuring out what can we do that will allow life to continue while still modifying our behaviour in a way that reduces risk.
Coming back to the question of anxiety, I think the danger is that if people have this kind of defiant response, it’s really a response to anxiety. People don’t enjoy feeling anxious — it makes them feel vulnerable, it makes them feel like they have less agency, perhaps. So, in order to get away from that emotional state, some people will seek a way to feel better through an expression of defiance. Which is that, “You know what, I don’t have to be scared of whatever it is. Don’t tell me what to do.” There’s a sense in which that feels good, because it feels like I’m taking back my control, I’m asserting my agency, I’m acting in a powerful way by doing whatever it is that I want.
It’s an understandable way to try to get rid of feelings of anxiety. It’s just that it actually is not very helpful. People are going to try and achieve that really short-term sense of feeling powerful, of feeling good, of feeling defiant, and trade away sensible precautions for the sake of that short-term emotional benefit.
There has also been rampant anti-Asian racism and discrimination surrounding the novel coronavirus. Have you personally experienced this kind of discrimination?
I’ve been pretty fortunate, and I think Canada is still relatively fortunate, in that I don’t think we’ve had as much anti-Asian racism as a lot of places in the world. But we have had some unfortunate incidents.
I think there is a sense of wanting to take back some measure of personal power. If I’m feeling vulnerable, if there’s a situation that I don’t like, it feels satisfying in some ways to be able to point a finger, to be able to blame someone even if there’s no actual substantive truth to it. It does kind of give this sense of satisfaction in some way. So I think it comes from that place.
I don’t want to say too much about my patients because, ultimately, I’m their care provider and I have a duty of confidentiality toward what they say to me. But I can say that I’ve experienced flavours of comments that I think do come from a place of fear.
If someone is a person of Chinese descent and considers themself to be part of Canadian society — and especially if one is in a position of respect, a position of authority — it’s hard to know what to do with comments that may have some sort of racist implication. You’ve probably seen the whole Derek Sloan debacle with respect to his comments about Theresa Tam.
I think the incident you’re referring to is when Conservative MP Derek Sloan who, in a video posted to Facebook and Twitter last month, criticized Chief Public Health Officer of Canada Theresa Tam, and questioned whether she worked “for Canada or for China.”
It’s really quite difficult to know what to do as a person of Chinese descent in response to one of these incidents. I think Theresa Tam handled it perfectly — she made it clear that her role is that of a professional who is deeply engaged in doing the best possible job in a difficult time, and therefore she is not going to engage in what she called “noise.”
I’m sure it must be very hurtful for her, as Canada’s top public health official, to receive comments which may have a racist tone to them from an elected member of Parliament in the House of Commons. I can imagine that the personal dilemma for her might be — and I’m speculating because I don’t know for sure — that she feels the best way to really demonstrate her solidarity (not that she should have to) and demonstrate the value that she has as a member of Canadian society is to simply do the best job possible and to not allow herself to be drawn in and distracted by these really unsavoury comments.
I very much feel the same way. I do experience comments that are maybe tinged with something, but I feel that I’m here as a professional and what I should do is what I do best. And in the larger picture, that in itself should demonstrate who I am and what I stand for. But it doesn’t mean that those comments are not hurtful. It doesn’t mean that those comments are acceptable.
It’s just quite difficult, when one is in a professional capacity, to always respond to those comments in a way that is both effective as a professional and will address them directly. So sometimes one makes the decision simply to prioritize professionalism and to forgo any kind of direct confrontation. At the end of the day, I don’t really know whether that’s the best response in terms of confronting racism, but I think it’s often the decision that ends up being made, which I myself have made.
Sloan has since refused to apologize for those comments and claims that his statement was simply “rhetorical.” What do you make of that explanation?
In modern culture, we’ve learned that racism is wrong — and I think lots of people who are racist will even quite happily say that racism is wrong. It creates this tendency to couch comments in some sort of justification or some sort of double-speak. Sloan’s comment was called out by Canadian media; he responded to it and didn’t apologize. He just said that he didn’t refer to Tam’s ethnicity or country of origin. It felt very much like he was double-speaking his way out of a very embarrassing political situation.
I think because we live in a culture where, for the most part, we have all agreed that it is wrong to be racist. And what that means is that comments which are based on race or ethnicity, or that have some kind of underlying edge to them, are usually not stated in a way that is overtly racist. I think some of that is happening during this pandemic, and it’s a tricky thing to know how to deal with.
As we’ve reported before, people of Asian descent have been the targets of COVID-19-related harrassment and discrimination since the beginning of the pandemic. But COVID-19 has also highlighted existing prejudices against other groups, with Jewish and Muslim communities reporting an uptick in harassment, mistreatment, and the spread of disinformation about them in recent months.
In Montreal, Hasidic Jewish communities have spoken out against being unfairly scrutinized after several people made false reports to the police claiming to have witnessed community members congregating in synagogues and other indoor spaces. At a recent anti-lockdown demonstration in Columbus, Ohio, a protestor held up an anti-Semitic sign with the words “The real plague” next to an image of a rat and the Star of David. In France, a candidate for the far-right National Rally party had his party support revoked after liking a video shared on the social media website VK, promoting an anti-Semitic COVID-19 conspiracy theory.
The United Nations has reported an “alarming rise” in anti-Semitic hate speech during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It is imperative for the civil society organisations and faith-based actors to signal a zero-tolerance policy towards antisemitism online and offline,” said Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief.
Incidences of Islamophobia have also grown, including in India, where the term “Corona Jihad” was reportedly trending on Twitter just weeks after religious riots in New Delhi killed fifty-three people. In the U.K., far-right extremists have been sharing false and misleading images of Muslims, who they claim are flouting physical distancing rules. And in Thunder Bay, Ont., the husband and son of a doctor who is treating COVID-19 patients were verbally attacked while shopping at a grocery store.
“Even as Canadian Muslims die from COVID-19, we worry about how the entire Muslim community could face castigation in the case that even a single Muslim breaches quarantine,” writes Mustafa Farooq, CEO of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, in a recent Edmonton Journal op-ed.
In the face of increasing hostility, these communities have also been forced to alter some of their religious practices as lockdown measures remain in effect.
During recent Passover celebrations in early April, instead of gathering together around a table, many Jewish families celebrated their traditional Seder dinners digitally, using video-conferencing apps.
Some celebrants adapted elements of the Seder to reflect the current times, like choosing to complete the ritual washing of hands — often done symbolically — to be done for real, as an acknowledgment of current public health guidelines. Other elements of the Passover experience also had a special resonance; gathering to remember the ten plagues that led to the exodus of Jewish people from Egypt while a different kind of “plague” looms made this year’s celebration stand out from those past.
Now, in the midst of Ramadan, Muslims are trying to navigate new restrictions that are affecting their daily fasts and upcoming Eid celebrations.
“Islam as a religion is a very communal faith, and Ramadan is kind of the zenith of that communal spirit,” says Safiah Chowdhury, a 31-one-year-old Muslim woman living in Toronto who is active in her faith community. “With the orders for physical distancing and the closure of our mosques at this time, it inhibits a lot of the community spirit that typically is replete during Ramadan. It’s changed significantly,” she says.
These difficulties are coming at a time when celebrations like Ramadan are most needed. Studies have shown that religious practices across faiths can increase overall happiness. A 2010 Gallup poll found that, out of a sample size of over 675,000 Americans, those who identified as “very religious” (about 41 per cent of the population) had higher rates of emotional health, healthy behaviours, and overall well-being at that time. But with the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated shutdowns, the ability to lean on one’s faith community for support is greatly diminished.
“The digital way of gathering is okay, but it’s no replacement for being around hundreds of community members all in their Eid best,” says Chowdhury. She adds that there have been efforts to find digital workarounds — like celebrating iftar (the nightly breaking of the fast) over video, and offering religious programming online — with some positive effects. “None of this really replaces actual prayer, but it does provide a lot of knowledge, insight, and reflection,” she says.
Even with physical distancing measures in place, some cities have been stepping up to accommodate religious celebrations in new ways. For the first time, the City of Toronto is allowing the Islamic call to prayer to be broadcast from local mosques. Normally, amplified sounds are prohibited by the city’s municipal code but officials have agreed to make an exception, acknowledging the difficulties the city’s Muslims are facing during the pandemic. “Spiritual, emotional, and mental well-being is important during these difficult times,” Tammy Robinson, a city spokesperson, told the CBC.
Similar to the nightly 7:30 p.m. applause in support of health-care workers, Toronto’s call to prayer exception is meant to signal a sense of community with Muslims quarantined in their homes and separated from family and friends. Chowdhury, for her part, says measures like these provide a bit of solace during an otherwise difficult time. “If you’re in the vicinity and you’re able to hear it, it’s just really calming and reaffirming,” she says. “It’s been one of the nice things about Ramadan in isolation.”
