Leader

NST Leader: Of Covid-19 and congregations

COVID-19 has changed many things. One of these is religious congregations. Everywhere you look, mosques, churches and temples are empty of their faithful.

The Movement Control Order (MCO) has made sure of this. But this doesn’t mean religion has retreated from humanity.

Disasters do make men scurry to God for help. All humans do this, even the atheists, because our souls seek this innate connection with the Creator.

The Arabs call this fitrah, our original disposition. A good reading of the history of religions will tell us that since Adam (pbuh), our common ancestor, set foot on Earth some 8,000 years ago, he came packaged with faith in God.

Over the years, this faith has changed and so have the names of God. Covid-19 can’t change this. If at all, the coronavirus has made men’s faith even stronger.

One strength of the faith is this: introspection. Post-Covid-19, men around the world are giving a really Big Think.

About who we are. About our relationship with the Creator and other created things on this Earth we have made so fragile. Such introspection should lead us to one critical message: there is a proper place for everything.

The Arabs have a word for it: adab. For the discerning eyes, science repeats this message. Even the insects must be left to pursue their purpose, however insignificant it may appear to us. If we disregard their universe, they will disturb ours.

This is world-renowned British primatologist Jane Goodall’s point about Covid-19 being the result of our disrespect to animals (NST, April 12). Disrespect is the disturbance of the Arabic adab, the created order of things.

And our disregard didn’t stop there. We have been harming and hurting our fellow human beings equally badly. And for the longest of time.

Race, religion or anything remotely different is enough to summon prejudice to the aid. Even as Covid-19 is ravaging the human race, Africans in China and Asians in Europe are bearing the brunt of racism.

The brutal truth is this: there will always be a Nero somewhere playing the fiddle when a Rome here and there burns.

To these, and the rest of us, we pass on Goodall’s message this newspaper carried: “We can all make a difference, everyone can.”

The houses of worship may be empty, but our hearts mustn’t be. For it is here our love for the Creator and His creations begins. We have time enough to grow this love, beginning with our family.

At the heart of it, faith is the individual’s link to God, and through it, the solidarity with the family, community and the rest of humanity. Thus does love ripple through.

Covid-19 is indeed a great reset, not just for the economy and environment but also the soul. A soul at peace with itself will be at peace with everything around it.

Christians welcomed Easter on Sunday in the quiet of their homes, not in packed churches as they have been doing for 2,000 years. There will be no public prayers this Ramadan for Muslims too.

Again, a first in living memory. Perhaps there is wisdom in this MCO-imposed break. In our usual hurry and haste, we have lost the link to God. And with it the link to the rest of His creations.

Covid-19 is here to tell us to return and begin at the beginning thus: place everything in its proper place.

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