The UK can learn lessons from how Muslim leaders organised themselves against Covid-19 in 2020
On the fifth anniversary of the global pandemic, my research underlines the important work of Muslim leaders and healthcare workers
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On 9 March, to mark the fifth anniversary of the global Covid-19 pandemic, towns and cities across the UK hosted hundreds of events to remember those who died and pay tribute to frontline health workers.
But while the impact of the pandemic — which resulted in just under 227,000 deaths in the UK — continues for those who experienced bereavement and long-term health complications, many will be moving on with their lives as their experiences fade to a distant memory.
This should concern us all, particularly in regions where the pandemic worsened a number of pre-existing health and social inequalities among UK minority groups, including those of Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds. While we know Muslim communities encompass multiple ethnic identities, national and local level government data collected on Covid-19 neglected to measure religion, leading to a substantial void in information on how Muslims were being impacted as a religious group.
It was this knowledge gap that led myself and a colleague at Birmingham City University to design the first academic project of its kind examining how the city’s Muslims were affected by Covid and the measures they took to manage it.
Our project, conducted between February 2021 and December 2022, identified a number of lessons to be learned about Muslims, often wrongly perceived as “hard to reach” by policymakers. Our research involved 141 participants and revealed the existence of a number of new partnerships between local public health authorities and Muslim communities forged through managing the threat of Covid-19.
The realities of Covid were stark for minority communities in the UK. In the first and second wave, from 24 January 2020 to 8 January 2021, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Black African and Black Caribbean males had significantly higher mortality rates than their white counterparts.
Our interviews revealed the extent to which Muslim voices have been broadly absent or overlooked in important public policy developments. For example, at a time where national restrictions meant only two people could be present in any mosque at the same time, agreements were made with authorities in Birmingham to allow the presence of a third person so that prayers could be livestreamed to online audiences.
We also encountered numerous examples of online disinformation and fake news about Muslims alleging a failure to follow government mandated restrictions. These were frequently “evidenced” using photographs of large groups of Muslims praying that had been taken years earlier. Our research showed the very opposite to be true, with faith leaders supporting participation with public health initiatives in the community.
Early on, I was lucky enough to make contact with Khaleel (not his real name), and several other key Muslim individuals who helped shape our research. He was the lead for a local welfare group and was instrumental in co-ordinating initial meetings between health authorities and mosques in Birmingham. This led to the decision to close all mosques in the city one week prior to the announcement of the first national lockdown on 23 March 2020.
The effort and work that went into achieving this in a city where nearly 30% of residents identify as Muslim was vast and goes completely against online claims about Muslims as “super-spreaders”. In fact, Muslim faith leaders were instrumental in ensuring that mosques hosted testing and vaccine centres and drew on Islamic teachings to encourage engagement with potentially controversial initiatives such as temporarily using alcohol-based sanitisers.
The initial depth of mistrust about vaccines was sizable. At the time we carried out our research in 2021 and 2022, the proportion of our British Bangladeshi or British Pakistani participants who were unvaccinated was 18%. This was 5.5 percentage points higher than the national average for British Bangladeshis (12.5%), and 2 percentage points higher than the national average for British Pakistanis (16%).
This trend was identified by community leaders early on and resulted in the first Covid-19 vaccine centre on a mosque premises being set up in Birmingham, with local health officials working with religious leaders to encourage vaccine uptake.
This support also extended to non-faith-based community organisations who pro-actively engaged with Muslims on public health initiatives. One such intervention by the Muslim leader of one organisation led to the opening of a number of vaccination centres in trusted spaces.
These initiatives were largely driven by high death rates among Muslims in the UK. From the outset of the pandemic, Muslim organisations struggled to cope with Covid fatalities and it was reported that some mosques had arranged for additional cold storage. While this was accurate, it overlooked how Muslim communities made key health and safety changes in response to the deaths. Where burial rites, or ghusl mayyit, had previously been primarily a family-centred responsibility, this would now fall to mosques. This shift led to national Islamic burial authorities working with younger generations to provide formal training programmes around burial preparations.
We also saw restrictions placed on the number of attendees at prayers for the deceased and funerals, which were outdoors and adhered to social distancing guidelines. Rumours of government-mandated cremations for Muslims wouldn’t come to pass, but they highlight the importance of transparent communication and collaboration with Muslims as stakeholders in public health policy.
Community leaders themselves faced an elevated risk of contracting Covid-19. This also extended to those Muslims working in the NHS who were constantly exposed to the threat of Covid whilst knowing that they were among the groups experiencing the most extreme effects of the pandemic. This was a tragic reality for many Muslims, with Amged El Hawrani, Habib Zaidi, and Adel El Tayar being the first three doctors working in the UK to die from Covid-19.
The sacrifices of the Muslims who helped throughout the pandemic have been overlooked by the current Covid inquiry but should serve as an important outcome. If there is one key lesson from 2020, it is to acknowledge the contribution made by Muslims in confronting Covid-19 and the importance of building trust between communities, authorities and policymakers.
Dr Damian Breen’s research project, Religious community organisations’ interventions around the impact of Coronavirus on Muslims in Birmingham in post-Covid Britain, was funded through the UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) Agile Response to Covid-19 scheme by the Economic and Social Research Council.
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