Dorothea Erbele-Küster | Volker Küster (Eds.): Between Pandemonium and Pandemethics (Leseprobe)

10 Introduction
• How does religion help to cope with the crisis?
• How does the Covid-19 pandemic affect interreligious life and practices?
Pradeep Chakkarath focus lies on the situation and responses from
within Hinduism in India as by far the largest number of Hindus live
in India. He argues that Hindu worldview integrating suffering as part
of human existence and meditation practices help to cope with the
pandemic. At the same time hygiene measures reinforce social inequalities
of the caste system and conceptions of impurity. Carola Roloff
also points out that Buddhist worldview is regarding suffering as a
central feature of human existence that has to be overcome by eliminating
the root causes in human greed, hatred and delusion. Likewise,
meditation may help in coping with the pandemic. Annette Boeckler
investigates how Judaism has changed due to transpositions of religious
practices into the virtual space in response to the Corona hygiene
politics. From an outsider perspective one is tempted to ask in
how far some of these changes are also boosted due to diasporic existence?
The sudden availability of virtual religious practices allowed
new networks in the global Jewish diaspora to be woven.
In spite all efforts we finally did not succeed including a Muslim
voice, not the least due to the restraints of the Covid-19 pandemic
itself authors withdraw their commitment last minute. Similar to blaming
the pandemic on the Jews in rightwing conspiracy theories, in India
Muslims were suspected of launching a “Corona-Jihad”. While
some fundamentalist Muslims saw the pandemic as divine punishment
against the infidels, in general Muslim religious authorities cooperated
with government health policies and regulations and advised believers
to pray in private rather than in public gatherings like the Friday prayer
and to abstain from the traditional pilgrimage (hadj) to Mecca. Also,
religious feasts like Ramadan were restricted to the private realm
of the family home. In Germany arouse a discussion about allowing
the Muezzin call to prayer and Muslim religious prayers on TV in
analogy to the Christian church bells and TV church services. While
in Germany and other Western countries the focus of the public debate
was on the cancelation of Easter and Christmas celebrations and the
consequences for religious and family life, Muslims and Jews pointed
out that their feasts and families were affected too. As a matter of fact,
this should have been debated as an interreligious issue.
Jude Lal Fernando highlights precisely interfaith responses to
the pandemic, as a counter voice to dominant responses to the pan-