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-Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
Mosque's makeshift morgue shows virus toll on UK minorities |
2020-04-27 |
![]() While the mosque in the central England city has been closed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, its parking lot has been transformed into a temporary morgue with room for 150 bodies. The volunteer-run mortuary, with its white tents, industrial refrigerators and neat stacks of coffins, is evidence of the toll the virus is taking on Britain’s Muslim and ethnic-minority communities. The two most diverse regions of the U.K. — London and the Midlands area centered in Birmingham — have seen the largest number of deaths in the outbreak. Mohammed Zahid, a mosque trustee who helped set up the mortuary with a firm of Muslim funeral directors, said the mosque in Birmingham’s predominantly South Asian Small Heath district normally holds one or two funerals a week. In the last few weeks, "we were doing five to six a day," he said. "You can see how the families were grieving," said 44-year-old Zahid, who wears a mask, coveralls and gloves as he moves among the coffins. Local government social-distancing rules allow only six people to attend each burial. "Especially when they can’t get their own cousins and brothers and sisters around them — it’s made it really hard for the people who’ve lost their loved ones," said Zahid, who has lost two aunts to COVID-19. "What do you say to a family who’s got five sons or daughters, and some of them have to stay home?" It’s a similar story at the nearby Green Lane Mosque, where coffins lie stacked up inside the prayer hall. Usually the mosque holds about 25 funerals a year. For the past three weeks it has seen five a day. |
Posted by:Besoeker |
#4 Condolences. I hear Iowa has a plethora of pig skin body bags. |
Posted by: Woodrow 2020-04-27 13:00 |
#3 neat stacks of coffins Long gun storage |
Posted by: Skidmark 2020-04-27 10:52 |
#2 An ammo dump and a morgue - versatile religion. |
Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2020-04-27 10:14 |
#1 ethnic-minority communities You mean like Britons, Saxons and all other white folk? |
Posted by: AlanC 2020-04-27 07:45 |