Of COVID-19, Religion, and Conspiracy Theories

(By Farooq A. Kperogi) - Coronavirus and Exploding Conspiracy Theories of Religious Crackpots

Of COVID-19, Religion, and Conspiracy Theories

The novel coronavirus is not only devastating humankind, it is also disrupting the settled certainties and spiritual verities of religious fanatics for whom atavistic and superstitious frames of reference are the only ways to make sense of the world around them. 

I’ll start from fringe members of my own religious community. When the new coronavirus first emerged in China, a lunatic fringe of the Nigerian Muslim community celebrated it and said it was Allah’s punishment against China for mistreating its Muslim minority population.

They said the clearest indication that it was divine pestilence to avenge the persecution of Chinese Muslims could be seen in the fact that all Chinese people were compelled to cover their whole bodies in ways that were reminiscent of the sartorial choices Allah enjoined Muslims, especially Muslim women, to make, which China denies its Muslim minority.

I recall telling a religious crackpot who made this silly argument early this year that it wasn’t the first time that people had covered their bodies in response to a pandemic. The 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed nearly half a million Nigerians and more than 50 million people worldwide, caused people to wear face masks.

COVID-19: Health Crisis and Crisis of Faith

Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church is silhouetted against the rising sun in Kansas City, MO., 

Wednesday, April 8, 2020. With Easter Sunday in several days, many churches are looking for 

ways to celebrate the occasion in light of stay-at-home orders and restrictions on gathering in an

 effort to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

(By Anthea Butler) - Is faith as we know it enough to get us through a pandemic?

(RNS) — This week, Christians will not gather in the streets of Seville, Spain, for the annual Semana Santa processions. There will be no washing of feet on Holy Thursday. Seven last words services on Good Friday will be livestreamed. For Jews, Passover has taken place at tables devoid of physical outside guests. Friday prayers at mosques will not happen. 

It turns out that a virus we cannot see is a more formidable threat to religious faith than secularism, government or unbelief. Catholics and Confucians, Buddhists and Baptists have all seen their piety give way to the coronavirus, which demands a solitary sufficiency that forbids the tactile, communal rituals that one would normally see this time of year.

Covid-19 is a health crisis, but it is also a crisis of faith.

This new normal will have profound implications for religious groups. Some will make it through this time, and their faith will be stronger for it. This is a test for believers — in the face of death, and robbed of their rituals and practices, what remains of their faith? It is a dark night of the soul, the ripping away of the familiar, the comforting, the soothing.

Many around the world have already been tested. In the Detroit area, seven bishops and leaders of the Church of God in Christ have died from the virus. Outbreaks have risen in the Orthodox Jewish community. In South Korea, the coronavirus outbreak began in a church in Daegu; in France, Covid-19 spread through a meeting of evangelicals in Mulhouse.

COVID-19, 5G Conspiracy Theories, & Empire Wars

(By Obinna Aligwekwe) - In all the midst of conflicting theories, conspiracy and otherwise, here are a few things I have been able to gather. 

These facts are verifiable:

1. America won the 4G war, and generated over $100 billion in GDP.

2. There was an intense race for 5G, a race which China has all but emerged victorious.

3. 5G is 20 times more powerful than 4G.

4. 5G has the capacity to generate 3 million jobs, and add $500 billion to GDP.

5. Most importantly, the nation that controls 5G, will control the world via information. Basically, 5G is the new nuclear button.

6. Donald Trump, on realising the US had lost, cancelled a contract with HUAWEI, Chinese tech giant, thereby stunting the progress of the technology in the West.
-----------------------------------------------------

Something makes me feel the disinformation regarding 5G is about GLOBAL POWER.

I may be wrong.
----------------------------------------------------

My theory is:

The US may be buying time with which to develop their 5G and keep it at par with the Chinese.

The sad thing for them is... China is already working on 6G!!

Of Coronavirus and Africa: The Illusion of Disbelief

(By Reuben Abati) - Corona Chronicles

… Throughout known history, whenever man faces a crisis of such unknowable nature, his tendency is to resort to religion, faith, and ego. … Religion … is precisely what many fall back upon in a season of distress and so it has been. As Corona Virus arrived in Africa, and made its landing in a few countries, the people trooped to places of religious worship in typical default response. Africans, victims of Karl Marx’s often wrongly contextualized statement that “religion is the opium of the people” usually blame God for everything. They regard God as the ultimate solution, indeed as the know-it-all-Being, the invocation of whose name can provide all answers to everything on earth. Richard Swinburne, a theist argues in his book – Is There A God? (Oxford University Press, 2010), that whereas the existence of God is “the ultimate brute fact”, human beings also have “obligations” or what he calls “supererogatory good actions” or “moral truths” to which they must abide even as they profess their love for God.

Africans often mix this up. As the Corona Virus pestilence spreads in the continent from one or two cases to over 1, 500 cases and over 50 deaths, more of the people rely on the assurances of Pastors and Imams who promise a cure or advertise the possibility of it. In Ghana, one Prophet said he had found an anointing oil to cure Corona Virus, and the Chief Imam of the same country reportedly announced that all Muslims are now free to consume alcohol to combat Corona Virus. While Europeans and Asians are in quarantine, Africans rush for anointing oil, alcohol and herbal solutions. When Trump [erroneously and carelessly] proclaimed chloroquine as cure, they obeyed him robotically. In Nigeria, pastors and all sorts have come up with passages in the Bible to justify the pestilence and how the cure is spiritual.