The British "Middle East Eye" news site said that Islamic charities and organizations in the United Kingdom are struggling to overcome the apparent disproportionate number of Muslims dying from the Coronavirus compared to others and the financial problems resulting from the closure.

The site confirms - in a report by writer and film producer Catherine Hearst - that the lack of adequate means of work to confront the pandemic has not prevented a number of those in charge of mosques and Islamic institutions from converting places of worship into centers for providing food, vaccination, counseling and counseling, or converting them into mortuaries to receive the dead bodies.

Although these institutions - and other charities - were pushed into the sidelines due to the indifference of the authorities and a hostile media scene, they remained fully aware of the centrality of their role for the Muslims of Britain, especially in the circumstances of the epidemic that have deepened this belief.

A number of those in charge of Islamic religious institutions with whom the site spoke to asserted that the lack of governmental support and support is not surprising to them, because official counterterrorism policies have always portrayed them as "suspicious societies" that are ignored at best or subject to scrutiny and hostility in the worst cases. .

Hossein Musharraf - an imam at a mosque in Nottingham, 200 km north of London - said, "We are not present ... the government does not like and does not want to talk to the Muslim community, as they consider us dangerous ... we are in their opinion a fifth column."

On the other hand, a number of Muslim civil society leaders and activists in Britain who spoke to Middle East Eye asked about the methods of managing and managing the funding that the government allocates to support charitable societies and institutions in the circumstances of the pandemic, stressing that none of them was able to access or benefit from this funding.

On April 8 of last year, the British government announced a package worth nearly one billion dollars to support the charitable sector, including $ 277 million for the Coronavirus Associations Support Fund, to be distributed to small charities through the National Lottery Fund.

On January 25, it announced the distribution of an additional $ 32 million to 60 local councils and groups "to expand the scope of work to support people most at risk and to strengthen the vaccination campaign against the virus."

Salman Waqar - the official spokesperson for the British Islamic Medical Association - comments on these government measures, saying, "It is true that the money is spent locally, but what is being done and how is this money spent?", And this is the question that the British Ministry of Culture, Information and Sports responded to, confirming that it was done Aid was granted to 8,282 "eligible charities" and only 115 groups of a religious nature benefited from the funding.

British Muslims queue at one of the centers designated for Corona vaccination (Getty Images)

Systemic racism

On the other hand, the British website confirms that the Muslim community throughout the United Kingdom - and in London in particular - suffered a disproportionate number of deaths during the first wave of the epidemic, given that this reality particularly concerns Muslims of Asian descent who constitute about 68% of the total number of Muslims. The country, and the current pressure on the Islamic funeral service, indicates that the same scenario is being repeated during the second wave.

The "Public Health Britain" report, which was commissioned by the government, regarding the disparity in the number of deaths among ethnic minorities, indicated that "systemic racism" is the main reason behind this disparity.

Given that approximately one in 3 of Britain's blacks, Asians, and other minorities is Muslim, it can be inferred - according to the site - that the same ethnic discrimination reflected in the report is responsible for the increase in deaths among the Muslim population.