Hindus and Muslim men have had a disproportionately high risk of dying with coronavirus throughout the pandemic compared with Christians, figures suggest.

After adjusting for age, location, socio-demographic factors and certain pre-existing health conditions, Hindus and Muslim men were still more likely to die with Covid-19, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

The ONS looked at mortality rates among religious groups between January 2020 and February 2021 and compared differences between both waves of the pandemic, adjusting these for age and other factors.

It defined the second wave as deaths occurring from September 12 2020 onwards, but noted that this analysis is provisional as it only covers up to February 28 2021.

It found that Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Jewish people all had an increased Covid-19 mortality rate compared with Christians across the whole period when adjusting for age.

People who identified as having no religion were 20% less likely to die than the Christian group.

When taking into account location, measures of disadvantage, occupation and living arrangements, and pre-pandemic health status, rates for Jewish and Sikh women were similar to those for Christian women.

But rates for Muslims, Hindus, and Jewish and Sikh men remained significantly higher.

Muslim men were 70% more likely to die with Covid-19 than Christian men, the ONS analysis found.

Muslim women had a 30% greater risk of dying with coronavirus, while for Hindu men it was 30% and for Hindu women it was 20%.

Jewish men had a 20% greater risk and Sikh men a 10% greater risk.

For Jewish and Buddhist men, the excess risk was only observed in the first wave.

Excess risk for Sikhs and Muslim women was only observed in the second wave.

The ONS said the factors it adjusted for account for a large proportion, but not all, of the additional risk.

The residual unexplained risk may be due to factors it did not consider, such as some pre-existing health conditions.

For some religious groups there is considerable overlap with ethnic background, meaning it is difficult to separate any association between risk and religion from risk and ethnicity.

Credit: PA News

Vaccine disinformation is being “forensically targeted” at specific groups, MPs have heard.

Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi said that information is “very, very cleverly, hyper super-forensically targeted at different communities”.

Mr Zahawi told the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee that disinformation about vaccines and fertility were “proving to be sadly quite potent”.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) had raised no concerns about any of the vaccines and fertility, he added.

And Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch told MPs that people needed to take a “personal responsibility” in tackling vaccine disinformation.

She also told MPs that misinformation around fertility and coronavirus vaccines was coming from “the aunty” rather than social media.

During the committee session, Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy asked what efforts were being taken to stop disinformation being targeted at specific groups.

She said: “We have seen the type of disinformation varies depending on the group it’s being circulated to. For example, Hindu and Muslim communities were told there is this information about the vaccine containing meat and alcohol.

“In black communities, we saw historical injustices is being exploited by anti-vaxxer groups.

“And false reports about the vaccine leading to infertility increased fears amongst young women.”

Mr Zahawi replied: “Even if I look at my own background, and mine and my wife’s family, from the Middle East, much of this information is very, very cleverly, sort of hyper super-forensically targeted at different communities.”

On concerns raised about vaccines and fertility, he added: “Some of the anti-vax messages, which are clearly directed at both young men and women around fertility, are false, but proving to be sadly quite potent.

“Some of the focus groups and polling evidence suggests much of the hesitancy is around issues around fertility.”

Ms Badenoch said: “The fertility thing is more problematic as a type of misinformation, because of where it comes from.

“I had a roundtable with clinicians last week and one of them works in east London, and she said that the fertility thing, it’s not social media where we can speak to social media companies and ask them to take it down, it’s the aunty.

“Aunts who may be less well educated or come from a different environment

growing up, in a different country, advising younger people.

“We can’t go into people’s homes and interfere with the sort of communication that is taking place, that’s very personal.

“So that’s why we just must keep repeating the positive messages about safety and also ensuring that clinicians have the information to be able to provide comfort to those people who are seeing the doctors.

“It has to be from the people who are trusted as experts.”

Mr Zahawi told MPs what while there was no safety data on

pregnant women, there is currently no reason to suggest the vaccine would have an adverse effect.

Ms Badenoch said that people needed to take a “personal responsibility” in tackling vaccine disinformation.

She said: “People need to take personal responsibility. Everybody needs to take their own personal responsibility.

“They can’t wait for the minister to fix the vaccine disinformation that’s

happening within their WhatsApp group. We are never going to see it; neither is the social media company or the telephone platform.

“Reinforcing the message that everybody has their responsibility, whether you

are a family member, whether you are a journalist, a clinician, a teacher, a

local politician.

“We, as MPs, also have a responsibility to tackle some of this. I have given

repeated examples of how MPs (for) political purposes end up using vaccine

misinformation phrases that are unbelievably unhelpful.

“We need to be serious and lead by example as well.”

She said that she personally joined trials for the coronavirus vaccine following misinformation about jabs being tested on ethnic minorities.

“We could see the misinformation around the vaccine being tested on ethnic

minorities and things like that,” Ms Badenoch told the committee.

“That was one of the reasons why very early on I decided to go on vaccine

trials and encouraged others to do so. Nadhim (Zahawi) did the same thing.”

Read more: Indonesia expects Halal certificate for experimental Covid-19 vaccine

A 10th-century sandstone sculpture of the Hindu god Rama returned to Cambodia decades after it was stolen from a temple during the kingdom’s civil war.

Denver Art Museum had acquired the 62-inch-tall torso from the Doris Weiner Gallery in 1986, which was stolen in the 1970s from the Koh Ker temple site. The museum says, at the time, it had no idea that the statue had been stolen. That only came from discussions with delegates from Cambodia.

Getting ready for the start of the handover ceremony of the Torso of Rama returned to Cambodia by @DenverArtMuseum. pic.twitter.com/rwikqspV8x

— Jay Raman (@ramanjr) March 28, 2016

The quiver on the statue’s back suggested that it had resided in the eastern gopura of the temple site. This section of the temple was home to two ferocious monkey kings, Valin and Sugriva, now in the National Museum of Cambodia.

But it still misses its head and other body parts. The kingdom of Cambodia continues to appeal to international art galleries and museums to return the missing limbs.

Documents sent to the Denver museum with measurements of the feet in a pedestal matched the legs of the torso. This confirmed that the statue had not left Cambodia legally. A chainsaw and hammer had detached the feet.

Cambodia’s Secretary of State, Chan Thani, thanked the Denver Museum of Art for voluntarily returning the Rama sculpture. And for its sensitivity towards Cambodian culture.

The statue dates back to the Khmer Empire, a Buddhist-Hindu dynasty famous for its temples and cities, including Cambodia’s Angkor Wat complex.

Authorities had located the pedestal which matched the Torso of Rama at Koh Ker’s Prasat Chen temple in 2012.

The Torso of Rama is the seventh statue to return to Cambodia from abroad.

On May 3, 2013, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced that two statues would return to Cambodia. The “Kneeling Attendants” – also called Pandavas – had been a feature of the museum’s Asian Wing for almost 20 years.

Mahabharata is a Sanskrit epic which depicts a wrestling match. Four other brothers, the Pandavas, had teamed with Duryodhana to wrestle Bhima. Observing the wrestling was the god Krishna and his brother, Balarama.

Like the Torso of Rama, thieves had severed the feet from their pedestals.

A year later and the Norton Simon Museum in California had agreed to return a looted statue to the kingdom of Cambodia. The 10th-century sandstone statue known as the “Temple Wrestler” or “Bhima” had been on display since 1976.

Archaeologist Tess Davies wrote a vivid and compelling account about the return of the Duryodhana statue to Cambodia in 2014.

The French protectorate absorbed Cambodia in 1863 and lasted until 1953. Colonialism shaped and dominated the scholarship of Cambodia’s history and culture. Academic classes on Cambodian architecture and history were taught by French professors. The French also helped establish the National Museum of Cambodia. Others argue that the looting of Cambodia’s cultural history began in this period. The civil war had served to extend an ongoing problem.

Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, civil war and  political coups,  the  Communist  Party  of  Kampuchea (CPK),  also  known as Khmer  Rouge, seized power in 1975.

Pol Pot’s utopianism resulted in the murder of almost two million Cambodians in just three years. Under the ‘Year Zero’ directive, schools closed, religion was banned and money became worthless. Executions in the ‘killing fields’ involved torture, starvation and disease.

The Cleveland Museum of Art returned a statue of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman to Cambodia last year. It acquired the statue in 1982 from a now deceased New York art dealer.

A French museum returned the head of a 7th century  statue to Cambodia in January 2016. The statue which depicts the Hindu gods Vishnu and Shiva had its head stolen in 1886. It had stood in the Phnom Da temple in southern Takeo province prior to the theft. In Phnom Penh, a lavish ceremony saw the stolen head reattached.

The Norwegian collector Morten Bosterud returned two stone statues from the Angkor period to Cambodia in October 2015. Both statues were looted during the civil war and spent the past three decades in Europe. A ceremony in Phnom Penh saw Bosterud return a ninth century head of the god Shiva and a late 12th to early 13th century male divinity head.

The post US art museum returns stolen Hindu statue to Cambodia appeared first on Religious Reader.

Sikh and Hindu villagers in a Malla village in Ludhiana, India helped renovate and re-open a historic mosque.

The mosque had closed in 1947 due to partial building collapse. But a communal rebuilding effort led to its inauguration on February 29.

Both faiths assisted with fundraising and construction. Muslims are a tiny minority in a village where 90 per cent of residents are Sikh and 9 per cent Hindu. In the past, Muslims had to travel out of the village to pray at a mosque.

The Majlis Ahrar Islam Hind Party of Ludhiana had contacted Maulana Habib Ur Rehman Sani Ludhianavi to assist.

Ludhianvi told the Time of India that “Even as the village has just one Muslim family, the response had been overwhelming”.

Villagers arranged a communal langar during the inauguration. Ludhianavi then published photos of the event on Facebook.

The villagers in Ludhiana highlight how communities work together. Iqbal Hussain, a local Muslim in the village, expressed his gratitude and the bonds of affection for other faiths in his village.

The post Hindu and Sikh villagers rebuild mosque shut since 1947 appeared first on Religious Reader.

A Maryland county will allow Muslim and Hindu students a day off from school to celebrate Diwali and Eid al-Adha.

The Howard County Board of Education faced a tough decision: to foster inclusion by removing all religious holidays from the academic calender; Or add extra days to include non-Abrahamic celebrations.

A unanimous decision in favour of the latter will result in school closings or professional development days for staff in the 2016/17 academic year. The board also voted to allow staff to take a professional development day off for Lunar News Years Eve, after requests from the local Chinese and Korean communities. As it falls on a Saturday, students remain unaffected.

Schools in the county have shut during Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  But a recent motion threatened to end this  tradition. It proved controversial enough to attract more than 300 people to a public hearing in December.

State and federal laws prevent schools from closing on religious holidays (unless mandated otherwise). Adjusting academic calendars requires a secular reason. Baltimore County had recorded a large levels of absenteeism during these Jewish holidays.

Art Abramson, Executive Director of Baltimore’s Jewish Council, welcomed changes to academic calendars on the condition that students would avoid punishment if they took a day off for religious holidays. He had also noted how schools with large Jewish communities faced an added economic burden to open during holidays like Rosh Hashanah. So it required a discretionary approach for individual schools to open or close on such days. A point missing in Breitbart’s reporting.

This was the case when Anne Arundel County voted to keep schools open during Rosh Hashanah in the next academic year. A move that has not happened since 2003. Students could still celebrate the holiday with a day of absence, but staff could not take a day off.

Within this framework,  Howard County rejected this similar motion in favour of diversity.

The school system in the area does not count the religious affiliation of students, but it does for race. Howard County has 74 public schools that serve 51,366 students. Enrollment from black and Asian communities stands at 56 per cent. And the schools in Howard County have a greater diversity of students when compared to other parts of Missouri.

State-mandated holidays do fall on Christian holidays, like Christmas and Easter. Any decision to increase days off rests on the shoulders of local schools.

Last July, the Baltimore County Policy Review Committee recommended that schools not close during Eid. It did, however, stress that students and staff could take time off to celebrate Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. In nearby Montgomery County, the school board voted to allow students and staff to take a day off for Eid al-Adha.

A private firm surveys communities to gauge the impact cultural and religious holidays have on absenteeism levels. This information could help bring greater diversity to the academic calender in 2017/18.

The 2017-2018 Academic Calendar Committee has already begun to meet. And it includes representatives from the Jewish Federation of Howard County, the Howard County Muslim Council, the Hindu community, and the Chinese American Parent Association.

Students will begin the 2016/17 academic year on August 29. It ends on June 13, 2017.

The post Asian, Muslim and Hindu holidays added to school calendars in Howard County, Maryland appeared first on Religious Reader.

What Draws People of Faith to Right Wing Organisations & What Effects Does the EDL Have on Interfaith Relations?

Key findings of the report include:

• EDL attempts to recruit among faith communities
• Christian leaders should publicly stand up to EDL
• UK government should examine group’s international funding
• Jewish Defence League should be banned

Christian organisations should be doing far more to combat the appeal of far-right groups such as the English Defence League (EDL), according to counter-extremism organisation, Faith Matters.

The comments from Faith Matters coincides with the launch of research into the appeal of the EDL among faith communities, particularly among a small element of Christian, Jewish, Sikh and Hindu figures.

“Christian institutions on a national level have not been robust in condemning the EDL,” said Faith Matters’ director, Fiyaz Mughal OBE. “There is no national voice from the Church of England for example, universally condemning the actions of the EDL despite the fact the EDL disrupts and attempts to divide Christian and Muslim communities. Why?”

Mughal also said that the UK authorities need to examine how hate groups such as the EDL, which have the capacity to cause huge disruption on our streets, receive international funding.

“Links with Pamella Geller’s Stop the Islamization of America campaign and the ability to raise funds from the US need to be put under the spotlight,” he said. “People in the US promoting street-based social unrest in the UK by donating to the EDL is simply not on.”

Main Findings

• The EDL uses mainly Christian symbolism in its promotion and publicity material,
• Some within faith communities believe that by allying with the EDL they can marginalise and stigmatise Muslims,
• Building community resilience against such hate is vital – anti-hate groups in other faith communities, such as the Luton Faiths Forum, Community Security Trust, the Turban Campaign and Sikhs Against the EDL, should be more fully supported,
• The UK government needs to look at how groups such as the EDL are financed internationally, via a network of supporters in the ‘counter jihadist’ network (particularly the USA),
• The Jewish Defence League needs to be effectively outlawed in the UK for inciting extreme hatred against Muslims.

Faith Matters has numerous branches across the globe. We undertake the following:

Faith Matters has also overseen two international ‘micro-finance’ projects which support the development of small businesses in Jerusalem, Israel and the West Bank in Palestine.

The Jerusalem Interest Free Fund: The fund provides small business and study loans to. The fund offers the loans for small business start-ups and educational courses for both communities – Arabs within East Jerusalem and the Orthodox Jewish community – on an interest free basis.

The Future Visions Charity: The charity supports entrepreneurs in the West Bank through micro and small business loans and to people in outlying villages in Palestine. Faith Matters provided strategic advice to the charity and helped to develop its structure, it direction and the systems it needed to develop in order to be effective.

Faith Matters Pakistan: Our work involves using new technologies in reaching out to new communities on a global basis. This work involves the use of SMS and social media, as well as Muslim and Christian interfaith dialogue work in Pakistan. Faith Matters is also undertaking its first capital build project in Jajuki, Pakistan and we are proud to have the opportunity to serve 100,000 Pakistani villagers in this area through the community centre that we are developing. Further work on Faith Matters Pakistan can be found on www.faith-matters.pk.

Faith Matters India: Our work in India involves work with young Hindus and Muslims and the promotion of dialogue between the two faith groups. This is being conducted in Delhi and involves young people discussing their identities and what it means to be Indian. Faith Matters India can be found on www.faith-matters.in.

Faith Matters Jerusalem: Our work in Jerusalem involves conflict resolution between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jewish communities. We believe the meeting and engagement of young Arabs and young Jews is a fundamental step to exposing both communities to the ‘other’ and in ensuring that the ‘other’ changes from being faceless and voiceless, to being a real person with a history and social narratives. This is the only way that stereo-typing and hate can be reduced and this work is facilitated by Faith Matters in Jerusalem.

Student Exchange Programmes: Faith Matters has undertaken numerous student exchange based programmes and we recently brought over students from the Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine and Jordan to the UK for a week long intercultural trip. The groups met young people in schools and further education colleges and they had the chance to experience the diverse communities in the UK. We are looking to bring over further groups in 2012.