COVID-19 unites Jews, Muslims over burial practices

Often, as Michigan State students create their bias busting cultural competence guides, they encounter examples of how, whoever we are, we are more alike than how different.

Book cover for 100 Questions and Answers About American JewsJudaism, Christianity and Islam owe much of their similarity to their shared Abrahamic roots. A CNN story on burial practices focused on how religions sometimes rely on each other to maintain their traditions in the face of new threats.

CNN reports “traditions have been adapted, as clerics turn to emergency measures prescribed in their religious laws. That’s especially true of rituals, as in Judaism and Islam, that rely on touch and intimacy with the deceased. In some instances, funeral home directors and burial societies across the country are crossing religious lines to help perform the sacred rites of passage.”

At a time when there are so many stories about how the coronavirus and its consequences divide us, this is a story about how people are coming together.

The rites of communal prayer and preparation of the dead are, with COVID-19, a threat to the living. But emergency modificatons are being made in ways that are respectful and true to the religions.

“100 Questions and Answers About American Jews” is available from Amazon or the Front Edge Publishing bookstore.

“100 Questions and Answers About Muslim Americans” is available from Amazon or the Front Edge Publishing bookstore.

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