Khaled Ahmed: In Pakistan, religious leaders, not doctors, are setting Covid policy

By Dilip -
On April 23, Prime Minister Imran Khan staged a four-hour “telethon” to collect funds for the coronavirus crisis and ended up netting nearly three billion rupees before asking his favourite cleric, Tariq Jameel, to pray. The mountebank priest first rejected the word “fight” against the coronavirus because it was “a curse of Allah” and needed repentance from a nation he thought was corrupt and lascivious. Khan and the nation took it as the old normal and bowed their head.

 More articles by Khaled Ahmed

 Unsurprisingly, the clergy in Pakistan has the upper hand and has defeated the doctors in deciding the state policy against COVID-19, which had struck 10,500 victims and had claimed 280 lives at the end of April. The doctors raised the alarm after Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) reached an “accord” with the “top” priests of the country to let people throng the mosques five times a day, plus special prayers during the month of Ramadan falling in the last week of April, depending on special moon-sighting by the same religious panjandrums.
Then, something funny happened. Another senior priest of Pakistan, Mufti Munib, got on to a roof in Karachi to sight the Ramadan moon but did not find it. There is an Islamic lunar calendar predicting accurately the rising moon every month but the priests would have none of it. When the moon was not sighted on Thursday, the mufti declared that the following day would not be the first day of fasting. Saudi Arabia, however, announced Ramadan and so did the rebellious mullah Popalzai of Peshawar, claiming he had seen the moon. Now, like many times in the past, Pakistan will get split over fasting and end up celebrating two Eids....
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/pakistan-coronavirus-imran-khan-clerics-tariq-jameel-6389435/
Pakistan has seen some unconventional judges in the Supreme Court in recent times

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