Muslims in Bengal open mosques for government quarantine facility

In West Bengal, the Muslim community has come forward offering a helping hand to humanity. 

In West Bengal, the Muslim community has come forward offering a helping hand to humanity. 

Qari Md Muslim Razwi, imam of Jamia Masjid Gausia, has offered the third floor of the sprawling Masjid building to the Kolkata municipal corporation to set up quarantine facility if the government needs extra space.

He has also offered a 6000sqft building and a school too for the same purpose. The mosque, also known as Bangali Masjid is in the Iron Gate area in Garden Reach. The mosque is shut for now, and the Imam had reached out to people in the area with a message of oneness, putting religious reservations on the back burner. The Imam’s proposal was accepted by all in the community.

Far away from Kolkata, in Murshidabad district’s Rejinagar area, a similar emotion has been reflected by Tajbidul Quran Madrasa. Maulana Eid Mohammad Mazahari, secretary of the Madrasa is open to offering the entire two-storeyed Madrasa building to the state government to build additional quarantine facility for the benefit of people. The building can accommodate more than 150 people on each floor. West Bengal has 582 government quarantine institutions with over six thousand occupancies as of now. The state has 68 COVID-19 hospitals with proper isolation facilities. But the state has also witnessed a steep rise in the number of positive cases with the increase in sample testing.

Now that lakhs of migrants and others stranded are expected to come back, there is a growing fear about asymptomatic people infecting others. Institutional quarantine is thus preferred over home quarantine by many within the state government fearing a community transmission can jeopardize all the efforts the state has invested so far.