BIRMINGHAM, England (AP) — The holy month of Ramadan is underway, and the Central Jamia Mosque Ghamkol Sharif in Birmingham should be full of worshippers. But this year, the main arrivals are the dead.While the mosque in the central England city has been closed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, its parking lot has been transformed into a temporary morgue with room for 150 bodies.
The volunteer-run mortuary, with its white tents, industrial refrigerators and neat stacks of coffins, is evidence of the toll the virus is taking on Britain’s Muslim and ethnic-minority communities. The two most diverse regions of the U.K. — London and the Midlands area centered in Birmingham — have seen the largest number of deaths in the outbreak.
Mohammed Zahid, a mosque trustee who helped set up the mortuary with a firm of Muslim funeral directors, said the mosque in Birmingham’s predominantly South Asian Small Heath district normally holds one or two funerals a week.
In the last few weeks, "we were doing five to six a day," he said.
"You can see how the families were grieving," said 44-year-old Zahid, who wears a mask, coveralls and gloves as he moves among the coffins.
Local government social-distancing rules allow only six people to attend each burial.
"Especially when they can’t get their own cousins and brothers and sisters around them — it’s made it really hard for the people who’ve lost their loved ones," said Zahid, who has lost two aunts to COVID-19. "What do you say to a family who’s got five sons or daughters, and some of them have to stay home?"
It’s a similar story at the nearby Green Lane Mosque, where coffins lie stacked up inside the prayer hall. Usually the mosque holds about 25 funerals a year. For the past three weeks it has seen five a day.