Religious Marginality, Covid-19, and Redress of Targeting and Inequalities

Abstract

This article interrogates whether we should consider ‘religious marginality’ as a qualifier much like the exploration of how gender, ethnicity, and class inequalities are explored when examining Covid-19-related vulnerabilities and their implications for building back better. Drawing on a case study of Pakistan as well as evidence from India, Uganda, and Iraq, this article explores the accentuation of vulnerabilities in Pakistan and how different religious minorities experience the impact of the interplay of class, caste, ethnicity, and religious marginality. The article argues that where religious minorities exist in contexts where the broader political and societal policy is one of religious ‘othering’ and where religious marginality intersects with socioeconomic exclusion, they experience particular forms of vulnerability associated directly or indirectly with Covid-19 consequences that are acute and dire in impact. Building back better for religiously inclusive societies will require both broad-based as well as more specific redress of inequalities.