Muslim Shia Rituals

Queens, once the borough that gave birth to President Trump and David Horowitz, now has a large Muslim population, and the fall processions of wailing crowds are a regular event. The coronavirus didn’t change that.

In early October 2020, videos show a huge knot of Muslim men packed closely together in circles, not wearing masks or with masks down, chanting and furiously beating their chests in memory of Hussein’s martyrdom. Some are shirtless in the traditional fashion. The slaps are meant to be hard enough to cause real pain and there’s plenty of reddened skin on display.

The Shiite procession marches down Flushing’s Main Street, past rows of Chinese stores without a police officer in sight. The media also doesn’t stop by to document the event. It’s one of a number of Shiite mass gatherings in New York and New Jersey, including more mourning events for Imam Hussein on Manhattan’s Park Avenue in August, where few of the participants wear masks, and another in Kensington, Brooklyn around the same time.

Unlike the Orthodox Jewish prayers of the High Holy Days and the Sukkot celebrations, these Shiite Muslim gatherings were not written up by the New York Post, the New York Daily News, or the New York Times as a public threat. Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio did not blame Muslims for the spread of the virus or declare a crackdown that would close mosques.

The Ashura Jaloos event took place in late August in the Kensington 11218 zip code which is listed on the “orange zone” on De Blasio’s coronavirus watchlist. The Queens procession took place in another watchlist neighborhood where coronavirus rates have been rising.

At the end of August, Governor Cuomo threatened to crack down on Orthodox Jewish weddings and blamed the “Jewish community” and the “Catholic community” for spreading the coronavirus, but made no mention of any action against Muslim events like the one in Manhattan that had taken place a few days before his threats against Orthodox Jews.