There are bigger concerns about its spread

The argument

The argument is about timing and priority rather than about whether prejudice exists. To try and untangle the state of Islamophobia before and after the outbreak at this point is premature. A comparison of that kind requires two settled pictures to set against each other, and the second does not yet exist: conditions are still changing, the behaviour being measured is taking place under emergency circumstances that are themselves temporary, and nothing can be held constant long enough for a difference to be attributed to the pandemic rather than to the disruption surrounding it. Until the pandemic is over and normal life resumes, these analyses are meaningless, because the baseline they would have to be measured against has not returned. The second part of the argument concerns what attention is being drawn away from. While that comparison cannot yet be made, the spread of the virus can be observed directly, and it is ravaging across a country where many are forced to live in cramped conditions. Those conditions make the ordinary advice about distance impossible to follow, and the protections that might compensate are unavailable: many have no access to anti-bacterial gels, masks, gloves or other lifesaving PPEs. The exposure is immediate, physical and already happening. Set beside this, proponents argue, the question of whether the pandemic has shifted attitudes is not the pressing one. It concerns an effect that cannot yet be established, while what can be established is a population unable to protect itself from a disease moving through it. The more important concern is therefore the spread itself, and on this view there are bigger concerns about it than its supposed impact on Islamophobia.

Context

It is hard to gauge how Islamophobia has evolved since the outbreak, but wherever you stand, this is not the main concern.

Premises

Counter-arguments

This is a dangerous argument, which deliberately undermines anxieties around the open spread of racism across the country. Choosing to neglect this now will have a long-term impact it is not so easy to undo. Islamophobia is a problem in India, and it must be dealt with properly during this pandemic.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] "Premature" does not follow from "ongoing", and "meaningless" certainly does not. Contemporaneous reporting, police records and survey data are gathered during events precisely because evidence and memory degrade afterwards, and the sibling positions on this question are built from exactly that kind of material. [Rejecting P2] The second premise establishes that the virus is a grave problem, not that it is the only one, and the two concerns are not in competition — as the counter-argument notes, deferring the question does not hold it still. If the pandemic is aggravating hostility toward a minority, then transmission and its social consequences are the same subject, which is the position this argument is offered against.