COMMENT | The right to practice and profess religion certainly has been one of the casualties caused by the Covid-19. The threat of the pandemic, which has been weathered globally for the past 12 months, has tremendously affected the universally accepted tenet of freedom of religion.

Religion, in any name and sect all over the world, has restricted its religious practices and rituals. The restrictions, although only relegated public religious practices to personal spaces, have in many ways affected the right to religion as a whole.

There is every reason why the right to religion is believed to have been undermined by the threat of Covid-19. Religious practices and rituals around the world directly contravened with the public health advice advocated in stopping the transmission of the virus.

They include public congregations in a large crowd, hand-based greetings as well as touching and kissing objects considered sacred. These practices signify the…