Most mosques shuttered and gatherings banned as Islamic world prepares for holy month
Every year in Cairo as the call to prayer rings out at sunset during the month of Ramadan, poor Egyptians gather at long tables lining the city streets to break fast with meals donated by wealthier Muslims. This year the streets will be empty.
Ramadan, at once the holiest and most festive month of the Islamic calendar, begins today but as countries fight the coronavirus pandemic, it promises to be a muted, less joyous affair. In Muslim nations from Nigeria to Indonesia, governments battling the outbreak have imposed curfews, restricted social gatherings and closed mosques.
For the world’s 1.8bn Muslims, it means a Ramadan like never before, with festivities and rituals performed in isolation at home, without the sense of community and social interactions that normally accompany four weeks of religious fasting, lavish family banquets and generous giving to the poor.
Fathy Sayyed Mahmoud who runs a butchery in a middle class area of Cairo described how last year he cooked at the shop for hundreds of people. “We would hire chairs and tables and serve a different dish every day, sometimes meat, vegetables and rice and sometimes chicken and pasta,” he said. “This year we will be giving out uncooked meat to poor people.”
In Turkey, in Istanbul’s waterside district of Eyup, similar feasts would normally take place at communal tables under the famous Eyup Sultan mosque, which is considered so sacred that it is washed with sweet-smelling rosewater throughout the holy month.
This year, all group gatherings, including communal prayers inside the mosque, have been cancelled. “As someone who has seen the excitement at and around Eyup Sultan mosque, of course I am sad that this year won’t be the same,” said Mustafa Mesten, the district’s most senior religious official. “This year, because of the outbreak, we are having to miss out on that beautiful experience . . . We feel melancholy. It will be bittersweet.”
Instead, the district’s mayor, Deniz Koken, plans to broadcast events and sermons online. The district will also deliver food boxes to the homes of those in need.
The deliveries may go someway to ease the economic pain in poor communities, who often rely on the free public meals to break fast during Ramadan, and who have seen their numbers swell as the pandemic has wrought havoc in economies across the Muslim world.
The Egyptian Food Bank, a charity, said it had drawn on public donations to deliver food boxes to almost 500,000 families in the past three weeks, more than triple the usual number. “People have been more than wonderful,” Food Bank’s Nevine Moghazy said. “It has been an epic of solidarity. Donations have come from across the board, from modest individuals to big institutions, businessmen and banks.”
Ismail Abdulkadir, of the Da’wah Institute of Nigeria, a Muslim education trust, said congregants were worried about how they would feed themselves. Nigeria, home to the largest Muslim population in Africa, has some 87m people living in extreme poverty.
“Some people are having this fear because if you can’t go out, how will you get free food?” Mr Abdulkadir said. “But I feel [charity] will increase as a result of this pandemic, because all Muslims believe that whatever you give you will be rewarded and the reward doubles in the month of Ramadan.”
Nigeria’s top Islamic authorities have advised Muslims to follow federal social distancing guidelines, and slammed clerics who have called coronavirus a western plot or planned to keep their mosques open. Still, some governors have lifted restrictions on Friday prayers in recent weeks, against the advice of public health officials.
In Iran, where more than 5,000 people have died of coronavirus — the highest number of fatalities in the Middle East — political and religious leaders saw no choice but to put aside Islamic teachings and enforce the health ministry’s guidelines. Since March, for the first time in living memory, the Islamic Republic has closed mosques, shrines, seminaries and Friday prayers.
Although some groups have used the approach of Ramadan to press for the relaxation of restrictions on religious sites, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has played a critical role in curbing hardline forces during the crisis, has remained steadfast. In a religious decree last week, he said fasting during Ramadan was still a “religious duty” but only if it inflicted no damage to people’s health.
In contrast, in Pakistan, the government has sought to appease its hardline groups, by allowing gatherings at the nightly taraweeh prayers to continue during Ramadan, antagonising more moderate leaders. Worshippers will have to stand six feet apart and wear masks, and mosques will have to remove carpets and disinfect floors before the gatherings take place.
“Once Ramadan begins and gatherings take place at mosques, it would be impossible for anyone to impose the provisions of this agreement,” said Hasan Zafar Naqvi, a prominent Shia Muslim cleric who has been critical of the government’s decision.
A senior Pakistani official said the government was fearful of a backlash from hardline groups if the prayers were not allowed to go ahead. “There was no choice really.”
But perhaps the biggest change will be in Saudi Arabia, where each year millions of foreign and domestic pilgrims usually visit Mecca during Ramadan to perform the Umra, also known as the lesser Hajj. The Grand Mosque in the holy city has been closed since early March, and Saudi television has now stopped airing live images of the empty courtyard.
The call for prayers continues to boom from loudspeakers five times a day, but instead of urging the faithful to come to the mosque, they are told to pray at home.
Source: Financial Times