Feelings on Ramadan Covid Lockdown

Extracts from Malaysiakini:

In shadow of coronavirus, Muslims face a Ramadan like never before

CORONAVIRUS | Days before the holy fasting month of Ramadan begins, the Islamic world is grappling with an untimely paradox of the new coronavirus pandemic: enforced separation at a time when socialising is almost sacred.

The holiest month in the Islamic calendar is one of family and togetherness – community, reflection, charity and prayer.

But with shuttered mosques, coronavirus curfews and bans on mass prayers from Senegal to Southeast Asia, some 1.8 billion Muslims are facing a Ramadan like never before.

Across the Muslim world, the pandemic has generated new levels of anxiety before Ramadan begins on or around Thursday, April 23.

In Algiers, Yamine Hermache, 67, usually receives relatives and neighbours at her home for tea and cold drinks during the month that Muslims fast from dusk till dawn. But this year she fears it will be different.

"We may not visit them, and they will not come," she said, weeping. "The coronavirus has made everyone afraid, even of distinguished guests."

A worshipper sits outside the locked Fatih Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey 

In a country where mosques have been closed, her husband Mohamed Djemoudi, 73, worries about something else.

"I cannot imagine Ramadan without tarawih," he said, referring to additional prayers performed at mosques after iftar, the evening meal in which Muslims break their fast.

Saudi Arabia urged Muslims not to gather for prayers or socialise because of the rising number of coronavirus cases in the Gulf region.

"We are all in one boat, if we commit together we'll safely reach the shore. We used to have a lot of social activities during Ramadan. This year it will be different and I urge everyone to commit to social distancing," Health Minister Tawfiq al-Rabiah said in a televised address on Monday.

In Jordan, the government, in coordination with neighbouring Arab countries, is expected to announce a fatwa, or edict, outlining what Ramadan rituals will be permitted, but for millions of Muslims, it already feels so different.

From Africa to Asia, the coronavirus has cast a shadow of gloom and uncertainty.

The same feelings exist among Malaysian Muslims, some of whom are still ignoring the MCO. The IGP has also lamented recently that some idiots including non-Muslims ('idiots' being my word, not the IGP's, wakakaka) seem particularly keen to make mass movements where there is no police roadblock - as if in violating MCO would be feathers in their caps.

But that silly defiance aside, religious followers in their beliefs, festivals and rites are particularly inclined towards groups and mass gatherings, the larger the better.

Once as a very young man (wakakaka), I accompanied a sweetheart to a Sunday church session held at what was a private residence in Island Glades Penang, where the gathering was quite massive. My interest then wasn't exactly in the Christian religion, wakakaka.

Anyway, I remarked on the surprising size of the crowd there whereupon Sweetheart said (words to the effect), "... numbers at a session are like coals on a fire, where the more there is, the brighter the fire of and for Christ burns." 

Her sweet remark was quite instructive for me because, being brought up in a Buddhist home, I was always taught that Buddhists in their beliefs and piousness meditate in quietude, tranquility and solitary existence or journey. Furthermore my Confucian (almost atheistic) Granddad indirectly promoted through his teachings and Chinese stories to me that the warrior-scholar-hero seeks 'cultivation' (non-Buddhist meditation for enlightenment) at the mysterious Mount Zu, wakakaka.

Thus for me, MCO is okay and something I am already doing almost everyday (except for one troubling issue, that my beer supply in Malaysia will now be threatened with MCO restrictions on Heineken and Carlsberg production, wakakaka again).

Om.