Coronavirus: 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide adjust Ramadan plans due to Covid-19 risks
- World’s 1.8 billion Muslims find themselves cut off from much of what makes the month special as authorities fight the pandemic
Sitting in the shade of Tripoli’s Mansouri Great Mosque, Issam Jadeed, an unemployed dessert maker, scowled at passers-by asking if they could go inside.
His answer, like so much else these days, involved the global coronavirus outbreak.
“It’s closed. Imagine! It’s almost Ramadan and we can’t go to pray because of this corona,” he said, referring to Covid-19 as if he were talking about a frustrating family member. “But it’s wrong to do this. This is the House of Allah. Inside, we would be aamen, secure.”
It is a time of frustration for many Muslims in Lebanon’s second largest city as well as millions around the world about to mark Ramadan, the holy month of fasting that begins Thursday at sunset.
Normally during Ramadan, the mosques of Tripoli, more than any other time of year, dictate the city’s rhythms and anchor its rituals.
But authorities shuttered them weeks ago when fears of the coronavirus emerged elsewhere in the Middle East, including Iran, the disease’s regional epicentre. And the closures are set to continue, making for what many of the 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide consider an incomplete Ramadan.
“The heart of the believer is tied to the mosque. Our hearts are burning from this situation. Not just burning – they’re a volcano,” Sheik Firas Balloot, head of the religion section in Tripoli’s Islamic endowments department, said. “If this fire wasn’t there, then we have no faith; we’re stone. But there is a common good, and issues of health.”