SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad

@guardian.co.tt

Shaykh Mu­naf Mo­hamed is a man strong­ly root­ed in the Is­lam­ic faith. For decades, he has been spread­ing the teach­ings of Is­lam- teach­ing Ara­bic on the Is­lam­ic Broad­cast­ing Net­work and at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Cen­tre for Lan­guage Learn­ing.

On Sat­ur­day, for the first time, Mo­hamed cel­e­brat­ed Eid, the end of the month of Ra­madan, away from the mosque.

He is cur­rent­ly the Imam at the Is­lam­ic Cen­tre in Kel­ly Vil­lage, Ca­roni, and for years, would have led the prayer on Eid to a con­gre­ga­tion of over 400 peo­ple.

With COVID-19 chang­ing the way the world works, Mo­hamed’s cel­e­bra­tion of Eid was done qui­et­ly at home. Un­like most Mus­lims, Mo­hamed ob­served Eid on Sat­ur­day, when he said the cres­cent moon was sight­ed in the African na­tions of Ethiopia, Kenya and So­ma­lia.

But like most Mus­lims, Mo­hamed was pre­pared to cel­e­brate Eid on Sun­day and said his wife had al­ready placed or­ders for a spe­cial Eid lunch from a cater­er.

“It is very sad that we can­not cel­e­brate Eid at the masjid but we un­der­stand the calls to stay at home with our fam­i­lies,” Mo­hamed said. “Our Eid meal was or­dered for to­day (Sun­day) so we did not do much on Sat­ur­day and we will be hav­ing our meal to­day.”

He said COVID-19 has kept him away from his chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, as he can no longer hug them when­ev­er he sees them.

One of his sons is cur­rent­ly stuck in Saint Maarten.

“He can­not come back right now be­cause the bor­ders have been closed, it is very sad when your own chil­dren can’t come home.”

But de­spite the heartache felt by him and his fam­i­ly, Mo­hamed said he agrees com­plete­ly with the mea­sures tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment to stop the spread of the virus as those steps were spo­ken off in the Qur’an.

“The Prophet Muham­mad said if you are in a place where there is an epi­dem­ic, you do not leave that place and if you hear of a place where there is an epi­dem­ic, you do not go to that place. All of this was spo­ken about in the Qur’an.”

Mo­hamed said he strong­ly dis­agrees with Imams who ig­nored so­cial dis­tanc­ing guide­lines in or­der to keep ser­vices at the masjid.

“A lot of peo­ple will have five peo­ple in the Masjid to have the Eid cel­e­bra­tion, who is go­ing to de­ter­mine who those five peo­ple are? How are you go­ing to man­age that? And for the peo­ple com­par­ing go­ing to the masjid to go­ing to the su­per­mar­ket, it is not the same thing. The Prophet Muhammed has said you can pray at your home.”

Mo­hamed said the Qur’an speaks of a call to prayer sent out by the Prophet Muham­mad when there was heavy rain­fall. He said that call to prayer in­struct­ed Mus­lims to stay at home and pray.

“If the Prophet Muham­mad said you can pray at home be­cause of heavy rain­fall, what do you think you should do dur­ing a pan­dem­ic?” he asked.