From cancelled iftar feasts to suspended mosque prayers, Muslims across the Middle East are bracing for a bleak month of Ramadan fasting as the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic lingers.
Ramadan is a period for both self-reflection and socialising. Believers fast from dawn to dusk and then gather around a family or community meal each evening of Islam’s holiest month, which begins later this week and ends with Eid al-Fitr festivities.
Dispiriting for many devout Muslims is that congregational worship — including taraweeh night prayers — is prohibited in mosques across the region, with many closed in a bid to slow the spread of the virus.
Several countries’ religious authorities, including Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Abdulaziz al-Sheikh, have ruled that prayers during Ramadan and Eid be performed at home.
In recent weeks, a stunning emptiness has enveloped the sacred Kaaba — a large black cube structure draped in gold-embroidered cloth in the Grand Mosque towards which Muslims around the world pray.
The white-tiled area around the Kaaba is usually packed with tens of thousands of pilgrims.
Ramadan is considered an auspicious period to perform the year-round umrah pilgrimage, which Saudi authorities suspended last month.
It is likely the larger hajj pilgrimage, set for the end of July, will also be cancelled for the first time in modern history after Saudi Arabia urged Muslims to temporarily defer preparations.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Territories Muhammad Hussein has announced similar prayer restrictions during Ramadan, while also advising against the public sighting of the crescent moon, which is used to estimate the start of the holy month.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has appealed to Iranians to pray at home during Ramadan, while urging them to “not neglect worship, invocation and humility in our loneliness”.
Hardliners across the region have rejected some online suggestions by Muslims that they should be exempt from fasting this year owing to the pandemic, insisting that while social distancing was necessary, the virus did not stop them from observing the rules of Ramadan from home.
