The Muslim Ummah's Discourse on Covid-19

By: Ayesha Nasir, Toronto Ontario

Five weeks ago, I asked friends a simple question: How are you convincing the elders in your family back home to not go pray at the mosque? A friend shared how it was “the hardest thing.” It took her a week to convince her father not to go and pray at home, she wrote. Another friend’s father refused to listen to her and prayed every prayer at the mosque.

I get that a pandemic causes some among us to clutch more tightly to our faith. But in both ease and hardship, it is that same faith that we must seek guidance from:

Abdullah ibn Umar reported: I saw the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, circling the Ka’bah and saying, “How pure you are and how pure is your fragrance! How great you are and how great is your sanctity! By the one in whose hand is the soul of Muhammad, the sanctity of the believer is greater to Allah than your sanctity, in his wealth, his life, and to assume nothing of him but good.” (Sunan Ibn Mājah)

This Hadith teaches us that the images of the Kabah and other masajid around the world being closed to the public due to the Coronavirus should not make us despair. Responsible Muslim leadership looks like an embodiment of the above Hadith: it values human life and human dignity.

WHERE THE UMMAH’S PRIORITIES LIE

Where as the world rampantly disregards the poor and most vulnerable amongst us, allowing disease, poverty, and war to fail these people time and time again, we have seen the world come together as one as a result of this pandemic. Yet in the Muslim world, this one unified attempt at success is being seen as an aberration. Both the religious elite and the government in Pakistan suppose, incorrectly and without reliance on fact, the following: that distance between individuals need not be so great (contrary to recommendations by health officials around the world); and secondly, that the young are somehow invincible and will not be harmed. The messaging from Muslim councils in countries like Pakistan has framed the closing of mosques as an attack on Islam. “Why is a media house an essential service and not a Masjid,” asks one viral statement by a Muslim scholar.

While the bigger and more touristy mosques around the world closed to the general public during the COVID-19 pandemic, my parents’ neighborhood mosque remains open in Karachi. Friends tell me to continue talking to elders in a ‘language they understand’, i.e. through the Quran and examples from the Prophet’s life. But no amount of ahadith on the sanctity of human life removes the belief from Muslims young and old that attending daily prayers at the mosque is vital to Muslim-hood, even despite the deadly and highly contagious virus.

WHAT’S THE UMMAH DOING ONLINE?

Meanwhile, lifestyle bloggers and influencers somehow ended up using the arrival of Ramadan as a means of pushing productivity on a people that are already doing everything they can. “Maximize your spiritual experience this Ramadan!”, “Think of social distancing as a blessing, not a buren!”, and even “Quran-time not Quarantine” became some of the messages.

On the other hand, some took it upon themselves to broadcast how they believed this would be the worst way to experience Ramadan. “Be mentally prepared for the gloom and loneliness that is bound to arrive, brothers and sisters”. They never said it so clearly but what was said was enough: be prepared to suffer. It’s easy to talk of suffering from an armchair. It’s easy to afford going to the mosque when you know you can afford paying for a COVID-19 test (if you live in a country where healthcare is not free).

It is also so easy to mourn over a cancelled convocation, postponed wedding, or even the uncertainty of Hajj not being held. So much of our lives are invested in maintaining our next life goal, and so it is our default reaction to feel very sorry when these goals seem to be delayed.

We were all carefully tracking our savings, carefully curating our offline and online personalities based on what we were wanting to achieve. But many of us are still in positions where we can afford to reattempt all of our lives when these lockdowns lift. For most of the Muslim world, the novel Coronavirus is more than a debate on the fiqh of holding taraweeh at home, or the rationality of keeping the mosques open. For most of the world, the disease exposes the rotting systems that fail to protect it.

THE UMMAH IS A BODY

Instead of using Ramadan as a way to think about our larger and collective struggle for justice and equity, we were being asked to think only of what is presented as being within our circle of control. But what is Ramadan if not the establishing of a routine whereby our spirituality is tested through our actions - the things that are most readily under our control? Hunger, thirst, increased worship - these are all the means through which we are told we can become sharper in our understanding of those who experience hunger and thirst due to poverty.

Empathy is the core of Ramadan: for it is through disciplining ourselves from our own excesses and luxurious lifestyles that we even begin to understand the lifestyles of those who do not enjoy the same privileges as we do. But Ramadan is not simply about charity for we will never truly be able to stand in someone else’s shoes. This Ramadan is about seeing the larger market of shoes and realizing how you benefit from these transactions and how comfortable you are in your own.

It’s because of COVID-19 and the strange situations we find ourselves in that we must ask: how are our communities going to look like after Coronavirus runs its course? Will we go back to $50 per seat Muslim conventions where Islam’s holistic societal and political vision of justice and mercy is erased? Will we continue to justify and allow homelessness, illegal warfare, racism towards black and brown refugees, exploitation of workers, forced disappearances, concentration camps and oppressive regimes of dictatorships?

The pandemic points to more than just a gaping absence of a universal healthcare system in some countries. It pokes at the problems that we failed to prioritize as an Ummah, pre-Coronavirus, because we perceived those problems to not be our own.

Al-Nu’man ibn Bashir reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “The parable of the believers in their affection, mercy, and compassion for each other is that of a body. When any limb aches, the whole body reacts with sleeplessness and fever.” (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī)

"This Ramadan is about seeing the larger market of shoes and realizing how you benefit from these transactions and how comfortable you are in your own."

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash,