According to Aljazeera, the coronavirus stopped communal Muslim prayers to Friday prayer for the first time in living memory. Many mosques from Indonesia to Morocco on Friday are quiet.
On the other hand, in some places, believers defied medical advice to join together in Friday prayer.
In Islam’s holiest sanctuary in Mecca, the usually crowded courtyard around the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque, towards which all Muslims pray, was silent and empty.
At Riyadh’s Al Rajhi Grand Mosque, only the imam, the muezzin who sings the call to prayer. Other staff were praying inside instead of the thousands who normally attend.
“This feeling is indescribable … the minarets are crying. The mosques were once full of worshippers,” said the muezzin, Nasser Mohammed, weeping.
The Blue Mosque of Istanbul, with its pencil minarets and cascading domes, Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock under its gilt roof, and the huge Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca with its ornate square minaret had all shut their doors.
Elsewhere, Muslims flocked to mosques from Cairo to Mogadishu, whatever the risks.
On the other hand, in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, mosques were still crowded. A religious scholar told his congregation though loudspeaker: “We are not too weak to let this one virus empty our mosques.”
But as the pandemic spread, some governments suspended communal prayers or closed mosques entirely. Leaving many of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims to pray at home, at work, in parks or in the street.
A religious gathering in Malaysia last month, attended by 16,000 people, generated 670 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in four countries in Southeast Asia. Weekly prayers were later called off in Malaysia.
