The other Ramadan

After Christian Lent, the fasting month of Islamic Ramadan will also be characterized by the restrictions of partial, if not total at times, social confinement for the Coronavirus pandemic. In the East, as in the West or in Asia, it is indisputable that churches, mosques, synagogues and other religious places are, as centers of aggregation and promiscuity, to be avoided in times of contagion. In eighteenth-century Russia, the plague of 1771 became truly catastrophic when a rumor began to circulate that there was an icon capable of protecting against it. The icon was affixed above the city gate of Moscow and attracted hundreds of faithful, who flocked from all over to pray and kiss the sacred image, which, in spite of itself, became an extraordinary agent of transmission of bacteria.

Of course, the population of that time did not know how an epidemic was transmitted. Today such ignorance is no longer possible. However, among believers many still refuse to accept precautionary behaviors that give them the feeling of having to give up something of nature
superior and collective rites that give substance to their beliefs: hugs, purification, sanctification, ablutions, ritual baths or Eucharistic communion. Islamic spiritual life, in everyday life, is not dramatically limited by the inability to participate in collective prayer, while recognizing its increased value, compared to the individual act. On the eve of the beginning of the holy month, the Turkish Diyanet (Ministry of Religious Affairs) had confirmed the closure of the mosques also for the collective tarawih, evening prayer proper to Ramadan, as well as for the normal daily collective prayers.

However, the month of Ramadan deserves a separate discussion, where there is not only an intensification of the spiritual moment, but the community soul of the Islamic faith unfolds in a very particular way. There are two main expressions of this dimension: particular attention
in the help of the most needy (increased exponentially this year also due to the pandemic virus), with zakat (legal alms), paid by any Muslim to the community of believers and with the simultaneously charitable and festive moment of the ftôr or iftâr, the meal breakdown of the daily fast, which begins before dawn and continues until sunset. If in large urban centers such as Istanbul, the public and popular dimension of collective meals (under large municipal tents), had already undergone a downsizing at the time of the serious attacks of international jihadism, this year the iftar has only one dimension familiar and not even in the patriarchal sense of the term: that real meeting between generations unique and now disappeared in many western societies. The Diyanet invited the faithful to avoid hosting or participating in dinners with friends or relatives. It will certainly be the same isla cultural identity not (that is, not necessarily linked to the practice) to be touched in some way by it.

In recent decades, a constant decline, at least in an urban context, of religious practice, had never corresponded to a real decrease in Ramadan participants, as a fasting practice but also as a time of social and cultural aggregation. This year, in the absence of large collective meals, it is no longer possible to make a clear distinction between two worlds that have traditionally always populated the free public distribution of meals: the first wave made up of people who do not pray before the meal, but who participate to the "iftar" because socially in difficulty and a second wave, made up of those who arrive after the Salāt al-maghrib, the fourth prayer of the five obligatory per day, which must be recited at sunset, marking, in fact, the end of fasting. The latter remains mandatory for all able and uncommitted Muslims as health workers, whose health can be compromised or whose fasting can affect the service to be offered. However, they will have to make up for the missed fasting days later.

In any case, the religious authorities, in a declaration before the beginning of Ramadan, even said, citing opinions of medical experts, that fasting increases the immunity of the body: something essential against pandemic viruses!

Claudio Monge
NP may 2020