Jesse Ramdeo

It was the an­swer devo­tees were pray­ing for — the re­open­ing of places of wor­ship fol­low­ing months of lock­down.

De­spite re­stric­tions lim­it­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, peo­ple were still grate­ful to be with­in holy walls to of­fer their prayers yes­ter­day.

At the Nur-E-Is­lam Masjid in San Juan, prayers pierced cor­ri­dors which had been silent for over four months.

Among those re­turn­ing to the mosque was Sher­az Baksh, who de­scribed it as a spir­it­ed mo­ment.

“Ac­tu­al­ly, it feels 100 per cent su­perb. I am so glad and thank­ful to be here, back in the mosque.”

In April, the doors to the Nur-E-Is­lam Masjid and those of oth­er places of wor­ship were shut due to a spike in COVID-19 cas­es, but as re­stric­tions lift­ed yes­ter­day, so did peo­ple’s voic­es in prayer.

Ac­cord­ing to Imam Sher­az Ali, even with a cur­few still in ef­fect, peo­ple seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty for in-per­son wor­ship­ping.

“Peo­ple were here this morn­ing and peo­ple were here just now when we fin­ished the sec­ond prayer, many peo­ple are ea­ger to re­turn to the Masjid. Of course, we can make the point that God is every­where and you can pray at your homes and so on but there is a spe­cial feel­ing com­ing to the house of God.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Imam, while mea­sures were in place to fa­cil­i­tate the par­tial re­sump­tion of in-per­son wor­ship­ping, no de­ci­sion has been tak­en to de­bar un-vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple.

“Al­though we en­cour­age peo­ple to be­come vac­ci­nat­ed, we do al­so be­lieve that its a per­son’s per­son­al choice and they need to get ed­u­cat­ed about vac­cines, the type of vac­cines and their own per­son­al health. How­ev­er, every­one still has to fol­low all pro­to­cols,” Ali said, adding the mosque will be used as a vac­ci­na­tion site next month.

While wor­ship­pers streamed in­to mosques, fu­mi­gat­ing was hap­pen­ing at the Cathe­dral of Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion in Port-of-Spain, fol­low­ing an ear­ly morn­ing mass. When a Guardian Me­dia team vis­it­ed some church­es and tem­ples across the coun­try, they were ei­ther closed or do­ing some last-minute clean up.