The Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Sen­a­tor Ha­ji Kaz­im Ho­sein, is re­mind­ing all cit­i­zens of the im­por­tance of ad­her­ing to the health and safe­ty pro­to­cols that come with “the new nor­mal”, as they re­turn to their places of wor­ship from Thurs­day 11 June 2020.

In an an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley, on Sun­day 7th June 2020, the date for the re-open­ing of places of wor­ship was ad­vanced to Thurs­day 11th June 2020.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment, Min­is­ter Ho­sein ex­pressed grat­i­tude and joy at be­ing able to re­turn to the Masjid for Jummah prayer on Fri­day.

“There is a feel­ing of grat­i­tude and greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion for life as we are able to re­turn to our places of wor­ship,” he says in the re­lease.  “We are all hap­py to once again join with our broth­ers and sis­ters at our re­spec­tive places of wor­ship to give thanks to Almighty God. How­ev­er, we must ob­serve the guide­lines is­sued by the Gov­ern­ment to pro­tect us in the on­go­ing fight against COVID-19.”

He added: “Wor­ship­pers must con­tin­ue to wear face masks, main­tain so­cial dis­tanc­ing and prop­er hy­giene prac­tices by wash­ing and san­i­tiz­ing their hands be­fore and af­ter join­ing their con­gre­ga­tion. This is not the time to re­turn to our old habits and ne­glect the call by the au­thor­i­ties. We must not drop our guard.”

In the re­lease, Min­is­ter Ho­sein re­it­er­at­ed his prayer for con­tin­ued mer­cy and bless­ings up­on all re­li­gious con­gre­ga­tions.

“As we re­turn to our var­i­ous places of wor­ship, I pray that Al­lah (swt) bless­es us with good health, long life and imaan (faith) to seek his re­ward through good deeds,” he said. “May Al­lah (swt) ac­cept our ibadaah (wor­ship) and grant ease to all our broth­ers and sis­ters who are fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties and hard­ships. Ameen.”

The Min­is­ter al­so shared a mes­sage to fel­low Mus­lims:

“As mosques across our beloved na­tion are re-opened, I want to re­mind all my broth­ers and sis­ters in Is­lam of the im­por­tance of Shukr (grat­i­tude). In re­turn­ing to our re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions, we must re­mem­ber to give thanks to Almighty Al­lah (swt) for pro­tect­ing us through­out this dif­fi­cult time. Many coun­tries across the world have been se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and are un­able to loosen their re­stric­tions. Let us be grate­ful for the bound­less favours show­ered up­on us by the Almighty. I en­cour­age you to of­fer prayer for all our broth­ers and sis­ters who are un­able to re­sume wor­ship at their church­es, masjids and tem­ples.”

He al­so re­flect­ed on this year’s Ra­madan ob­ser­vance, not­ing:

“Is­lam teach­es us to be com­pas­sion­ate, pa­tient, gen­er­ous and grate­ful. Prayer is the best form of grat­i­tude to Al­lah. To­day, I em­bold­en all cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue to make D’ua (prayer) and al­ways re­mem­ber to say Al­ham­dulil­lah (praise be to god) for the gift of life, for be­ing able to leave our homes and go to our mosques and be­ing able to have ex­pe­ri­enced an­oth­er month of Ra­madan with our loved ones. Though Ra­madan this year was dif­fer­ent, we will for­ev­er cher­ish the time spent at home with our loved ones. I tru­ly be­lieve it in­creased our faith in God and re­mind­ed us that prayer is the great­est ve­hi­cle of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the Almighty.”