Camille McEach­nie

One To­ba­go imam is call­ing out his To­ba­go and Trinidad Mus­lim broth­ers for hold­ing pub­lic Eid-ul-Fitr prayers dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic for a "se­lect" five mem­bers at dif­fer­ent times.

Yusuf Diab, imam of the Masjid Ibn Ab­baas at Crown Point and di­rec­tor of the To­ba­go Is­lam­ic Learn­ing Cen­tre, told Guardian Me­dia via email that the imams hold­ing the prayers, which will be sched­uled for ei­ther Sun­day or Mon­day de­pend­ing on when the moon is seen Sat­ur­day evening, are vi­o­lat­ing the fair and bal­anced Is­lam­ic leg­is­la­tion prin­ci­ples of Is­lam and are go­ing against the ad­vice of Is­lam­ic schol­ars world­wide. He said the plan can al­so cause the virus to spread.

Al­so call­ing the prayers "elit­ist", Diab, head of one of two Mus­lim sects in To­ba­go, said "se­lect­ing spe­cif­ic per­sons to at­tend prayers on an un­just se­lect ba­sis “is a form of spir­i­tu­al gate­keep­ing" and goes against Is­lam, which seeks to break down "so­cial and racial bar­ri­ers."

Diab not­ed that most of the Is­lam­ic world had is­sued of­fi­cial state­ments call­ing on Mus­lims to hold prayers at home with their fam­i­ly be­cause of the pan­dem­ic.

Fol­low­ing is Diab’s full state­ment:

It has come to our at­ten­tion that there are some mosques in To­ba­go and Trinidad that are plan­ning to do the ʿEid cel­e­bra­tion with a max­i­mum of five peo­ple, due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic reg­u­la­tions. These five peo­ple will be cho­sen based on “mer­it,” ac­cord­ing to them, i.e. be­ing reg­u­lars in the mosque etc. This is ex­treme­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble of them from sev­er­al an­gles.

First­ly, the Ma­jor Schol­ars of Is­lām, those who have all the cre­den­tials and right to speak in this re­li­gion, have giv­en us a rul­ing and a con­ces­sion based on sound, scholas­tic ju­rispru­dence that we should con­duct the ʿEid prayer by our­selves, with our fam­i­lies, in our homes in this nov­el sit­u­a­tion. Add the fact that the of­fi­cial re­li­gious bod­ies of most of the Is­lāmic world in coun­tries like Mo­roc­co, Al­ge­ria, Egypt, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and Sau­di Ara­bia have all is­sued of­fi­cial state­ments that ʿEid will be prayed by the peo­ple at home this year. This is based on the im­por­tant prin­ci­ple in the Is­lāmic Leg­is­la­tion that, “Pre­ven­tion of harm takes prece­dence over the en­join­ment of good”. So even if there is a slight pos­si­bil­i­ty that one out of those five cho­sen could have the dis­ease and spread it, then we must take steps to en­sure that it is pre­vent­ed from hap­pen­ing.

Sec­ond­ly, a per­son’s po­si­tion of piety is known by Al­lāh, The Most High, and there is no prece­dent for any “mer­it” sys­tem be­tween mankind in mat­ters of wor­ship in Is­lām, in any of the Schools of Thought in the re­li­gion. The on­ly mer­it sys­tem that ex­ists is be­tween the wor­shiper and his/her Lord Al­lāh, but be­tween each oth­er we can­not de­cide who “qual­i­fies” for cer­tain mer­its or not. e.g. there is no mer­it sys­tem for who goes to Ha­jj (pil­grim­age), or who’s al­lowed to go to the mosque or oth­er than that. So on what scale has this so-called “mer­it” sys­tem been jus­ti­fied? Who de­cides which five gets to come to this elite ʿEid Prayer that will un­doubt­ed­ly leave a larg­er seg­ment of the lo­cal Mus­lim pop­u­lous iso­lat­ed and dis­en­fran­chised? Are these five cho­sen based on a par­tic­u­lar race or sta­tus in the so­ci­ety? Reg­u­lar at­ten­dance in the mosque can­not be a cri­te­ri­on ei­ther, as many Mus­lims live far from the mosque, un­like in a Mus­lim coun­try where there is a mosque on every cor­ner, so per­haps some can­not af­ford to trav­el to the mosque as reg­u­lar­ly as the well-off Mus­lims can. So piety and “mer­it” can­not be judged based on at­ten­dance, as the best Mus­lim might be fi­nan­cial­ly poor but spir­i­tu­al­ly rich in faith, and Al­lāh knows the hearts of the peo­ple best.

Third­ly and fi­nal­ly, if a sixth, sev­enth or eighth Mus­lim shows up, as un­doubt­ed­ly would be­cause of ig­no­rance of the na­ture of the af­fair, then who will pre­vent him from par­tic­i­pat­ing? Is it worth the fifty thou­sand dol­lar fine if the au­thor­i­ties show up and the scan­dal that will en­sue when Po­lice is in­volved and it ap­pears like the Mus­lims are stub­born and de­fi­ant?

Is­lām is a way of life that is di­vine­ly re­vealed and one of its ob­jec­tives is to equal­ize the sta­tus quo and break down so­cial and racial bar­ri­ers. So to de­fy the Schol­ars of Is­lām and the of­fi­cial health rec­om­men­da­tions—even when stay­ing with­in the five per­son con­straints—and pray­ing the ʿEid Prayer pub­licly can­not be an act of piety. Rather, it ap­pears to be a mis­guid­ed act of self­ish­ness and un­just se­lec­tive bias that is not pi­ous et al, but a form of be­ing spir­i­tu­al gate­keep­ers and no doubt a form of ex­trem­ism. To con­duct such an elit­ist ʿEid Prayer in the face of the cur­rent state of pan­dem­ic could be un­der­stood as a state­ment of in­jus­tice to the gen­er­al Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion and a bold de­fi­ance of the prin­ci­ples of Is­lām and the fair and bal­anced Sharīʿah (The Is­lāmic Leg­is­la­tion)

Yusuf Diab

Imam, Masjid Ibn Ab­baas, To­ba­go.