Hun­dreds of thou­sands of Mus­lims across Trinidad and To­ba­go are ea­ger to be­gin their fast to­day for the month of Ra­madan.

This is the sec­ond Ra­madan be­ing ob­served dur­ing the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic how­ev­er, Imam Sher­az Ali said the com­mu­ni­ty is grate­ful there are few­er re­stric­tions in place this time around.

He ad­mit­ted that last year’s ob­ser­vance was very chal­leng­ing since Mus­lims had to roll back on many of their rit­u­als.

“Last year was a very dif­fi­cult year for us in the month of Ra­madan be­cause of course, the masjids were not ab­solute­ly closed but, there were quite a num­ber of lim­i­ta­tions and re­stric­tions for gath­er­ing in the masjid. This year that has in­creased to 50 per cent so the masjids have been or­gan­is­ing them­selves to ac­com­mo­date 50 per cent of their nor­mal flock,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

Imam Ali not­ed, “There will be break­ing of the fast go­ing on at the masjids as well as the night prayer which comes af­ter the day of fast­ing which is known as Taraway and every night in the month of Ra­madan when we break our fast we pray for about an hour or an hour and a half.”

He as­sured that all pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions will be en­forced at their re­li­gious spaces such as so­cial dis­tanc­ing, the wear­ing of masks and tem­per­a­ture checks will be done.

Imam Ali al­so re­mind­ed the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty that they can be vac­ci­nat­ed for COVID-19 dur­ing the fast­ing pe­ri­od.

“The things that break the fast in­clude eat­ing and drink­ing some­thing or things com­ing in­to the pas­sages where we would con­sume food and drink but of course the in­jec­tions are non-nu­tri­tion­al and they are be­ing in­ject­ed in the arm and so on, so they will not af­fect the fast,” he ex­plained.

He al­so in­di­cat­ed that there are oth­er prac­tices in place for any­one who is un­able to fast dur­ing this pe­ri­od, whether it be be­cause of ill­ness or preg­nan­cy.

Ac­cord­ing to Imam Ali, they can ob­serve fast­ing af­ter the month of Ra­madan. How­ev­er, if some­one can­not fast at all then, the per­son will be re­quired to en­gage in dai­ly char­i­ty by pro­vid­ing poor fam­i­lies with a meal every day or give mon­ey to the masjid.

Mean­while, Imam Ali said the or­gan­i­sa­tion, Mus­lims of T&T, will be pool­ing re­sources to as­sist St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. He said there are about 2,000 Mus­lims on that is­land.

“We have de­cid­ed to come to­geth­er and help the peo­ple of St Vin­cent by col­lect­ing food items, food­stuff and so on and some of our broth­ers are ap­ply­ing for per­mis­sion to go to St Vin­cent and we will work with the lo­cal gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties to get that per­mis­sion to go across to St Vin­cent and spend some time and as­sist in what­ev­er re­lief ef­fort they can,” ac­cord­ing to Ali.

He said mosques across the coun­try are act­ing as col­lec­tion cen­tres for any­one will­ing to do­nate re­lief items.