LONDON: Mosques in the UK are increasing their online presence and adapting the services they offer this Ramadan to help Muslims stay connected to their local places of worship amid the coronavirus lockdown.
They will be broadcasting special talks, Qur’an recitals and prayers for worshippers to listen to during the holy month, when Muslims aim to increase worship, acts of charity, gratitude, self-discipline and self-improvement.
Mosques during Ramadan usually heave with worshippers who break their fasts together at sunset and perform the Maghreb prayer shortly after.
Congregation members gather again for the Isha and Taraweeh prayers later on after it is completely dark outside.
The other prayers are also attended by more people, as Muslims who would usually pray at home or not at all strive to connect to God and practice their faith better during the holy month.
This year, however, mosques in the UK are closed to worshippers in line with government restrictions that aim to curb the spread of coronavirus.
British mosques are being advised to increase their digital presence so that members of their congregation remain spiritually linked to their local mosques at a time when they are unable to attend them.
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) has encouraged mosques to find ways “to be a virtual hub of community activism,” and to “continue to offer support” to worshippers.
The East London Mosque and London Muslim Center, which had an online presence long before the pandemic and has a room dedicated to broadcasting online, is livestreaming Islamic talks daily between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. during the holy month.
The mosque’s imams and guest speakers will speak about a variety of Ramadan-related topics, and listeners can tune into these on the website, by downloading the broadcasting app Mixlr, or on Facebook.
“The East London Mosque has taken steps to keep up people’s spirits during Ramadan,” media and communications manager Khizar Mohammad told Arab News.
“Our daily online talks, by both resident imams and guest speakers on a variety of topics, will replace talks that used to be held after the Asr prayer at the mosque.”
The Qur’an is divided into 30 parts, and during Taraweeh prayers the imam will recite approximately one of these parts so that the entire holy book is recited over the course of Ramadan.
Given that all congregational prayers have been suspended, the mosque is broadcasting live recitation of the Qur’an daily so worshippers who would normally have listened to the entire book during Taraweeh prayers can still listen to it during the month.
“Sheikh Mohammed Mahmoud will recite one part of the Qur’an everyday live on our Mixlr channel between 3:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.,” Mohammad said.
In addition to this, the adhan (call to prayer) will be broadcast, and the sermon for Friday prayers can be viewed on the mosque’s YouTube channel.
The mosque usually provides iftar to more than 500 worshippers every day during Ramadan. Due to the lockdown, iftar will not take place in the mosque. Instead, it will deliver meals to people who need it most.
“Our community iftar has instead been refocused toward providing iftar for those who otherwise would be in difficulty, such as the elderly who are isolating alone, vulnerable people and fasting NHS (National Health Service) workers,” Mohammad said.
MCB Secretary-General Hared Khan praised the community initiatives run by Muslims that have “sprung up to help the vulnerable.”
He said in a statement: “Mosques are using the power of the Internet to serve the religious and spiritual needs of communities.”
He added: “Ramadan is the best time to continue this valuable work in supporting the people around us, regardless of faith and color.”
Masjid e Tauheedul Islam in the town of Blackburn, northwest England, is another mosque that has been keen to keep connected with members of its congregation.
All prayers are livestreamed via the mosque’s website and Mixlr channel, and talks given after prayers are also broadcast.
“Masjid e Tauheedul Islam is trying to deliver a program that benefits the community throughout the day,” the mosque’s Imam Suhail Adam Manya told Arab News.
“Before Ramadan, we used to broadcast a talk after every prayer, but during the holy month this is being ramped up,” he said.
“We’ll be starting a children’s hour broadcast soon, where kids can listen to stories and will be given challenges to complete online. There will be prizes and it will keep them occupied.”
The mosque’s Mixlr channel is proving to be very popular, with “more than 165,000 listens since the lockdown started,” Manya said.
The mosque, like others across the country, “launched a huge community care program in Blackburn when the lockdown was announced,” he added.
“We delivered leaflets with boxes of dates to houses in the community when the lockdown came into effect. We told people that if they had coronavirus symptoms, couldn’t get to the shops or needed any kind of help, they could ring the number on the leaflets and a member of our team would help,” Manya said.
“We have our own call center, and this initiative will continue throughout Ramadan. This weekend, we’ll be distributing food-pack drops to the wider community and hot iftar meals to Muslims. We’ll also be delivering medication to those who are self-isolating,” he added.
“Our call center is extremely busy, and we’re proud to say that 50 percent of the calls that we take are from non-Muslims,” he said.
“We have over 500 volunteers working with us, and since the lockdown we’ve visited up to 7,500 Muslim and non-Muslim homes. We’ve distributed nearly 1,500 hot meals, and we’re supporting the elderly and the sick.”
UK mosques adapt for Ramadan amid coronavirus pandemic
https://arab.news/z8xb8
UK mosques adapt for Ramadan amid coronavirus pandemic
- The East London Mosque will deliver iftar meals to people who need it most this Ramadan as the mosque remains closed
- The MCB has encouraged mosques to find ways “to be a virtual hub of community activism”
Croatian health minister arrested and sacked over alleged graft
The prime minister’s comments came after Croatia’s Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK) said it was conducting several arrests
SARAJEVO: Croatian Health Minister Vili Beros was sacked on Friday after being arrested on suspicion of corruption, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said.
Beros’ lawyer Laura Valkovic told local media that he denied any criminal responsibility. The health ministry declined to comment.
The prime minister’s comments came after Croatia’s Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK) said it was conducting several arrests.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office also said it had initiated an investigation against eight people, including Beros and the directors of two hospitals in Zagreb, over alleged bribery, abuse of authority and money laundering.
Croatia’s State Attorney Ivan Turudic, whose office works closely with USKOK, said there were two parallel investigations into the alleged crimes and that EPPO has not informed his office nor USKOK about its investigation.
Turudic said Beros was accused of trade of influence. He said two other individuals had been arrested and one legal entity would be investigated on suspicion of the criminal act of receiving a bribe.
The people detained will be brought before an investigative judge who will decide on any pre-trial detention, Turudic told a news conference.
The EPPO said that a criminal group seeking to secure financing for the sale of medical robotic devices in several hospitals was suspected of giving bribes to officials to try to win contracts for projects, including EU funded ones.
“What is obvious is that this is about criminal acts of corruption,” Plenkovic said. “On behalf of the government, I want to say that agencies authorized for criminal persecution should investigate everything.”
Protesters storm parliament in breakaway Georgian region Abkhazia over deal with Russia
- Eshsou Kakalia, an opposition leader and former deputy prosecutor general, said the parliament building was under the control of the protesters
- “We will now seek the resignation of the current president of Abkhazia,” he was quoted by Russia’s Interfax news agency as saying
TBILISI: Protesters stormed the parliament of the Russian-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia on Friday and opposition politicians demanded the resignation of the self-styled president over an unpopular investment agreement with Moscow.
Protesters used a truck to smash through the metal gates surrounding the parliament in the capital Sukhumi. Video from the scene then showed people climbing through windows after prying off metal bars and chanting in the corridors.
Eshsou Kakalia, an opposition leader and former deputy prosecutor general, said the parliament building was under the control of the protesters.
“We will now seek the resignation of the current president of Abkhazia,” he was quoted by Russia’s Interfax news agency as saying. Protesters also broke into the presidential administration offices located in the same building as the parliament.
Emergency services said at least eight people were taken to hospital.
The presidential administration said in a statement that authorities were preparing to withdraw the investment agreement with Russia that some Abkhaz fear will price them out of the property market.
Russia recognized Abkhazia and another breakaway region, South Ossetia, as independent states in 2008 after Russian troops repelled a Georgian attempt to retake South Ossetia in a five-day war.
Most of the world recognizes Abkhazia as part of Georgia, from which it broke away during wars in the early 1990s, but Russian money has poured into the lush sub-tropical territory where Soviet-era spa resorts cling to the Black Sea coast.
RUSSIAN MONEY
Abkhazian lawmakers had been set to vote on Friday on the ratification of an investment agreement signed in October in Moscow by Russian Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov and his Abkhazian counterpart, Kristina Ozgan.
Abkhazian opposition leaders say the agreement with Moscow, which would allow for investment projects by Russian legal entities, would price locals out of the property market by allowing far more Russian money to flow in.
The opposition said in a statement that the protesters’ actions were not against Russian-Abkhazian relations.
“Abkhazian society had only one demand: to protect the interests of our citizens and our business, but neither the president nor the parliament have heard the voice of the people until today,” Interfax cited the statement as saying.
Earlier this week Abkhazia’s self-styled president, Aslan Bzhania, held an emergency security council meeting after protesters blocked a key highway and rallied in central Sukhumi to demand the release of four activists.
The activists, who were subsequently freed, had been detained for opposing the passage of a law regulating the construction industry which references the Russian-Abkhazian agreement.
In 2014, demonstrators stormed the presidential headquarters, forcing then-leader Alexander Ankvab to flee. He later resigned over accusations of corruption and misrule.
Opposition leader Raul Khadzhimba, elected following the unrest in 2014, was himself forced to step down in 2020 after street protests over disputed election results.
Pakistani province declares health emergency due to smog and locks down two cities
- Smog has choked Punjab for weeks, sickening nearly 2 million people and shrouding vast swathes of the province in a toxic haze
- Average air quality index readings in parts of Lahore exceeded 600 on Friday
LAHORE, Pakistan: A Pakistani province declared a health emergency Friday due to smog and imposed a shutdown in two major cities.
Smog has choked Punjab for weeks, sickening nearly 2 million people and shrouding vast swathes of the province in a toxic haze.
A senior provincial minister, Marriyum Aurangzeb, declared the health emergency at a press conference and announced measures to combat the growing crisis.
Time off for medical staff is canceled, all education institutions are shut until further notice, restaurants are closing at 4 p.m. while takeaway is available up until 8 p.m. Authorities are imposing a lockdown in the cities of Multan and Lahore and halting construction work in those two places.
“Smog is currently a national disaster,” Aurangzeb said. “It will not all be over in a month or a year. We will evaluate the situation after three days and then announce a further strategy.”
Average air quality index readings in parts of Lahore, a city of 11 million, exceeded 600 on Friday. Anything over 300 is considered hazardous to health.
The dangerous smog is a byproduct of large numbers of vehicles, construction and industrial work as well as burning crops at the start of the winter wheat-planting season, experts say.
Pakistan’s national weather center said rain and wind were forecast for the coming days, helping smoggy conditions to subside and air quality to improve in parts of Punjab.
Dr. Muhammad Ashraf, a professor at Jinnah Hospital Lahore and Allama Iqbal Medical College, said the government must take preventative measures well before smog becomes prevalent.
“It is more of an emergency than COVID-19 because every patient is suffering from respiratory tract infections and disease is prevailing at a mass level,” he said earlier this week.
Sri Lankan president’s leftist coalition secures landslide election win
- National People’s Power alliance wins 159 seats in the 225-member parliament
- First time in history, election is won by representatives of Sri Lanka’s poor
COLOMBO: The coalition of Sri Lanka’s new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake won a landslide victory in a snap parliamentary vote, results from the election body showed on Friday, giving the left-leaning leader a mandate to fight poverty and corruption in the crisis-hit island nation.
Dissanayake’s alliance, the National People’s Power, secured 159 seats in the 225-member assembly, according to the results released by the Election Commission.
The United People’s Power of Sajith Premadasa retained its role from the previous parliament as the largest opposition party, winning 40 seats.
When Dissanayake won the presidential vote in September, he had only three members of his party in parliament, which limited his ability to realize his campaign promises.
To boost the NPP’s representation — as government ministers can be appointed only from among lawmakers — he dissolved the parliament and cleared the way for the polls that took place on Thursday, a year ahead of schedule.
While ahead of the poll, the president expressed optimism that the 42 percent of the vote he received in the presidential election showed the NPP was “a winning party,” the landslide win came with a surprise.
“It’s a historic election,” Lakshman Gunasekara, a political analyst in Colombo, told Arab News. “The result has gone far beyond the expectations of analysts ... I did not expect them to win a total majority, but they have done so.”
Dissanayake and his coalition took over control of Sri Lanka as the nation continued to reel from the 2022 economic crisis — its worst since independence in 1948. The austerity measures imposed by his predecessor, Ranil Wickremesinghe — part of a bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund — led to price hikes in food and fuel and caused hardship to millions of Sri Lankans.
Dissanayake said during his campaign that he planned to renegotiate the targets set in the IMF deal, as it placed too much burden on the ordinary people.
More than half of former lawmakers chose not to run for re-election. No contenders were seen from the powerful Rajapaksa family, including former president Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, also former president, Gotabaya — who was ousted in 2022 and largely blamed for the crisis.
Sri Lanka People’s Front, the party loyal to the Rajapaksa family, secured only three seats in the new parliament.
Sri Lankans decided to choose the NPP, a movement that until now would never win more than 4 percent, as there was a general “anti-incumbency kind of mood, but also tiredness among the voters of the same old parties alternating and doing political mismanagement, whipping up ethnic chauvinism, encouraging attacks on minorities to cover up for their own corruption,” Gunasekara said.
He explained that even more voted for the NPP than for Dissanayake in the presidential vote, as during slightly over one month of his and his three-member cabinet’s rule, they “realized that this new leadership is very fresh in their style of governance, very collective ... not personality-oriented, and also did not resort to violence or bullying or thuggery.”
Both Dissanayake and most of his party members come from the poorest segments of Sri Lankan society.
“He’s a son of a farmer, benefited from free education ... He’s an educated person, but coming from the lowest classes, not from the urban elite, not the urban middle class, the Westernized people, fashionable people, not at all,” Gunasekara said.
“It will be a new entrant into the South Asian political arena ... For the first time, we have subalterns who have arrived in power. And they have arrived with a huge majority.”
Primary schools empty as smog persists in India’s capital New Delhi
- New Delhi and the surrounding metropolitan area, home to more than 30 million people, consistently tops world rankings for air pollution in winter
- The smog is blamed for thousands of premature deaths each year and is an annual source of misery for residents
NEW DELHI: Residents in India’s capital New Delhi again woke under a blanket of choking smog on Friday, a day after authorities closed primary schools and imposed measures aimed at alleviating the annual crisis.
Delhi and the surrounding metropolitan area, home to more than 30 million people, consistently tops world rankings for air pollution in winter.
The smog is blamed for thousands of premature deaths each year and is an annual source of misery for residents, with various piecemeal government initiatives failing to measurably address the problem.
All primary schools were shut by government order on Thursday night with young pupils – particularly vulnerable to smog-related ailments due to their age – instead moving to online lessons.
“I have an eight-year-old kid and he has been suffering from a cough the past couple of days,” Delhi resident Satraj, who did not give his surname, said on the streets of the capital.
“The government did the right thing by shutting down schools.”
Thursday’s edict also banned construction work, ordered drivers of older diesel-powered vehicles to stay off the streets and directed water trucks to spray roads in a bid to clear dust particles from the air.
Delhi’s air quality nonetheless deteriorated to “hazardous” levels for the fourth consecutive day this week, according to monitoring firm IQAir.
Levels of PM2.5 pollutants – dangerous cancer-causing microparticles that enter the bloodstream through the lungs – were recorded more than 26 times above the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum shortly after dawn on Friday.
Critics have consistently said that authorities have fallen short in their duty to tackle a crisis that blights the city each year.
“We haven’t responded to the emergency with the same intensity with which we are facing this crisis,” Sunil Dahiya of New Delhi-based advocacy group Envirocatalysts said.
The acrid smog over New Delhi each year is primarily blamed on stubble burning by farmers in nearby states to clear their fields for plowing.
A report by broadcaster NDTV on Friday said that more than 7,000 individual farm fires had been recorded in Punjab state, to the capital’s north.
Emissions from industry and numerous coal-fired power stations ringing the city, along with vehicle exhaust and the burning of household waste, also play a part.
“Since we haven’t yet carried out any systemic long-term changes, like the way we commute, generate power, or manage our waste, even the curtailed emissions will be high,” Dahiya said.
Cooler temperatures and slow-moving winds worsen the situation by trapping deadly pollutants each winter.
A study in The Lancet medical journal attributed 1.67 million premature deaths to air pollution in the world’s most populous country in 2019.
