‘DIFFERENT WAY’ TO CELEBRATE
Muslims mark Eid virtually
Eid al-fitr, the holiday marking the end of the month-long dawnto-sunset fasting of Ramadan, is a time of celebration for practising Muslims: morning prayers at the mosque, a big breakfast or lunch with family and friends, visiting and sharing of traditional sweets such as pastries filled with pistachio paste or kahk, a type of buttery sugar cookie with a sandy texture.
This year, COVID-19 and the social distancing it has mandated precluded all that for Muslims in Montreal and everywhere: Mosques are closed and large community gatherings are prohibited. For many, it made for a quieter Eid celebration, a culmination of a quieter Ramadan and, for many, a lonelier one.
For Aouatif Zebiri, this has meant that “we are having to deal with our faith in a different way. “A big part of the Eid celebration is for people to go the mosque and to listen to the imam — to his words, his lecture,” she said.
“Most Muslims, even if they don’t go to the mosque for Ramadan, go for Eid. It’s a spiritual prayer but also a community prayer. The Eid prayer is the most important prayer.”
Some mosques have livestreamed the Eid service via the Zoom teleconferencing tool. Zebiri and her brother followed an
Eid service recorded in the United Arab Emirates, where their parents live, and listened the imam.
In addition to prayer, an important element of Eid is that people visit each other and share food. “This year it’s a very different world: No friends visiting, no family visiting. It’s mostly calling people and celebrating virtually,” she said.
Ehab Lotayef and his wife, Tali Goodfriend, for instance, met with friend online via Zoom Sunday afternoon. Although gatherings are not the same as meeting face to face, they do minimize the distance between us in some ways, he said.
It is “quite a feat to go through Ramadan,” said Samaa Elibyari. “You go through the same exercise and the same hardships and the same pleasure and then you celebrate together.”
Observing Ramadan, one of the basic five tenets of Islam, is in part about “disciplining our physical impulses,” she said. Practising Muslims refrain from drinking and eating from dawn until sunset and also from the physical pleasures of sexual interaction, she explained.
Ramadan also has a spiritual aspect, with its special prayers. Fasting is intended to help people “to realize how much bounty we have and how privileged we are — and to think about the people who cannot eat every day or when they are hungry. This encourages compassion for others who do not have what we have,” Elibyari said.
Iftar, the meal after sunset during Ramadan, is generally enjoyed with others. “Ramadan is also about community — It starts with the family and with neighbours: The more, the merrier.
“You have gone through the day and done your duty ... You realize how much pleasure you take in eating — and that pleasure is amplified when you are with other people.”
This year, that community aspect was absent. “It’s the saddest Ramadan I have had in my whole life,” she said.
For Ghada Mohamed, it was “a very, very different Ramadan: so calm. It gave me more time to stay with my own family. We did a lot of reflection.”
She prayed with her husband and their 12-year-old son, who fasted for most of Ramadan. “I was so proud of him,” she said.
In previous years, the family has celebrated with store-bought cookies and pastries, but because they are sheltering in place, there was time to bake the pastries and kahk at home.