Amid fatwa, Muslims to embrace unusual Eid

NEW DELHI: India’s most influential Islamic seminary, Darul Uloom Deoband, on Monday issued a fatwa asking all Muslims to offer prayers and celebrate Eid at home this year in keeping with the extended national lockdown. Delhi-based author and historian Rana Safvi sees this Eid as a “humanitarian event” rather than a festival. Qari Fazlur Rahman, who leads Eid prayers on Kolkata’s Red Road every year, believes adapting to a new normal doesn’t mean the sanctity of the festival will be lost.
Heading into the last week of Ramzan amid the Covid-19 pandemic, India’s 172 million Muslim population is preparing for — and reconciling itself to — a most unusual Eid bereft of all the usual trappings like huge prayer congregations, ceaseless shopping, social visits and the inviting warmth of an Eid Milan embrace.
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On social media groups, messages like “no new clothes, just wear your best clothes” are being circulated among family and friends, urging people to fill the festive void with the spirit of giving. The suggestions range from paying a needy child’s school fee or someone’s rent to helping a lockdown-hit trader revive his business.
In homemaker Suboohi Alvi’s Lucknow home, the special Eid sewaiyan whose aroma fills her kitchen at this time of the year won’t be just for friends and family. “We will make sewaiyan for distribution among those who have gone through much distress in the past two months and can’t afford a decent Eid feast,” she said. In Srinagar, Muzaffar Shah has but one request — the administration should allow mutton shops to open ahead of Eid. “If not anything, a good Eid feast will make up for all that we will miss out on this time,” he said. In the Valley alone, traders usually do Rs 1,200 crore worth of business in the run-up to Eid. “As it is, things have been bad since mid-2019. The pandemic-induced lockdown has blown away the Eid business as well,” said Srinagar trader Ashiq Sheikh.
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According to the Lucknow Trade Association, the volume of Eid business lost in the city this Eid would be around Rs 500 crore. In Telengana and AP combined, it is around Rs 2,000 crore, sources said. In the lanes of old Delhi, there is no sign that Eid is less than a week away. No sweets are being sold on the streets and there are no decorations around Jama Masjid.
In Telangana, community leaders and clerics have asked everyone to temper the festive spirit not only because of the lockdown but also out of respect for those whose lives and livelihood have been affected the most.