In light of the Corona crisis, technology contributes to increasing religiosity in the West, so can it be used in Ramadan?

Ragheed Ayoub

Places of worship closed their doors in various parts of the world to believers of all walks of life. Perhaps the Corona virus is the "only enemy" that combated fighting different religions, not only because it killed more than eighty thousand of their followers, but because it caused, for the first time in human history, the closure of worship centers .

Places such as Makkah, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Church of the Nativity and the Temple of the Big Buddha - whose congregation delegations did not stop from the moment of its erection until today - seem empty today in a sad scene that indicates in large part what the Corona Virus was able to do with the role of worship that is the connection of the earth to the sky.

The worshipers disappeared and the religious people increased
It is interesting to note that with the closure of places of worship, for fear of the spread of the deadly virus, that religiosity has increased and this is not strange in times of crisis, a recent study from the University of Copenhagen found that for every eighty thousand new cases of Covid-19 present in a country, searches doubled On the Internet about prayer.

To address this painful paradox, religious leaders across the United States have resorted to virtual tools through which services, sermons, text studies and individual counseling are transmitted.

"It was unimaginable to look at a bunch of empty chairs," Jordi Gerson, rabbi at the Greenwich Reform Synagogue, Connecticut, told BuzzFeed News, commenting on the difficult decision to cancel the March 8 carnival on the occasion of the Jewish Eurim holiday.

But at the end of the following week, after consulting with a group of synagogue members, Gerson offered Saturday prayers from an empty shelter, through the video chat app Zoom which grew significantly during the epidemic.

Strangely enough, there were more participants in Zoom services than Gerson usually sees with a crowd in the synagogue on Saturdays.

As for the Rev. Douglas Slaughter of the Second Baptist Church in Aiken, South Carolina, who sits on a chair on the church floor and handles the laptop screen, this technical change has been a challenge against his dynamic style that has evolved over four decades.

"It was a challenge. I am a very mobile speaker. I like to move and talk to people," Slaughter said.

But the priest found in this technique a distinctive thing, which is interacting directly with the parish of his church through the comments on the Zoom program.

After Slaughter gave a sermon that encouraged her children to "walk in faith, not fear", an elderly worshiper made a note to the pastor about his performance in the sermon broadcast by Zoom saying, "Pardon, you look fat."

Comments about the use of technology were not negative. St. Gregory of the Episcopal Church of Nessie in San Francisco conducted a survey of his church parish wondering how to perform an appropriate digital prayer on Sunday, encouraging parishes to share their personal experiences.

What is the future of digital worship ?
Western scholars and clerics fear that "hypothetical worship" may not include other, less organized forms of religious contact. Imam Muhammad Majid of the ADAMS Center in Stirling, Virginia, uses Zoom and Facebook Live to make speeches and give religious lessons remotely. However, these virtual platforms do not allow the type of informal communication that Majid said is crucial to his work.

"Someone will ascend after the Friday prayer and whisper in my ear that one of his family members is ill and needs my prayers," Majid told Bazfid, saying: "Where is this whisper, this private conversation on the Internet? There is no possibility for individual access to share intimate thoughts and information."

The Adams Center is one of the largest mosques in the United States, and has affiliates and affiliates serving 5,000 families. Among them are groups of people whom Majid said a hypothetical religious community is unfit for them.

While virtual worship extends the participation of groups of young people who know to use potential technology, some people cannot be left behind.

"We have senior members of society, people who do not speak English very fluently and do not have young people to help them with technology," Majid said.

"I am worried about these people. You have to remember that some of these elderly people are refugees. They feel joy in physical gatherings. They feel love. This kind of thing is missing at this time. I don't think technology can replace that."

Rabbi Gerson shares Imam Majid Al-Rai and says, "I visit people on their deathbeds through FaceTime, but I have never been able to hold the hand of a dying person. I am worried that people will die on their own."

They argue that hypothetical forms of assembly cannot replace the functions of the wider community of many churches, temples, mosques, Hindu and Sikh temples.

A call to save Ramadan
Maybe Corona surprised the world, but his surprise to the Muslims was greater. The biggest pessimists, two months ago, did not imagine that Muslims would not be able to perform Umrah or Tarawih prayers and pray the night in Ramadan, which comes to us at the end of this month.

Perhaps hope for the end of this ordeal will make many Islamic centers, bodies, and ministries in the Arab and Islamic countries not present the idea of ​​using digital technology to alleviate the negative aspects of this pandemic.

But as reports come to light - which confirm that the pandemic remains and expands during Ramadan - these institutions must work and think about creative solutions and find legitimate exits for them to persuade the skeptics or intransigents.

And I think - and the month of Ramadan is at the door - that if we, as Muslims, are to be aware of some of what we missed on the basis of "what he does not realize, he does not leave his ignorance" that there will be thinking from now on putting a plan on which the fatwa centers in the Islamic world meet to help governments and Arab and Islamic technology companies Out of this predicament with minimal losses.

Perhaps an Islamic (Hackathon) technical conference should be held dedicated to legalizing the use of technology by advisory centers, finding technological solutions by technology companies and organizing and supervising the process by governments.

In the end: technology will not replace mosques, but many Muslims may turn to the technology of virtual rooms with its neighbors and friends to hear the sermon of the Great Mosque of Mecca, for example, instead of the inability to travel to Mecca, just as thirsty people quench their yearning for those holy places by watching the live broadcast and move between the sides of the Grand Mosque and the mosque. The Noble Prophet with the cameras broadcast there.

We saw how technology has overcome obstacles in all areas, and it is able to do so in the field of worship also in light of what is available from them according to the tolerant Sharia. What does the future of virtual reality technologies, augmented reality, or even 3D hologram technology tell us, and what are the limits of ijtihad for Islamic scholars?