To Open or Close? COVID-19, Mosques and the Role of Religious Authority within the British Muslim Community: A Socio-Legal Analysis

Abstract

A whirlwind of developments have unfolded in the UK since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has subsequently instigated an intensely animated debate among British Muslim religious leaders about the contentious and sensitive topic of mosque closure, producing a rich and sophisticated spectrum of responses. These responses emerged within the dramatic global background of an imminent closure of Islam’s most cherished mosque to international pilgrims, namely the sacred precinct in Mekkah. The stakes were, therefore, high for British Muslim religious leaders considering mosque closure, facing the stark dilemma of compromising the sacrosanct status of the mosque and congregational worship in Islam or putting the lives of British Muslims in their hundreds of thousands at risk. This paper seeks to analyze the role of religious authority within the British Muslim community through the lens of the responses of the community’s religious leaders to the COVID-19 closure of mosques. It builds upon a Special Issue published by this journal on leadership, authority and representation in British Muslim communities. The issue of COVID-19 mosque closure in the UK presented an excellent case study for this paper’s analysis, manifesting as it does the dynamic way in which religious authority in the British Muslim community continues to evolve. This paper thus seeks to use this case-study to further enrich the literature on this topic.

Islam and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Between Religious Practice and Health Protection

“…Restricting the use of places of worship has made believers of all religions feel abandoned by their religious leaders and alone in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. These limitations showed people how important religion is in life, especially when health and life are at risk (Al-Astewani, 2021 ).…”

“…Numerous sanitary restrictions aimed at preventing the spread of the virus made it impossible to gather for community prayer in churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of prayer. Restrictions on gathering people to meet religious needs have been in place in many places around the world (Boguszewski et al, 2020;Begović, 2020;Al-Astewani, 2021;Osei-Tutu et al, 2021;Kostecki & Piwko, 2021;Kühle & Larsen, 2021). For this reason, almost all religious activities have been transferred to television and the Internet (Molteni et al, 2020).…”

Crisis and Continuation: The Digital Relocation of Jain Socio-Religious Praxis during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…10 Although Jainism, and Jain organizations and individuals, were present and active in the digital world before the COVID-19 pandemic, the discussion below illustrates how both the type of online activities and the attitudes towards them have changed considerably. To date, published research on the effects of a crisis of the scope and impact of the 2020 pandemic on the relationship between religion and digital media is scarce, and consists mostly of case studies examining different religions from a variety of disciplinary perspectives-including law, medicine, and psychology, as well as theology, religious studies, and anthropology (e.g., Thomas and Barbato 2020;Parish 2020;Al-Astewani 2021;Wildman et al 2020, and the corona dossier blog on the Religious Matters in an Entangled World research project). Tilak Parekh's work on the digital presence of the Hindu temple in Neasden is particularly interesting, as it situated itself in a context that is in many respects similar to the one this article discusses (Parekh 2020).…”

Spatial Analysis of Distribution Pattern of Covid-19 Cases in Batang Regency

“…Some religious or spiritual leaders need to bespoke persons to suggest their followers obey the health protocols. In some cases, the rapid change of regulation toward mosques made worshipers confused and anger also negatively impacted the mosque and COVID-19 prevention efforts [33,34].…”