Balkan Muslims Find Second Pandemic Ramadan a Challenge

Mass prayers, iftar dinners - breaking the daily fast - and family and neighbourhood gatherings are essential parts of Ramadan, besides other events such as concerts, fairs and conferences.

Finally, in Eid al-Fitr, known also in the Balkans as Ramazan Bajram, believers come together to celebrate the end of the holy month.

However, for a second year in a row, thanks to government measures to halt the spread of COVID-19, Balkan Muslims have not been able to organise mass prayers, iftar dinners and many other events.

In approximately half-Muslim Bosnia and in overwhelmingly Muslim Kosovo, governments have imposed lockdowns and banned mass prayers, crowded iftar dinners and other social events, or allowed only a few, under strict conditions.

Turkey's government went further and introduced a full lockdown during the month of Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr.

Muslim believers in the region are grieved by having to experience another non-conventional Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, with some calling it an unimaginable development.

"The pandemic has changed everything we know about the world and religion, as well as how we experience the month of Ramadan," Vural Akcay, an imam from the Turkish port city of Izmir, told BIRN.

Akcay added that it was bewildering to have no Friday prayers or tarawih prayers - special night prayers in Ramadan - or crowded iftar dinners. "No one could have imagined we would live in such days," he added.

A digital Ramadan is not the same thing General view of the empty entrance to the Husrev-beg Mosque, during Ramadan, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 12 April 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/FEHIM DEMIR

However, Vural said believers...