Ramadan under lockdown in Virginia
Ramadan meals are served drive-through style outside a mosque in Virginia amid the coronavirus lockdown.
Volunteers and paid staff at the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Virginia, prepare and distribute hundreds of hot meals to people waiting in cars outside the mosque, which is now closed to the public, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
As they gather outside for the food distribution, members of the mosque reflect on how the pandemic has affected their community.
“Ramadan is a month where we come together as a community, come for nightly prayers, break fast together, so this is a big impact,” Saif Rahman, director of public and government affairs at Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center, explains.
“The other component of this, very honestly, is the financial component. Ramadan typically is the month when mosques tend to get the vast majority of their yearly budgets in terms of donations.”
The centre is now closed to the public so staff are having to provide meals via a drive-through system.
“The food is being cooked by the workers of the mosque and us volunteers we come later, around 4pm,” explains Aisha, a volunteer, “to pack the food, put the stickers on, bag them and then distribute them.”
Virginia has remained in lockdown since March 30 and Governor Ralph Northam has not yet outlined when the restrictions will be lifted.
There are more than one million confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
This report was produced and edited by Al Jazeera NewsFeed’s Mostafa Rachwani.