 For many faithful, this year's Easter, Passover, and Ramadan will be completely different as an experience now that larger gatherings are prohibited. And since shelter-in-place guidelines went into effect last month, many religious groups have shifted services and meetings online. But larger questions remain about how to serve congregant spiritual needs during a time of crisis, how to carry out charitable works, and how to maintain operations long term. In some cases religious leaders are defying shelter-in-place guidelines and argue that their services are essential. And in this hour, we're going to talk with religious leaders about how they're adapting to the coronavirus pandemic. Good morning to Imam Rami Ansour, who is the founding director of the Tabia Foundation. Welcome, Imam Ansour. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me and having me on the show. Glad to have you with us as well. And let me begin, if I may, with you. And let's just find out in a general way what you're doing. Because as I said, there are many, most of them outside of California who say fellowship and meeting in community is absolutely essential and therefore we're going to defy these orders to be shelter-in-place. I want to know where you stand on that. But also, if you're standing and sheltering in place, what you're doing about the fact that you can't bring your congregation together? Yes. So when this all began back in, or more people were paying attention to it at least, there was a lot of communication within the Muslim community on what to do. And even before the shelter-in-place went into effect, a lot of mosques in the Bay Area and around the nation, they actually stopped their Friday prayer. So the Friday on right before the shelter-in-place, it had stopped. And a lot of Muslims reached into our tradition and our scriptures. And they were referring to a prophetic saying of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, that if there is an outbreak in a land, then don't go to that land. And if you're in that land, then don't leave it. So the idea of quarantine. So we have this within our tradition, the idea of quarantine. And another tradition that says that if there is an outbreak or a pandemic, that the person who stays in their house and waits it out gets a great reward. So a lot of Muslims just automatically went into this mode and transferred their worship to worshipping at home. And the idea that it's an essential service, well, the other aspect of our faith, and we share this with many other faiths, is do no harm. That one of the foundational teachings is that we cannot harm others. And so if there is anything that we do that would bring harm to another person, even as basic as the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said, if you ate something like garlic and you still have bad breath, then you cannot go to the mosque. So the scholars were reminding Muslims around the world that if something as simple as bad breath would prevent you from going to the mosque to harm or offend others, then what about possibly causing somebody to get the transfer of this flu? So you've got your holy books to back you up in this quarantine, and that's good. But you're not able to meet in fellowship. And I know particularly as Ramadan is coming up and so forth that it is really crucial to have people meeting together. That's really the way things have always been done, hasn't it? It has. And the Friday prayers was actually the first biggest shock that a lot of people had, because for many people, especially here in the Bay Area with the our fast-paced lifestyles and the commutes and the hustle and bustle of just daily life, the Friday prayers are reprieved and for many it's their way to recharge and reconnect with their faith. So that was an initial shock and then having to deal with that. And then when the Muslims saw our holy sites such as Mecca and Medina also shutting down and there's pictures on the internet of the Kaaba, which is usually full and teeming with people and it's just empty, that was another shock. And then the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, when it was closed down, it was it was yet another shock. So people are then trying to look into our tradition and say, okay, what do we do? And so one of the the recourses is, okay, let's turn our houses into our places of worship. And one of the ideas is that we should turn our make our houses into monasteries. And there's one of the an early Muslim saying of this nature that that how wonderful is the house of a how wonderful is the monastery of a believer, his or her house. So the idea is turning our worship inwards. And for the Ramadan, even though it's the common practice to pray in congregations in the mosques, and you'll see this all over the world, there's also another tradition of praying the nightly prayers at home either by yourself or also with with your family. So people are turning in making their congregations really their families turning in. There's even some there's pictures of people giving sermons, you know, within their homes and and really turning their houses into monasteries. So that's one of the silver linings that we can see in this cloud. Well, it's good, there's silver linings with closed mosques and no Friday prayers in terms of fellowship. It's all very disrupting education has changed the way really you have to get essentially out into the community has changed drastically. And that's true for all major faith. Let me go to Imam Ramayansur again, who's founding director of the Tabia Foundation and ask you a question I asked before. Those who are struggling with their faith, what do you tell them, Imam? What do you say to them? Well, it's, yes, it's a very good question. And there are a lot of people struggling and in the process of shifting to online. The Friday sermons are now in many places being delivered online and people are encouraged to pray at home. We're expecting Ramadan to be the same where sermons and lectures and even right now a lot of webinars are being given. And there's a lot of outreach into the community and the fear and the anxiety or the trauma that's been felt is at many different levels. So for example, some are feeling it at the financial level. And so the, the, the imams and the, the organizations and the chaplains and so forth, they're trying to mobilize to, to address that with online fund, right? Fundraisers connecting with other organizations, because for many messages, especially coming up in Ramadan, 50, the five zero to 75% of their annual budgets come out of that month. Many of the look of the smaller mosques, their Friday donations are what keep the operation and their, and their charitable works. So with people losing their jobs, not being able to pay rent. Now there's a bigger strain on the, on the, the mosques and they're making a lot of efforts to, to reach out to the community. So for some that it's, that their, their traumas is financial. We're trying to address that for some it is, it's psychological and emotional, whether it's because of preexisting issues. And everybody's got a, has a different experience with this on the spiritual level. For some it's, it's theological. And so we're responding to that, the theological questions that are coming up is, you know, is this a punishment from God? What did we do to deserve that? So we're working and I'm, no, this is a present in all faith. For some, it's psychological and emotional, whether preexisting issues or spurred by this. And so a lot of the Muslim mental health professionals, they're doing therapy online, they're doing classes. Then for some, it's, it's the healthcare workers, Muslim healthcare workers who are make up a large percentage of healthcare workers in many areas. They're at the frontline. My sister-in-law is a nurse and they have concerns. They're testing for COVID-19. They're not giving them masks. They have concerns, theological concerns of, is this okay for me to do that? You know, the healthcare workers are in some places, in 95 masks, they don't have a proper fit with a beard. And for those Muslims and people of other faiths as well who, who keep beards religiously, now the question is also coming up, do I shave the beard? And I've given my advice on that, that we have to, we have to maintain safety. And if that's the way to do it, then that's for the frontline providers, that's what they might have to do. There's burial concerns in the UK when they began speaking about cremation. The Orthodox Jewish community and the Muslim community came together and they fought for their rights to say, we want to maintain our ability to, to perform our burials. They joined hands. They said, we're going to do it properly and safely. And now the families might not have been able to attend the funerals, but they were able to get their last rights. So we're also seeing a lot of faith-based communities coming together, people working together and looking at their common, their common beliefs and, and seeing how they can work together for this. And it's, so another silver lining is that, yes, people are coming together. They're looking at their humanity. We realize this is not affecting just one community. This is affecting humanity. It's affecting people of all colors, races, socio-economical status and so forth. And then for myself and my main line of work in dealing with, in working with the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, a lot of people in free society are now getting a little bit of feeling of what it means to be deprived of, of freedom, of, of the isolation and so forth. And when, when we're also hearing from our clients and students in prison that because the, because of the, the isolation is making it even harder to do a lot of things, there's not a lot of health care that's already being provided in the prisons. And so now we're getting stories from our students that are experiencing, have been diagnosed with corona and they have their questions and it makes it even harder to service them and their needs. But hopefully we're all going to get through this, but it's really important that we pull together as humanity, regardless of a person's religious or spiritual beliefs and, and see those commonalities that we have and work together to, whether it's at the charitable level, whether it's at helping people emotionally, whether it's checking in on family, whether it's reconnecting with family members, reaching out and connecting with people that maybe we haven't maintained as the, the connections that we need to, because those connections are really crucial for us to get through this. We'll get Raphael on and Raphael, welcome. Thanks for waiting. Good morning. I wanted to thank you for having everybody on this morning. I am a former prisoner, so I am good at, at quarantining, but the, the mom and the pastor mentioned about prisons, what can we do to help the prisoners who are not going to get the help like the people here in free society? What can we do as the public to help them? A very important question. Let me go back, if I may, to you, Imam Rami Ansour, Founding Director of the Tabi Foundation. You've got a non-profit going to teach in cars as well, right? Yes, we do. We offer education, which includes Islamic education as well as rehabilitation and addressing life skills education and assisting in getting higher, higher degrees of bachelor's, master's and, and PhD and so forth. And we also do reentry work in a number of different areas, like actually across the U.S. and over 42 states. And we've reached over 7,000 individuals in over 600 prisons. And in answer to the, to the questioner, there's a lot of things that we can do. One of the things that we're doing with our organization is writing letters to, as the pastor mentioned, you know, to advocate for the release of prisoners, especially those who are immunocompromised. And today I'll be writing a letter for a person that I just got a request from him last year, or last year he was supposed to be released. He is immunocompromised and they want to get him out released early. So we can, you can call on your, your representatives and the senators and try to say that some of these especially in California that the CDC are, if they're going to be giving early release to prisoners, that they give priority to those who are immunocompromised and would be more susceptible to the COVID. But I think it's also a good time for us to go into, do some introspection and ask ourselves, what are we doing to change the prison industrial complex in, in the United States? Many people don't know that the prisoners who are in medical facilities here in California, they don't have insurance. So housing them costs on average about half a million dollars a year. So that's half a million dollars a year of our taxpayer money that, and I'm not saying we, we, we, we need to give all of the medical attention to those prisoners, but we need to really start asking ourselves, where is our money being spent and who is accountable for that? So we need to start advocating for that and, or advocating for changes in the prison, in the prison industrial complex. We don't have the majority of people in prison are for drug possession. I know one person who one of my good friends now spent over 20 years and had three life sentences for a, for a possession of, of, of drug use. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of questions that we have to be asking ourselves. And this is a great time for introspection, you know, going back to one of the early, earlier questions about asking ourselves, are we, you know, what is our belief in antiquated religious systems? And I think the, the question is, is warranted. We need to ask ourselves, um, about, and maybe it's antiquated, uh, interpretations of religious systems. Maybe it's a misinterpretations of religious texts. We're seeing people of all faiths, um, continuing to have gatherings. And then some of the large gatherings, they become hot spots of outbreak cases because they said, oh, we don't believe in the, the contagious nature of this and so forth. But at the same time, we should also be asking ourselves during this time of introspection and isolation, you know, what are our antiquated understanding of cultures, of political systems, of economical systems, of attachment to, um, you know, cultures or antiquated understandings of immigration policies and what is our xenophobia and what have we done as human beings to possibly, uh, you know, spending trillions of dollars on war, but not putting that money into our medical system and, um, per preventing future outbreaks or why, why isn't trillions of dollars that are being spent on wars overseas? Why isn't that being spent on research and development for universal flu vaccines or other type of preventative measures? And then, uh, why are we in a, as, as the richest nation in the world, why are we having a shortage of ventilators and why are we having a shortage of hospital beds? So I think there's a lot of questions beyond just the, um, questioning the ant, you know, quote unquote, antiquated religious systems. Well, again, Imam Rahmi Ansour is founding director of the Tabia Foundation.