(ERGO) – Sheikh Abdulhayi Aden Sheikh Hassan, a popular Islamic scholar, is giving short broadcasts on Radio Ergo, advising how Somali Muslims should protect themselves and their society during the Coronavirus pandemic.
The five minute sermons give an Islamic perspective to the advice being issued by medical experts and authorities, including handwashing, social distancing, and praying at home.
Some communities and individuals have claimed that Muslims will not be affected by Coronavirus, and that prayer is the answer to the disease.
“It is the right thing for Radio Ergo to educate its listeners on how to protect themselves in this difficult time. I hope our listeners will heed the advice, change some of the practices that are deemed to be harmful, and keep their faith in Allah,” the Sheikh said.
The Sheikh believes in the power of radio as an agent of change, admitting that he himself has had to adapt his normal ways of living and working to the new circumstances.
Sheikh Abdulhayi is the imam at the Omar bin Khadab mosque in Mogadishu’s KM5 area, where he attracts large numbers for his Friday sermons. Recurrent themes in his sermons are changing negative habits, warnings against tribalism, and encouraging peace and reconciliation.
The mosque often echoes with the laughter of his congregation, as he uses proverbs and funny anecdotes to relate Islamic teachings to contemporary social realities. He broadcasts his sermons on his official YouTube channel, with close to 100,000 followers, many of them young people.
As a social activist, he took part in a multiple marriage ceremony in February, where five people with disabilities married their able-bodied partners. Each newlywed couple was given a gift of $5,000 to begin their married lives.
The sheikh sits on a committee of local leaders that has mobilised community resources to renovate a number of key roads in Mogadishu. He is also a lecturer in Sharia and Law at the University of Mogadishu.
Sheikh Abdulhayi, a father of 18 children, was born in 1969 in the southwestern city of Baidoa, where he went to school. In 1998, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in Sharia and Law from the University of the Holy Quran and Islamic Sciences in Sudan, and a master’s in Islamic Jurisprudence (Usul-ul-fiqi) from Omdurman Islamic University in Sudan in 2017. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Islamic Jurisprudence.
