We have merged the previous posts together and will be posting all updates regarding coronavirus on this page. Please bookmark this page and check back frequently to keep abreast of new developments
06/07/2020 – Masjid Risk Assessment
In addition to the rules below detailing the entry to the masjid, attached is our Risk Assessment.
02/07/2020 – Masjid Reopening Plan
Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu,
By the grace and mercy of Allah SWT, I am pleased to announce that the Masjid will, InshaAllah, be reopening on Saturday 4th July from Zuhr salaah. Salaah times will remain as per the published timetable
In order to comply with Government guidelines and for everyone’s safety, social distancing will be in place and a set of rules will be implemented for all musallees to follow. Volunteers will be assisting throughout so please follow all the instructions given to you by them in addition to the information below.
If you have any symptoms of COVID-19, DO NOT ATTEND THE MASJID UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE. Similarly, if you are in a high risk category, for your own safety, please do not attend.
Entry Procedure
- Due to social distancing, the number of spaces available inside the masjid for prayer have unfortunately been reduced to a maximum of 48. This includes 10 chairs for those who are unable to pray while standing.
- Volunteers will be at the door allowing people in at a steady pace and counting how many have entered.
- Doors will open 20 minutes before the jamaah time and will be locked either when capacity is reached, or 5 minutes before the start of salaah. At this point no exceptions will be made for anyone else to enter the masjid.
- Queue in an orderly fashion as guided by the volunteer and maintain at least a 1m distance between you and the next person.
- Whilst waiting to enter, write your name and contact number on the attendance register. This will be required for every salaah you attend.
- You will only be allowed inside if:
- you wear a face mask that fully covers the mouth and nose. The mask must remain in place for the whole duration you are in the masjid.
- you come prepared with wudhu. The toilets and wudhu area continue to remain closed.
- you bring your own prayer mat.
- you bring your own shoe bag. Shoe racks are out of use so you will need to put your shoes inside the bag and take them into the jamat khana with you.
- you act sensibly and follow the instructions of the volunteers.
- Children under the age of 13 will not be permitted inside the masjid.
- Due to the higher risk to the elderly, anyone over the age of 70 is advised to continue to pray at home. However, if you do attend, you do so completely at your own risk.
Inside the Masjid
- Upon entry, remove your shoes and place them in your bag.
- Use the hand sanitiser provided and rub it into your hands for at least 20 seconds.
- Volunteers will direct you downstairs or upstairs depending on available space.
- Walk along the plastic pathway to find an available space as far to the front as possible. Spaces are clearly marked on the floor with protective plastic and signs. Lay your prayer mat on top of the plastic, and sit down to await the start of the salaah.
- All Quran, books, tasbeeh etc will be cordoned off and unavailable to use. You may bring your own from home if you wish.
After Salaah and Exit Procedures
- After the congregational salaah has been completed, you will be given a short time to pray your individual sunnah/nafl/witr prayers.
- Once you have finished or once you have been told it is time to leave, take your prayer mat and shoes and follow the plastic walkway towards the exit by following the signs. All doors will be manned by volunteers.
- If you prayed downstairs, the exit doors are the two fire exit doors on the left hand side.
- If you prayed upstairs, the exit route is down the stairs and through the front doors from which you entered.
Other information
- The volunteers are there to help and guide you to ensure everyone’s safety and compliance to the rules. Follow their instructions at all times.
- The capacity of the masjid is strictly 48 musallees. If you are turned away due to the capacity being reached, please do not argue with the volunteers to let you in.
- Give salaam verbally to other musallees, but do not shake their hands.
- Keep noise to a minimum while you are in the vicinity of the masjid.
- Upon exiting the masjid, keep the side alleyway and the front clear and make your way home immediately. Do not gather outside to talk to friends.
- Failure to follow the rules could lead to you being asked to leave the masjid and being prevented from attending future salaah.
The co-operation of every musallee in this is vital. If the Trustees deem that large numbers of people aren’t following the rules, or are causing a disturbance we will have no other option but to close the masjid again.
As this is a continually changing situation, the Trustees reserve the right to change any of the above in order to comply with updated Government guidance or new best practice procedures.
Finally, I would like to thank the volunteers who have put themselves forward and have given up their own time to help manage the day-to-day onsite operation of the masjid during this time. May Allah accept their efforts and I ask that you remember them in your duas.
Wassalam
Ismail Dadabhai
Chairman
Chingford Islamic Society
14/06/2020 – Masjid Update
Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu,
The Government have announced that places of worships can open for individual prayer from 15th June 2020.
The Trustees of the Masjid have considered this along with advice from WFCOM, WF Ulama, and MCB and have decided that opening on the basis of individual prayer doesn’t recognise the main function of the masjid which is to hold congregational prayers. As such, and in line with many other masajid in Waltham Forest and the surrounding around areas, Chingford Masjid will remain closed to the general public until further notice.
We will review the situation again as new guidance comes forth and thank you for your patience and continued support during this time.
Wassalam
Ismail Dadabhai
Chairman
Chingford Islamic Society
18/05/2020 – Madrassah Update
Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu,
It’s been a few weeks since my last email and I wanted to let you know some key information for the weeks ahead.
- As we do each year, during the last 10 days of Ramadan and over Eid-ul-Fitr, the madrassah is closed. You will have received a text message informing you that we will be closing from Wednesday 13th May 2020 to Friday 29th May 2020. InshaAllah, madrassah will then resume on Monday 1st June 2020. Please encourage your child to make best use of these special 10 days of Ramadan by praying their salaah on time and reading lots of Qur’an. Our plan is to continue with the Remote Madrassah using Microsoft Teams. However, if Government guidance changes then we will review this position and will inform you of any change.
- Thank you to the parents that have completed the parent survey. This is valuable feedback for us which we will share a summary of once more parents have completed it. If you haven’t already, we kindly request you to do so. It is very short and won’t take more than 2 minutes to complete. The link to it is www.chingfordmasjid.org/parentsurvey.
- As you will have noticed, we have yet to collect the fees for both April and May as we wanted to make sure that Remote Madrassah was working well before we do this. I am sure that you will agree that, Alhamdulillah, this has been the best way of continuing madrassah during this difficult period with the only other option being to close fully. As we run the madrassah on the basis of covering costs only and not ‘for profit’ we will need to collect the fees for these 2 months as normal.
However, to make things a little easier, we will stagger the payments so that they are not all collected together. We will inshaAllah collect the fees as follows:
April – Invoices will be sent out this week with payments collected shortly afterwards
May – Payments will be collected during the week of 1st June with invoices sent the week before
June – Payments will be collected during the week of 15th June with invoices sent the week before
July – Payments will return back to the normal collection date of the 1st of the month with invoices sent about 2 weeks before
If any parent has any problems with this collection schedule, please email us to discuss it. Please do not cancel any direct debits without discussing it with us first as you will to complete the whole sign up process again to reinstate it. Payment will only be collected if you receive an invoice from us beforehand so for those parents that have already informed us, no money will be taken. However, please leave the direct debit in place.
One final point to note; on our website you can now pay your sadqatul fitr and zakaat, and can also donate to our COVID-19 Masjid Appeal as well. Please visit www.chingfordmasjid.org/donate for more information.
I pray that Allah SWT accepts all of our fasts and ibadah during this special month and gives us the opportunity make the most of the last few remaining nights of this blessed month. Ameen.
Wassalam
Muhammad Esmail
Trustee
Chingford Islamic Society
20/04/2020 – Madrassah Update
Assalamualaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatu,
As you know we have now been running the Remote Madrassah using Microsoft Teams for around three weeks.
Alhamdulillah 70% of our pupils have been regularly attending the Remote Madrassah during these three weeks and we feel that this has been running very successfully. We hope that you also feel that your children are continuing their Islamic education as best as possible under these challenging circumstances.
We would love to receive some feedback from you in order for us to determine how you/your children are finding the Remote Madrassah experience. I have put together a very short survey of only 6 questions which I kindly request you to complete. The survey can be found at http://www.chingfordmasjid.org/parentsurvey and will take no more than 2 minutes to complete. We do not ask for your name/email address so the survey is completely anonymous.
If, however, you have not set your child up for Remote Madrassah and now wish to do so, please follow the instructions in the email that was sent to you earlier in the month which contained the login details. If you have not received it, please reply to this email and I will resend it.
Finally, with Ramadan later this week, the Remote Madrassah will continue until the Government’s advice changes and we are able to re-open the Masjid safely. InshaAllah we will communicate any changes to you once more information is known and a decision has been made.
Wassalam
Muhammad Esmail
Trustee
Chingford Islamic Society
17/04/2020 – Jumma Khutba
During the period that the masjid is closed, all Jumma khutbas will be broadcast live at www.chingfordmasjid.org/live.
30/03/2020 – Madrassah Update
Assalamualaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatu,
Further to the email on Thursday, we have been setting up the user accounts and classes on Microsoft Teams as mentioned. However, we haven’t been able to send out the login details as yet. This will follow shortly inshaAllah.
I’d like to bring to your attention a change to today’s session. We had originally planned to run all the madrassah classes remotely from today. However, upon further reflection we have decided to run it for only 2 classes today with the rest to run from tomorrow.
The reason for this is, as you can appreciate, this is a very big IT project which normally takes months of planning, testing, and training before it goes live. Due to the situation we are in we have had to implement a solution in only a week and a half, so we are expecting some teething issues which we will need to resolve. If we have all 14 classes running, it is going to be very difficult to manage this which is why we have decided to run 2 initial classes as a trial for today. This will help us to quickly resolve any issues that arise which inshaAllah will mean that the sessions tomorrow will run smoothly.
The 2 classes that will be running today are Maulana Rashid’s class (both first and second sessions), and Aapa Sadia’s class (both first and second sessions). Parents will receive the login details for Microsoft Teams shortly.
Please also note that we have adjusted the timings of madrassah slightly to allow for any delays in joining or starting the class. Session 1 will start at 4:20pm and session 2 will start at 5:35pm. Each session will last for 1 hour and 15 mins and this arrangement will continue until classes resume back in madrassah.
Please join the session as soon as you receive your child’s login details. If you see a message stating that you have successfully joined the class, then you can disconnect until a few minutes before the start of your child’s session. We will be available to provide support if any parents are having trouble connecting from 3:30pm onwards so please try logging in and if you have any problems, call either Maulana Mizan (for boys) on 07493 662703 or Aapa Rukaiya (for girls) on 07799 943446 in the first instance.
Jazakallah for your patience and understanding at this time.
Muhammad Esmail
Trustee
Chingford Islamic Society
26/03/2020 – Madrassah Update
Assalamualaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatu,
As you know, we have been investigating the possibility of running a remote madrassah model during the time that the madrassah is closed and social distancing measures are in place. I am pleased to inform you that we will be using Microsoft Teams for this purpose which many schools are also using for remote learning.
We will be creating individual pupil accounts on the Masjid’s Office 365 platform and will email the login details for your child/ren to you in a separate email in the 24-48 hours. In the meantime, could you please visit https://teams.microsoft.com/download and download the application relevant for your device? Ideally, this will be a Windows or Apple notebook, but there are apps for tablets and smartphones as well. Once you receive the login details, please log in.
If you have more than one child attending madrassah, please install the Teams app on a separate device for each child so that multiple classes can run at the same time. However, if you do not have enough devices please reply to this email to let me know. We may need to change the session that one of your children attend.
Should you have any issues installing the app or logging in (once you have received the details), please contact either Maulana Mizan (for boys) on 07493 662703 or Aapa Rukaiya (for girls) on 07799 943446. Alternatively, reply to this email with your phone number and someone will call you back.
Further instructions will follow over the next few days and InshaAllah we are planning on resuming madrassah classes using Teams from Monday.
Wassalam
Muhammad Esmail
Trustee
Chingford Islamic Society
20/03/2020 – Masjid Update
It is with great sadness to announce that following consultation with medical experts and following government advice, in the best interests of our musallees and visitors, we have decided to suspend all activities at Chingford Islamic Society until further notice.
We will be continually monitoring the situation and will reopen once it is safe to do so.
Please continue to check this page for further updates and announcements.
20/03/2020 – Madrassah Update
Assalamu alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatu,
Further to the announcement earlier in the week of our decision to close the madrassah due to the ongoing coronavirus situation, I would just like to inform you of our plans for madrassah for the coming weeks/months.
Yesterday Prime Minister Johnson announced that he expects to “turn the tide” on coronavirus within 12 weeks. However, we know that not giving our children the crucial deeni education for this length of time will mean that their progress will be hindered and in many cases children will forget what they have already learnt if they are not supported and reminded on a daily basis.
As many schools have now adopted an online learning approach, we are also exploring this as a possibility to continue with madrassah classes remotely so that teaching and learning can continue as far as we possibly can. Exactly how we do this is still unclear at this stage as we need to explore the various remote teaching/learning tools available to find what suits our needs best.
However, I just wanted you to be aware that we will, InshaAllah, be reinstating madrassah classes in some remote learning capacity as soon as we practically can.
I will email you again next week, InshaAllah, with a further update and with more information.
Wassalam
Ismail Dadabhai
Chairman
Chingford Islamic Society
19/03/2020 – Jumma Arrangements
Unless the government announces restrictions on large gatherings, we will continue with Jumma salaah in the masjid as planned. However, we will be placing the following restrictions and conditions:
- If you are above the age of 60, have a weakened immune system (heart problems, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc), or have any symptoms of flu, DO NOT COME TO THE MASJID. PRAY ZUHR AT HOME INSTEAD.
- Similarly, if you live in the same household as someone above, pray your zuhr at home too as you could become a carrier of the virus, even though you might not display the symptoms. Remember the virus is deadly to those aged above 60 or those with weakened immune systems.
- While we understand that many children are off school, please DO NOT SEND/BRING children under the age of 12 to the masjid. While normally it is good for children to attend the masjid, the current climate isn’t the time to instil this habit.
- Come prepared with wudu. The toilets and wudu area in the masjid are closed.
- Bring your own prayer mat/musalla to pray on inside the masjid. This is to prevent cross-contamination from the carpets.
- The salah times will remain the same at 12:25, 12:50, and 13:15. However, each salaah will have the azaan, a short khutbah, and then the fard salaah. Musallees will need to leave immediately after the fard salaah and pray their sunnah and nawafil at home. You will be ushered out quickly to make space for the next salah.
- Please only come to the masjid at the times shown above. If you are able to come to a later salah, please do so as the earlier ones get full very quickly.
- Please do not gather outside the masjid waiting for the next salah as that increases the risk of the virus spreading. Please leave the area and come back nearer the time of the next salah.
- If needed, we will be holding additional jumma salah so there is absolutely no need to worry about missing it.
We ask for your full co-operation and understanding in this matter.
18/03/2020 – Madrassah Closure
Assalamu alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatu,
In line with the government’s advice to limit social interaction during the current coronovirus situation, the Trustees of Chingford Islamic Society have taken the decision to suspend the madrassah with immediate effect. Please do not send your children from today until further notice.
In the meantime, we encourage you to start a ‘mini-madrassah’ at home with your children at the normal madrassah times so that their daily routine isn’t disrupted. Below is a guide of how the hour should be spent:
- Quran recitation – 20mins
- Islamic studies – re-reading/learning of books – 20mins
- Memorisation – re-reading and re-learning surahs, duas etc – 20mins
Additionally, please note the following:
- The masjid will only be open for 10mins before each fard salaah and will close 5 minutes after the fard salaah. Musallees will need to pray their sunnah, nawaafil, and witr salaah at home
- To reduce the risk of infection, the wudu area and toilet is now closed until further notice. If you come to pray your fard salaah in jamaah then you will need to come prepared with wudu from home. If your wudu breaks while in the masjid, then you will need to return home to make wudu.
- All musallees are requested to bring their own musalla/towel/sheet on which to pray salaah. The carpets are being professionally steam cleaned today but this isn’t something that we can do every day and so by bringing your own mats we can all help to reduce the risk of spreading the virus.
Finally, please be mindful of the fact that the virus is more serious for the elderly and those who have weakened immune systems. Do all you can to prevent them from leaving their homes, even to attend the masjid for salaah, as they are putting their lives at risk. Islam gives us exemptions for situations like this so they will InshaAllah still receive the same reward by staying at home and praying under these circumstances.
We pray that Allah makes this virus pass quickly and gives us the strength to bear patience in these trying times. Ameen.
Ismail Dadabhai
Chairman
Chingford Islamic Society
16/03/2020 – Important Info
Following the current situation regarding Coronavirus (COVID-19), please note that the Masjid Management Committee are advising all musallees, parents, and visitors of the following:
- If you are experiencing ANY flu-like symptoms, it is WAJIB (obligatory) that you do not enter the masjid to prevent spreading the virus to others. You are excused from praying salaah in the masjid (including Jumma).
- Parents of pupils attending the madrassah are also advised to keep child(ren) at home if they display any signs of flu.
- The elderly (60+) and those with underlying medical conditions have an increased risk and therefore we advise that they pray at home instead of attending the masjid.
- Perform your faraidh in the masjid and pray the sunnah and nawafil prayers in the home. This was the practice of the Prophet (ﷺ) even outside of such situations.
- Bring a face cloth/musalla from home to pray on in the masjid.
- Make fresh wudhu for each salaah, even if you already have wudhu. This will help maintain good hygiene.
- Wash your hands frequently using soap making sure to rub for at least 20 seconds. Do this upon entering the masjid and after reaching home.
- Cough/sneeze into a tissue – remember ‘Catch it, bin it, kill it’.