As the coronavirus pandemic spreads, religious leaders have been advised and compelled to shut the doors of their places of worship. In these times of uncertainties, when faith is more crucial than ever, people are confined within their homes, failing to congregate at their local place of worship for the much needed spiritual comfort.
Hence many places of worship and communal groups have started using Zoom and similar technologies to livestream services and events in recent weeks.
For example BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha UK & Europe- besides reaching out to the vulnerable and elderly with all the helps possible like tiffin service in Harrow and Brent, they are also providing with health awareness and presentations online and webcast sabhas and satsangs showing ‘sandhya arti’ and ‘abhishek’ at the temples. Weekly religious assemblies for children, teens and adults are also now being webcast live for every generation.
For Muslims, the Al-Salam Institute in East London, is now reportedly facebook live streaming Friday sermons, allowing their followers to join in from the comfort of their homes. Meanwhile, Islamic prayer courses have also been converted into live-streamed webinars.
This weekend is Easter for Christians. Passover for the Jews is from 8 till 16 April. Vaisakhi is on 13 April. Many communities for example the Bengalis have their new year on 14 April, which includes visiting temples and families for many. Ramadan starts from 23 April till 23 May. For members of these communities, these are among the holiest seasons of the year. But now Muslims will perhaps be breaking their fast on Whatsapp, Jews sharing seder on Zoom chat and Easter morning prayers exchanged through Skype.
However as use of livestream and online technologies increase, there have been a number of reports of ‘unwelcome guests’ interrupting those proceedings, what is now being called, “Zoom Bombing” by posting racist and other nasty comments. The perpetrators may be “bots” (i.e. robots programmed to send such messages), local or overseas extremists, or online “trolls” and other trouble-makers. Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that protects British Jews from antisemitism and related threats have prepared a comprehensive list of what to do to protect oneself from such mishaps. For example, “disable auto saving chats, file transfer, screen sharing for non-hosts. Disable remote control, annotations, ‘join before host’, enable ‘waiting room’ and use per-meeting ID not personal ID.
“During meeting- assign at least two co-hosts, lock the meeting, if all attendees are present and mute all participants.
“But if you are ‘Zoom bombed’, remove problematic users and disable their ability to re-join when asked and lock the meeting to prevent additional disruption,” said a special note prepared by them.
