When the call to prayer echoes across Gaza this Ramadan, it no longer comes from towering minarets or historic mosques. Instead, it rises from makeshift prayer spaces amid rubble and loss.
Anwar Abu Shaweesh, director general in Gaza’s Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs, said the destruction caused by Israel's war is staggering.
Over the course of the conflict, about 1,160 of Gaza’s 1,244 mosques – or nine out of every 10 mosques – were either destroyed or heavily damaged. At least 909 were flattened entirely, while 251 were rendered unusable.
Mr Abu Shaweesh estimates that damage to mosques, churches, cemeteries and religious sites exceeds $500 million. Among the most significant casualties was the Great Omari Mosque in Gaza city, a historic mosque dating back hundreds of years.
“The destruction affected the ability of people to perform religious rites,” Mr Abu Shaweesh told The National, particularly during Ramadan, when attendance traditionally surges for Taraweeh and night prayers.
In response, communities and charitable groups have built about 500 temporary prayer spaces across Gaza, many inside shelters or displacement camps. They are simple, made of wooden frames, iron poles, and plastic sheeting, but they are not enough.
For Mousa Abu Kweik, 35, from Gaza city’s Al Nasr neighbourhood, the Great Omari Mosque was more than a place of worship. Before the war, he rarely missed a night of Taraweeh there during Ramadan.
“It had a special atmosphere,” he said. “The beautiful voices reciting the Quran, it was something you felt in your heart.”
For two Ramadans, displacement kept him away. But this year, youths rebuilt a small prayer space on the mosque’s ruins. Mousa returned to pray there. “It is not what it was,” he says. “But it is better than absence.”
The stone arches and centuries-old architecture are gone. So are many of the worshippers who once filled the courtyard. More than 330 ministry employees, imams and preachers were killed during the war, and 27 remain detained in Israeli prisons.
“The greatest sorrow,” says Sheikh Diaa Abu Mahadi, an imam from Jabalia Camp now displaced in Gaza city. “Is the loss of our fellow imams and preachers who used to stand with us in Ramadan”.
Sheikh Diaa now leads prayers in temporary structures. He says this Ramadan feels different from the past two years, when intense fighting made prayers nearly impossible. A relative calm has allowed people to gather again, although not in the mosques they once knew.
“People come in large numbers,” he says. “They hold tightly to these rituals.”
In prayer spaces patched together using plastic and wood, worshippers stand shoulder to shoulder on uneven ground. Children recite verses under a torn canvas. The faithful bow where carpets once lay on marble floors.
“There are many voices missing this year,” Sheikh Diaa says. “Voices people were used to hearing every Ramadan.” Yet he sees resilience. “When I lead Taraweeh, I see commitment. Despite two years of destruction and loss, people insist on preserving Ramadan.”
