Brother, usually you make good points, but this one is just stupid.
1. In social distancing you are with your family, in your home. It is not forever, it is a few months maybe.
2. How will this break the social system? What aspect of society will disapear after a few months or not being able to gather in large crowds?
3. Does isolation harm Islam? Did our Prophet Muhammad pbuh not go to the caves? Do we not participate in ithekaf? Did the awliya not often retreat to baitaks in the forests to contemplate and pray?
Pakistani mullahs are doing dramabaazi. Mufti Muneeb ur rehman is happy for everyone else to go to the Masjid but has declared he will pray at home. They are only interested in keeping open the masjids which act as chanda factories for these mullahs. If they were interested in teaching the deen, would we have so much anti Islamic behaviour in our society?
In the UK all our masjids have closed, but the teaching of the deen has gone online. Brothers who used to perform zikr weekly in our local masjid are having mehfils online. The jummah khutbah and other lectures are live streamed. The jamat is only made of 5 people.
A few imams across the UK have started a mini masjid initative. They encourage people to create little cardboard masjids in their homes, to help their kids feel connected to the masjid -
https://www.minimosque.com
Someone I am a great Admirer of, and am confident will emerge as a leader of the Muslim community in the UK in the coming years;
Shaykh Muhammad Aslam, has been doing online classes for children and adults (many others have too). My young daughter watched his livestreams on youtube. At one point there were 5000 people watching it. This may not sound a lot, but in a classroom based scenario, that might have been 50 kids at the most. Yet removing the geographical barriers, bought the lessons on the childhood of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) into our homes, into 5000 homes at one point, live!
Congregational prayer during a pandemic is dangerous.
