Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Fast­ing Mus­lims who are ob­serv­ing the holy month of Ra­madan hope Gov­ern­ment will ex­tend their cur­few by half-an-hour for them to ob­serve their night­ly prayers at their mosques. Pres­i­dent of the An­ju­man Sun­nat-ul-Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA) Ha­ji Ya­coob Ali said many imams had ex­pressed con­cern over the tim­ing of a 9 pm to 5 am cur­few in ar­eas deemed to be hot spots. On Sun­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency in sev­er­al crime hot spots in the coun­try. Ali said AS­JA sup­port­ed Gov­ern­ment's ef­forts to com­bat crime and hoped the mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed would re­duce crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ali said the night­ly prayers ex­tend un­til 9.20 pm in some mosques. The prayers are specif­i­cal­ly per­formed dur­ing the month of Ra­madan. The leader of the Taraweeh prayers leads wor­ship­pers by read­ing the Holy Qur'an from the first day of the fast un­til the end of the fast­ing pe­ri­od. Ali said: "It is for this rea­son that we are kind­ly ask­ing that for the rest of this month the time be ex­tend­ed to 9.30 pm and we hope Gov­ern­ment will oblige." Mus­lims be­gan their fast on Au­gust 1. The Eid-ul-Fitr pub­lic hol­i­day will be ob­served on Sep­tem­ber 1.

Ali said on the 27th night which is "The Night of Pow­er" there is an all-night prayer vig­il in mosques through­out the coun­try. He said pass­es is­sued to fam­i­lies who would be out dur­ing that night would suf­fice. Mean­while, the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) said it sup­port­ed Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion.

A state­ment from the IRO said the ac­tiv­i­ties of a few should not be al­lowed to en­croach on the rights and lib­er­ties of the ma­jor­i­ty. The IRO al­so asked that sen­si­tiv­i­ty be ex­tend­ed to the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty who would be mak­ing their way home when the cur­few takes ef­fect. The state­ment said: "While we recog­nise the need at times to tem­porar­i­ly sac­ri­fice our civ­il lib­er­ties in or­der to al­low the se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies the op­por­tu­ni­ty to curb a sit­u­a­tion that may be con­sid­ered out of con­trol, we look for­ward to a speedy re­turn to nor­mal­cy, as these sac­ri­fices, if en­dured for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od can have a detri­men­tal ef­fect on lives."