Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Nizam Baksh dis­agrees with his Mus­lim broth­ers that the Gov­ern­ment is dis­crim­i­nat­ing against Mus­lims. He said if this was the case, he would not have held such high of­fice. Baksh was speak­ing with the me­dia, af­ter re­ports by the Is­lam­ic Guild of the Caribbean and South Amer­i­ca and the T&T Mus­lim As­so­ci­a­tion that the Gov­ern­ment was dis­play­ing bias to­wards the Mus­lim peo­ple in light of the fir­ing of talk show host Fazeer Mo­hammed.

He said: "This is not true...If that was so I would have been out of the fir­ing line long time, but in­stead I am on the front line." He said when­ev­er any­body was dis­missed, it was not a pleas­ant thing and so ten­sions would run high. Asked to com­ment about his feel­ings re­gard­ing the dis­missal, Baksh said: "I don't know the facts be­hind Fazeer Mo­hammed's dis­missal, so I would not wish to com­ment. "So far, I am not privy to the in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing his dis­missal, so I would re­serve my com­ment on that un­til I have the facts," he added. Re­gard­ing the protest by some in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, Baksh said: "It is a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try and they are free to do so if they choose.

"Some per­sons may go to ex­tremes...I think it is with­in their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right to share their feel­ing and make com­ments that are strong if that is their de­sire," he added. Asked whether Is­lam­ic phi­los­o­phy did not sup­port women in lead­er­ship po­si­tions, Baksh said he usu­al­ly took the mid­dle ground on re­li­gious is­sues in­stead of tak­ing an ex­trem­ist po­si­tion.

"If I look around the world, I will see Is­lam­ic coun­tries like Pak­istan and Bangladesh where there are women as prime min­is­ters, so I can­not hold such an ex­trem­ist view," he said.

"In re­li­gion, I take a course," he said.