Res­i­dent Imam of the San Fer­nan­do Ja­ma Masjid, Atif Ma­jeed Su­laimani, is urg­ing Mus­lims to help feed, clothe and as­sist Venezue­lan mi­grants who are now strug­gling to cope with life in Trinidad and To­ba­go hav­ing fled the so­cial, po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic tur­moil in their coun­try.

Speak­ing at Eid-ul-Fitr cel­e­bra­tions at the mosque on Mu­cu­rapo Street, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, Su­laimani said ex­tend­ing help to the poor was part of Is­lam’s teach­ings.

“You must be ready to help the poor and the des­ti­tute. There are lots of mi­grants who are in need of as­sis­tance. What­ev­er you can do to help, whether it is a case of bot­tled wa­ter, food, cloth­ing, you must do what­ev­er it takes to help peo­ple in need whether they are Mus­lims or not,” Su­laimani said.

He added, “You have to as­sist peo­ple in need, no mat­ter what coun­try they come from. It does not mat­ter what na­tion­al­i­ty, what skin colour, what caste. Is­lam does not dis­crim­i­nate and you nev­er know if they would even­tu­al­ly en­ter in­to Is­lam.

“We have to help them no mat­ter whether they are Mus­lims or not. We have to con­tin­ue to pro­tect hu­man­i­ty. We have to vol­un­teer and get vol­un­teers to come for­ward and do what­ev­er they can to help these peo­ple. It is im­por­tant that we do this be­cause they are de­pend­ing on us in this dif­fi­cult time.”

Mean­while, with arms out­stretched, scores of chil­dren jos­tled with adults as they sought to col­lect alms out­side the mosque. With in­creas­ing lev­els of pover­ty and un­em­ploy­ment, there were few­er peo­ple dis­trib­ut­ing mon­ey this year. Those who did dis­trib­uted $5 and $1 bills.

Among those who went to col­lect were sev­er­al dif­fer­ent­ly-abled peo­ple. Among them was Kelvin John from Di­a­mond Vil­lage, who lived for 38 years in the Unit­ed States. John said he was caught in an ice storm and lost sev­er­al of his toes be­cause of frost­bite. When he re­turned to T&T, how­ev­er, he said his liv­ing stan­dards de­te­ri­o­rat­ed. He stayed in a nurs­ing home for two years and af­ter­wards when his mon­ey ran out he went to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

“There was no gauze pads or med­i­cine there. My con­di­tion got worse when I went to the hos­pi­tal and now I have no leg,” he said.

Dale Jairam, who is blind, said he al­so hoped to get as­sis­tance.

“A friend dropped me. I got some saw­ine and mon­ey and I am thank­ful,” Jairam said.