The fol­low­ing is Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s greet­ings for Eid-ul-Fitr:

Fel­low Cit­i­zens, I ex­tend Eid ul-Fitr greet­ings to the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, my fam­i­ly and my­self as Prime Min­is­ter.

To the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, this means the end of the Holy month of Ra­madan, and now they turn to the Blessed fes­ti­val of Break­ing the Fast, pray­ing in grat­i­tude to Al­lah for the help, and strength ex­tend­ed, dur­ing the month of fast­ing.

This is the ap­pro­pri­ate oc­ca­sion, I be­lieve, to reach out to our Mus­lim broth­ers and sis­ters with the un­der­stand­ing that we all oc­cu­py this land called, Trinidad and To­ba­go. We may hold vary­ing world views, and even oc­cu­py sep­a­rate spaces, but, over­all, this small, ge­o­graph­ic land is ours and to­geth­er there must be con­scious, on-go­ing ef­forts to not ac­ri­mo­nious­ly di­vide—but to be tol­er­ant of each oth­er, and seek to uni­fy and build a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Mod­ern man, with all of the im­bal­ances that he is cre­at­ing, seems to have lost touch with him­self, and in the process is cre­at­ing wide­spread hope­less­ness.

For the past month, our Mus­lim broth­ers and sis­ters have been on their spir­i­tu­al quest, their own in­ter­nal jour­ney, yet at the same time they have not been obliv­i­ous or locked away from the chal­lenges of dai­ly life.

Is­lam preach­es that its fol­low­ers must look for God in his­to­ry, and their sa­cred scrip­ture im­pos­es a mis­sion, a du­ty to cre­ate a just com­mu­ni­ty in which all mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly the weak, vul­ner­a­ble and dis­ad­van­taged are treat­ed with re­spect. In seek­ing to cre­ate such a so­ci­ety they are liv­ing in ac­cor­dance with God’s will.

The so­cio-po­lit­i­cal con­scious­ness of this faith is ad­mirable. In seek­ing to ef­fect so­cial change, through aware­ness, and rea­son, this com­mu­ni­ty brings to life a con­scious hope at a time, when mil­lions might see on­ly the de­spair of their dai­ly ex­is­tence.

With the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, with its so­cio-psy­cho­log­i­cal fall­out, the world-wide sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions, ris­ing prices, and oth­er crises, I be­lieve that many cit­i­zens can ben­e­fit from the hope, love, com­pas­sion and for­give­ness em­bed­ded in the Mus­lim faith.

Fel­low Cit­i­zens, please join me in wish­ing Eid Mubarak to our Mus­lim broth­ers and sis­ters.

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