An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

Trinidad has many fine ex­am­ples of Is­lam­ic ar­chi­tec­ture which have re­flect­ed the sta­tus, dig­ni­ty and size of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty in the is­land.Nev­er­the­less, the first masjids were hum­ble struc­tures of wood, tapia and thatch that served the var­i­ous ja­maats in the com­mu­ni­ties where there were num­bers of the 20,000 or so Mus­lims who came to the is­land un­der in­den­ture­ship.By the 1920s, how­ev­er, some ad­her­ents of the faith had pros­pered ex­ceed­ing­ly and were able to erect masjids in keep­ing with their el­e­vat­ed eco­nom­ic sta­tus. Fore­most among these men was Ha­ji Gokool Meah, who had come to the is­land in the mid-1800s and was left or­phaned when his moth­er died. From labour­ing on an es­tate near San Fer­nan­do, he saved and bought a mule cart and lat­er ex­pand­ed in­to shop­keep­ing.

Gokool be­came a mil­lion­aire be­fore his death at age 92 and was best known as the own­er of the Globe chain of cin­e­mas. The Globe Cin­e­ma he found­ed in Port-of-Spain still stands as an out­stand­ing ex­am­ple of Art De­co ar­chi­tec­ture. At the time of its con­struc­tion, it was the largest movie house in the re­gion as well as one of the first air-con­di­tioned build­ings in the land.

He al­so owned ex­ten­sive hold­ings in Diego Mar­tin, where every morn­ing he ob­served the dic­tum of Is­lam on the giv­ing of alms by stand­ing at his gate with a large bas­ket of hops bread to be dis­trib­uted to hun­gry chil­dren. A very de­vout man, he was one of the few who ear­ly on had made the holy pil­grim­age or Ha­jj to Mec­ca. Af­ter 1922 he be­came known as Ha­ji Gokool Meah.

On lands of the old Pe­ru Es­tate in Coolie Town (now St James), a ram­shackle tapia build­ing had served as a masjid on the West­ern Main Road. In 1927 Gokool had this lev­elled and con­struc­tion of a new build­ing in clas­sic Is­lam­ic style start­ed. Us­ing a com­bi­na­tion of lo­cal labour and di­rect­ed by for­eign crafts­men, the new mosque was made with re­in­forced con­crete which was used to good ef­fect in the im­pos­ing dome and the four minarets. There was al­so a Mihrab, or prayer niche, aligned in the di­rec­tion of Mec­ca. A hand­some iron and con­crete fence sep­a­rat­ed the com­pound from the busy main thor­ough­fare.

The enor­mous cost of the ed­i­fice was borne by Gokool, who left a stun­ning $1 mil­lion in his will to start the Ha­ji Gokool Meah Trust. His el­dest son, Noor, was the pri­ma­ry trustee.

The pro­ceeds were used to pay for the up­keep of the build­ing and the salary of a res­i­dent imam. It was al­so used for char­i­ty, which was some­thing that Gokool was fa­mous for through­out his en­tire life.Ha­ji Ruk­nad­deen ar­rived in Trinidad in 1893 and af­ter a short pe­ri­od of in­den­ture­ship, sup­port­ed him­self as a tai­lor in Tu­na­puna. A schol­ar and lit­er­ate in sev­er­al East­ern lan­guages, he was soon recog­nised as a cler­ic of stand­ing and be­came to his brethrens a guide, ad­vis­er and leader. He was a Su­fi or as­cetic of his faith and rose to be­come the Quazi or leader of the Mus­lims of Trinidad. In con­junc­tion with an­oth­er promi­nent Mus­lim, Al Haj Maulana Shah Mo­hammed Has­san, he formed in 1933 the An­ju­man Sun­nat-ul-Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA) which re­mains to­day the largest and best known Is­lam­ic or­gan­i­sa­tion in the na­tion, with sev­er­al pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties which pro­vide a high stan­dard of ed­u­ca­tion to chil­dren of all de­nom­i­na­tion­al back­grounds.

Start­ing in 1935 with a gift of land from a promi­nent Mus­lim on Queen Street in Port-of-Spain, As­ja planned to erect a grand masjid in the best Is­lam­ic tra­di­tion. One of the bene­fac­tors, bak­ery own­er Mo­hammed Ibrahim, was the main dri­ving force.Part of the do­nat­ed prop­er­ty ad­joined a piece of land owned by the pa­tri­arch of the Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, Ab­dou Sab­ga. Ibrahim tried to buy this par­cel of land sev­er­al times with­out suc­cess, even­tu­al­ly of­fer­ing Sab­ga a blank cheque to make his own price. The busi­ness­man prompt­ly tore up this cheque, de­clar­ing that if the land was to be used in ser­vice of God he would glad­ly give it for free, which is what he did.

Ibrahim su­per­vised the con­struc­tion process, which was done in re­in­forced con­crete like the Gokool Meah masjid. A gar­den of tran­quil­i­ty in­side the grounds was in­clud­ed in the de­sign, which boast­ed airy and mag­nif­i­cent cham­bers, in­clud­ing the oblig­a­tory Mihrab.Both the Queen Street and Gokool Meah masjids stand as ex­am­ples of how in­deli­bly part of the na­tion­al spec­trum the Is­lam­ic com­mu­ni­ty has es­tab­lished it­self.