For­mer In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) pres­i­dent Broth­er No­ble Khan was yes­ter­day quizzed on his knowl­edge of the Qur'an as part his tes­ti­mo­ny in the on­go­ing sedi­tion tri­al of Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr. While un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion by Bakr's de­fence at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge, Khan, a leader of the Trinidad Mus­lim League (TML), was ques­tioned about his knowl­edge of the Is­lam­ic prin­ci­ple of za­kaat. Za­kaat re­quires Mus­lims to give two and half per cent of their wealth to char­i­ty. Khan ex­plained that there were mul­ti­ple cat­e­gories of peo­ple list­ed in the Qur'an who are de­serv­ing of za­kaat.

Sturge re­peat­ed­ly asked Khan to iden­ti­fy the sec­tions of Bakr's hour-long speech which were of the most con­cern to him. Khan re­spond­ed: "When he (Bakr) said if I don't give a rea­son for (not) giv­ing za­kaat, then take it."

Sturge said: "In your own un­der­stand­ing, the na­ture of za­kaat is that it is im­pos­si­ble to steal it or take it by force?" How­ev­er, Khan strong­ly dis­agreed, say­ing it was pos­si­ble. He said from his un­der­stand­ing, the con­tri­bu­tions were vol­un­tary but ac­cord­ing to the Qur'an, Mus­lims were ob­lig­at­ed to make them. He said the Qur'an sets out a pun­ish­ment for wealthy Mus­lims who failed to make za­kaat con­tri­bu­tions. Sturge sug­gest­ed that if a Mus­lim re­fused to make the za­kaat con­tri­bu­tion and gave a rea­son, the per­son col­lect­ing it would have to ac­cept the rea­son. Khan agreed. Khan ad­mit­ted that while with the TML he was part of a com­mit­tee which over­saw the col­lec­tion of za­kaat from its mem­bers. He not­ed that he was not an Is­lam­ic schol­ar, who he said would be able to ex­plain more de­tails of za­kaat.

De­spite be­ing re­peat­ed­ly of­fered a copy of the Qur'an to iden­ti­fy sec­tions which sup­port­ed his state­ments, Khan re­fused, say­ing he could not do so. Khan is one of the State's main wit­ness­es, as his name was men­tioned by Bakr in his con­tro­ver­sial Eid-ul-Fitr ser­mon which was de­liv­ered in No­vem­ber 2005. Khan served as an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor from 2002 to 2007. Bakr, of La Puer­ta Av­enue, Diego Mar­tin, is be­fore Jus­tice Mark Mo­hammed and a nine-mem­ber ju­ry in the Port-of-Spain Third Crim­i­nal Court. Apart from sedi­tion, Bakr faces charges of pro­vok­ing a breach of the peace and two charges of in­cit­ing oth­ers to de­mand mon­ey by men­ace. Bakr's le­gal team in­cludes at­tor­neys Naveen Maraj and Ha­sine Shaikh. The case is be­ing pros­e­cut­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal and state pros­e­cu­tor Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan. Khan is ex­pect­ed to take the wit­ness stand again to­day.