Eid-ul-Fitr marks the end of the holy month of Ra­madan, a pe­ri­od of fast­ing and prayer. Fast­ing (sawm) with prayer (salat), char­i­ty (za­kat), pil­grim­age (ha­jj) and the de­c­la­ra­tion of faith (sha­ha­da) are the five Pil­lars of Is­lam.

Fast­ing is a form of wor­ship, self-pu­rifi­ca­tion and self-dis­ci­pline and helps de­vel­op em­pa­thy with the less for­tu­nate. Fast­ing is prac­ticed in many re­li­gions. Is­lam can al­so be traced to Abra­ham.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2011 Cen­sus, the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty ac­counts for five per cent of the T&T pop­u­la­tion, com­pared to 25 per cent or 1.9 bil­lion of the world’s pop­u­la­tion. De­spite the rel­a­tive­ly small per­cent­age, the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty is well rep­re­sent­ed in all ar­eas of na­tion­al life and has con­tributed to mak­ing our coun­try a zone of peace and sta­bil­i­ty not­ed for its re­li­gious tol­er­ance. To­day, we must spare a thought for those coun­tries now rav­aged by war and sec­tar­i­an strife and say a spe­cial prayer for those who have no choice oth­er than to do their best to sur­vive in the mid­dle of the hos­til­i­ties.

Hu­man be­ings have more in com­mon than dif­fer­ences. The Hu­man Genome Project, which aimed to map the hu­man genome, showed that 99 per cent of our DNA is the same across all in­di­vid­u­als. This one per cent con­tains ge­nom­ic vari­ants which con­tribute to in­di­vid­ual unique­ness and can af­fect phys­i­o­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics like our height, hair colour and re­sponse to health treat­ments. In this sense, per­haps we are all cousins, de­scen­dants of Adam and Eve.

Our re­li­gious be­liefs and pref­er­ences are not in­flu­enced by ge­nom­ic vari­ants. Most in­di­vid­u­als adopt the re­li­gion they were raised with, the re­li­gion of their par­ents, though some peo­ple con­vert to oth­er re­li­gious be­liefs or prac­tices. The key point is that our re­li­gious be­liefs should not be the ba­sis for defin­ing in­ter­per­son­al re­la­tion­ships, as that could lead to con­flict. Sec­tar­i­an con­flict must be avoid­ed in any so­ci­ety, as its neg­a­tive ef­fects last for gen­er­a­tions.

Most coun­tries are not en­tire­ly sec­u­lar, mean­ing many have a sig­nif­i­cant re­li­gious in­flu­ence in their so­ci­eties and gov­ern­ment. How­ev­er, there is a recog­ni­tion that states should be sec­u­lar and re­li­gion should be sep­a­rate from the state and pub­lic life, en­sur­ing free­dom of be­lief and non-dis­crim­i­na­tion based on re­li­gious af­fil­i­a­tion.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is no dif­fer­ent in this re­gard. This na­tion’s high­est award was pre­vi­ous­ly called the Trin­i­ty Cross and was as­so­ci­at­ed with Chris­tian­i­ty by non-Chris­tians. In 1973, Dr Wahid Ali, then pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate and a Mus­lim, re­luc­tant­ly agreed to wear the award on­ly af­ter then-prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams agreed to change the name. The name of this coun­try’s high­est ho­n­our was on­ly changed to the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter a suc­cess­ful high court ac­tion in 2006 brought by Sat Ma­haraj on be­half of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha and In­shan Ish­mael, pres­i­dent of the Is­lam­ic Re­lief Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

There are sev­er­al lessons here. The first is that every­one has a voice in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety, and their dif­fer­ences must be re­spect­ed. The sec­ond is that so­cial change takes time and can be ac­com­plished peace­ful­ly through le­git­i­mate chan­nels. The third is that mul­ti-racial and mul­ti-eth­nic so­ci­eties can thrive in peace­ful co­ex­is­tence. We take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to wish the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty Eid Mubarak!