RHON­DOR DOWLAT  

Se­nior Re­porter 

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt 

The An­ju­man Sun­nat ul Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion Inc. (AS­JA) has called for ur­gent ac­tion fol­low­ing the des­e­cra­tion of a mosque in Cen­tral Trinidad, al­leged­ly per­pe­trat­ed by a non-Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber.

AS­JA Act­ing Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al Imam Ahamad Ho­sein, in a re­lease is­sued on Tues­day, con­demned the act as a vile at­tack on the sanc­ti­ty of Is­lam­ic wor­ship, urg­ing au­thor­i­ties to treat it as a hate crime and an act of Is­lam­o­pho­bia.

The mosque des­e­cra­tion comes amid a wave of in­flam­ma­to­ry ac­tions against re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing a vi­ral video of a man de­liv­er­ing deroga­to­ry re­marks against Hin­duism at the Di­vali Na­gar com­pound in Ch­agua­nas on De­cem­ber 31, 2024. The in­di­vid­ual, who claims to be Rasta­far­i­an, is al­so ac­cused of tar­get­ing mosques and oth­er places of wor­ship in re­cent days.

AS­JA ex­pressed alarm at what is called the lack of con­dem­na­tion from gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, par­tic­u­lar­ly not­ing re­ports that the mosque des­e­cra­tor was seen as­so­ci­at­ing with some­one re­sem­bling the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. 

“An at­tack on any place of wor­ship is an at­tack on our na­tion’s foun­da­tion­al val­ues of free­dom and re­spect,” said Ho­sein. “The fail­ure to take ac­tion calls in­to ques­tion the gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to safe­guard­ing these prin­ci­ples.”

On Mon­day, the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) said they sent a let­ter to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, de­mand­ing a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Di­vali Na­gar in­ci­dent.