CARISA LEE
Reporter
carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt
Religious leaders in this country say they too, like everyone else, are cautious about the crime situation even as they know that their role in society is to help curb crime, through intervention.
Speaking with Guardian Media via Zoom yesterday, Islamic leader Fuad Abu Bakr said he was on Observatory Street, Port-of-Spain waiting for someone, when he decided to move to a safer location.
“I said listen, let me don’t dwell here because I was waiting on someone, let me make the block, go on Renegades Way, which is Charlotte Street because it’s a bit probably safer there,” he explained.
Abu Bakr explained that his decision to move was not because he had any “cocoa in the sun”.
He explained that he works in various communities with the youth through the Abu Bakr Foundation and the Kwame Ture Education and Development Centre and is quite aware that criminals nowadays don’t seem to care who they hurt.
“Our society is a battlefield, where people have conflicts going on and it’s being played out, and it has no kind of discrimination for innocent children, for me, for you, so I am cautious but I am not afraid,” he said.
Bakr said Muslims have a tremendous role within society and are sometimes misunderstood and misrepresented by a few with ill intentions.
Pundit Lloyd Mukram Sirjoo feels hopeless and helpless when it comes to the crime situation in this country.
“Just imagine 18 lives lost in two or three days, it cannot be business as usual, somebody is falling down on the job,” he explained.
He said in the weeks before last weekend’s bloodbath, he would tell his devotees to, “do not create an opportunity for the criminals,” but after so many people were murdered in just two days, he’s not sure what to say to them again.
“We have passed that stage because you not going anywhere, you are in your home and you having home invasions and people are being murdered in their homes,” he exclaimed.
Mukram Sirjoo said law-abiding citizens have no defence but as a pundit he called for more prayer but it must include the youth.
“If we have to do anything that could try to appease the situation, we have to reach out and get the young people back into the religious institutions, because they are the ones,” he suggested.
Roman Catholic (RC) priest and Vicar Fr Robert Christo said he was saddened by the past weekend’s murder count. He said helping to bring the crime rate down is at the top of the church’s agenda.
“The church doesn’t have a mission necessarily, the mission has a church because the church doesn’t have an end,” he explained.
He said the aim is to find new and creative approaches needed to re-energise and re-engage the youth back into the church.
“Young people would leave because many people had bad experiences and negatives with the church and church-related people at all levels,” he admitted.
Fr Christo said young people want the right example and good witnesses which they were not getting.