The Caribbean Dawah As­so­ci­a­tion is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to clar­i­fy why the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion de­nied Is­lam­ic Schol­ar Sheik Uth­maan Ibn Fa­rooq en­try in­to T&T, class­ing him and mem­bers of his char­i­ty group as “un­de­sir­ables”.

Fa­rooq and his eight-mem­ber tour­ing par­ty ar­rived at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port at 1.30 pm on Sun­day, with plans to par­tic­i­pate in a Dawah Work­shop at the Bam­boo Masjid Hall on Mon­day. The ten-day vis­it al­so en­tailed him lec­tur­ing to lo­cal Mus­lims on Dawah skills and invit­ing peo­ple to join Is­lam. Fa­rooq and his team al­so planned to par­tic­i­pate in ham­per dri­ves.

How­ev­er, Dawah As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Asad Ya­coobali said some­one from the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion told one of the mem­bers they were un­de­sir­able to T&T when they ar­rived at Pi­ar­co. The group al­leged that the im­mi­gra­tion per­son­nel said he got an in­struc­tion to find any rea­son to de­ny them en­try and or­dered them to leave on the next flight.

Ya­coobali said the men left Trinidad for the Unit­ed King­dom (UK) two hours af­ter the en­try de­nial with­out their lug­gage. He said the men did not have any idea when they would get back their be­long­ings.

“When they land­ed, some­body ap­proached him at im­mi­gra­tion and told him he was not al­lowed to en­ter. They did not give any in­for­ma­tion. They did not give any warn­ing or any time for us to find a so­lu­tion. Rather, they were just told that he need­ed to get on the next plane back out, which was just two to three hours lat­er,” Ya­coobali said.

Ya­coobali said the as­so­ci­a­tion is up­set and sad­dened by the dis­crim­i­na­tion shown to a world-renowned per­son­al­i­ty and that char­i­ty mem­bers could not en­ter.

He ques­tioned what made Trinidad dif­fer­ent from the UK and oth­er coun­tries that an Is­lam­ic schol­ar tour­ing the world need­ed spe­cial arrange­ments. He said this was Fa­rooq’s first tour of the Caribbean, and he planned to vis­it Guyana next.

Ya­coobali said Fa­rooq has over one mil­lion YouTube sub­scribers and trav­els the world shar­ing his knowl­edge. Know­ing that he is a US cit­i­zen, no­body ex­pect­ed him to en­counter an im­mi­gra­tion prob­lem. Ya­coobali said a few names were called as be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the snub but did not want to say any­thing out of place. He said his as­so­ci­a­tion con­tact­ed a few gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, who in­di­cat­ed that on­ly one per­son could help. How­ev­er, Ya­coobali said that per­son re­fused to take the as­so­ci­a­tion’s calls.

“In many ways, it feels like dis­crim­i­na­tion against Mus­lims, yet again, and there seems to be no end to this mad­ness. Even when in­di­vid­u­als are mak­ing sug­ges­tions like ‘we should have made spe­cial arrange­ments for him to en­ter the coun­try through im­mi­gra­tion’, why is that nec­es­sary.”

Ya­coobali said some peo­ple could con­sid­er Fa­rooq a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure be­cause he in­vites peo­ple to Is­lam. How­ev­er, he said he was nev­er stopped or ar­rest­ed in any oth­er coun­try.

Apart from an­swers, the as­so­ci­a­tion wants com­pen­sa­tion, as it in­curred ex­pens­es to bring the team to Trinidad and pre­pare for the work­shop.

“We are hop­ing that some­body from the Gov­ern­ment gives us an ex­pla­na­tion and helps us work this out so that this does not hap­pen in the fu­ture.”

Guardian Me­dia called and sent a mes­sage to Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds on the is­sue but he did not re­spond. The Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion al­so did not re­spond to a me­dia query on the is­sue.