SHAS­TRI BOODAN

One Mus­lim cler­ic be­lieves this coun­try is reap­ing the re­wards of its ne­glect of serv­ing God—hard­ships and tur­bu­lence—and that it al­so is suf­fer­ing from a lack of good lead­er­ship.

The com­ments came from out­spo­ken Mus­lim cler­ic, Imam Rasheed Karim, dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at the Fe­lic­i­ty Mus­lim As­so­ci­a­tion’s Eid func­tion on Sun­day 17 Ju­ly 2022, which took place at the Fe­lic­i­ty Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, Ch­agua­nas.

“We look at what is tak­ing place in our beau­ti­ful coun­try of T&T.  When we look to­wards lead­er­ship, we see a lot of bick­er­ing when it comes to the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty,” he ob­served.  “We look to­wards the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans when it comes to the gov­er­nance of T&T.  They are nowhere to be found when it comes to­wards di­rect­ing the cit­i­zen­ry of T&T.”

Not­ing this was the first time the com­mu­ni­ty was able to cel­e­brate Eid since the on­set of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic two years ago, Imam Karim en­cour­aged the gath­er­ing to not lose hope. 

“Many of us to­day have lost our bear­ings.  Many have lost their guid­ance be­cause we choose to sur­ren­der.  We should not give up; we should not sur­ren­der, be­cause Almighty Al­lah is the one who is giv­ing us our strength. Our liveli­hood comes from Almighty Al­lah,” the Imam stressed.  

“When you look to­day at the crime rate, you look at what is hap­pen­ing, you look at our so­ci­ety, how many peo­ple have been mur­dered, how many peo­ple have been shot, how many peo­ple have been killed on a dai­ly ba­sis and you ques­tion your­self why.  Almighty Al­lah has giv­en us that an­swer.  Why, it is sim­ply be­cause you have lost your bear­ing, you have lost your guid­ance, you have lost that di­rec­tion that you need to find. You need to find your­self, you need to find your bear­ing, and you need to find what is caus­ing this harm to take place in so­ci­ety,” Imam Karim said.

He added: “When in­di­vid­u­als lose their hope in Almighty Al­lah and stop putting their trust in Almighty Al­lah and put their trust in world­ly pos­ses­sions… that is what caus­es our demise. That is what is caus­ing cor­rup­tion and fit­nah (hard­ships) in our coun­try. That is what is caus­ing harm and mur­der and tur­moil in our beau­ti­ful coun­try of T&T. Almighty Al­lah wants us to un­der­stand these things. It is be­cause of what your own hand has sown.”

The Mus­lim cler­ic said God wants every­one to get back to their orig­i­nal pur­pose, which is serv­ing the cre­ator and not get­ting side-tracked. He said life on earth is for a short time and peo­ple need to in­vest this time in the ser­vice of God and not wor­ship­ping ma­te­r­i­al gains.

“The minute we start to un­der­stand that and bring that to our dai­ly lives, we are go­ing to live a hap­py life,” he said.

Al­so bring­ing greet­ings at the event was Ch­agua­nas May­or His Wor­ship Faaiq Ho­sein.