The UMMAH T&T Mus­lim Fed­er­a­tion has in­struct­ed its at­tor­ney to ini­ti­ate moves to file a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion against the leg­is­la­tion to take out of cir­cu­la­tion the ex­ist­ing $100 dol­lar bills with­in a re­strict­ed pe­ri­od of time.

This was re­vealed by Imam Rasheed Karim, chair­man of the largest lo­cal group of in­de­pen­dent Is­lam­ic or­gan­i­sa­tions who crit­i­cised the move which he said in­fringes on the rights of the 180,000 strong Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty.

“As cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Mus­lims can­not be forced to en­list in­to the lo­cal bank­ing sys­tem as Is­lam for­bids the in­volve­ment of usury (in­ter­est) in our fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions,” said the spir­i­tu­al leader.

“Be­cause of this pro­hi­bi­tion, thou­sands of Mus­lims opt to stay out of the sys­tem and thus se­cure their funds in dif­fer­ent ways, all le­gal though. But this law now puts them in a dis­ad­van­ta­geous sit­u­a­tion and com­pels a sig­nif­i­cant seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion to com­pro­mise their re­li­gious be­liefs,” Imam Karim said.

The Ummah T&T Mus­lim Fed­er­a­tion leader said that al­though the in­tent of the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Pro­ceeds of Crime and Cen­tral Bank Amend­ment) Bill was well-mean­ing, the framers failed to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the unique re­li­gious oblig­a­tions of Mus­lims.

He sup­port­ed Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Sen­a­tor Sad­dam Ho­sein, who in the de­bate in Par­lia­ment last week­end high­light­ed the dilem­ma faced by the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion with the ad­vent of the new leg­is­la­tion, which ac­cord­ing to Imam Karim came like a thief in the night.

The Imam said he has been told by the group’s at­tor­neys that a sol­id case can be pre­sent­ed to stay the pas­sage of the Bill in the Sen­ate be­fore it reach­es the desk of the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic for fi­nal as­sent.

“We are con­fi­dent that some mea­sure of re­lief can be pro­vid­ed by the court to en­sure the right of free­dom of re­li­gion as en­shrined in the T&T con­sti­tu­tion can­not be sub­ju­gat­ed in the in­ter­est of short term goals which we be­lieve could be achieved in oth­er ways than tram­pling on the rights of cit­i­zens,” said the Ummah T&T leader.

Imam Karim re­it­er­at­ed Is­lam’s strict laws against all forms of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clud­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing. He said any con­nec­tion with the pro­ceeds of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties is al­so pro­hib­it­ed.

He warned how­ev­er that laws de­signed to safe­guard the in­ter­est of the na­tion should be made in con­sul­ta­tion with the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and not draft­ed in se­cre­cy and be­hind closed doors which he sug­gest­ed has back­fired once again in the face of the Gov­ern­ment.

Imam Karim is con­tend­ing that once again Mus­lims “have been forced to bear the brunt of the fall­out from the in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the state while al­so cre­at­ing great anx­i­ety and un­cer­tain­ty in the bank­ing sec­tor.”