KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley hand­ed over le­gal doc­u­ments for the de­vel­op­ment of a Mus­lim ceme­tery yes­ter­day, for­mer House Speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed said the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty is will­ing and ready to work with the Gov­ern­ment.
Row­ley vis­it­ed the Sub­ra­tee Trace Masjid in Bar­rack­pore where mem­bers of the An­ju­man Sun­nat-ul-Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA), Trinidad Mus­lim League (TML), Tack­veey­at­ul Is­lam­ic As­so­ci­a­tion (TIA) and the Ah­madiyya Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty gath­ered to wit­ness the hand­ing over of doc­u­ments for the de­vel­op­ment of the Dou­glas Road Bar­rack­pore Mus­lim Ceme­tery on eight acres of State land. 
Mo­hammed, a mem­ber of the ceme­tery com­mit­tee and for­mer chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, re­called Row­ley sin­gling out the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty’s char­i­ty work dur­ing the COVID-19 fight. He said the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty could help to heal the di­vi­sions with­in the coun­try.
“We can move this coun­try to­geth­er and the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, I can say with all con­fi­dence, is will­ing and pre­pared to join hands with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad & To­ba­go. So to­day, we have been af­ford­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to tell the pub­lic that we, the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, we are ready and will­ing to work with the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure that the pro­grammes that will ben­e­fit our com­mu­ni­ties and our coun­try at large will suc­ceed with our help,” Mo­hammed said.
Yes­ter­day’s event fol­lowed Sun­day’s en­dorse­ment of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her slate of can­di­dates by or­gan­i­sa­tions of the UmmahTT/Mus­lim Fed­er­a­tion. UmmahTT chair­man Rasheed Karim said they were en­cour­ag­ing mem­bers, their fam­i­lies and friends to sup­port the UNC for next month’s gen­er­al elec­tion, as the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment had done lit­tle for the com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing its tenure. Karim added that the Gov­ern­ment had al­so la­belled Mus­lims as ter­ror­ists.
But yes­ter­day, Row­ley told the gath­er­ing that all the chil­dren of Abra­ham are broth­ers and sis­ters, adding both Chris­tian­i­ty and Is­lam are Abra­ham­ic re­li­gions. He told the gath­er­ing that while they con­sid­ered it an ho­n­our for him to be at their masjid, he was al­so ho­n­oured to be there. 
“Your needs are the great­est needs. That is the most im­por­tant thing for the politi­cians to ad­dress,” Row­ley said.
He al­so trig­gered mem­bers’ emo­tions as he re­called his friend­ship with Maulana Mush­taq Ahmed Su­laimani of the San Fer­nan­do Ja­ma Masjid, who died in March 2019.
“I know you lost a leader. I lost a friend,” he said.
The land for the ceme­tery be­longed to Ca­roni (1975) Ltd. Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, the State will trans­fer own­er­ship to the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, which will al­low the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty to use the land through a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing. The com­mit­tee will be re­spon­si­ble for es­tab­lish­ing, main­tain­ing and op­er­at­ing the ceme­tery.
PNM can­di­date for the Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituen­cy Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters asked mem­bers to sup­port him in the elec­tion, as he plans to get as­sis­tance for the de­vel­op­ment of the ceme­tery and rep­re­sent their oth­er needs.