Sascha Wil­son

Mus­lims are be­ing urged to con­tin­ue to prac­tice the lifestyle they ob­served dur­ing the month of Ra­madan.

The call came from Imam At­iff Ma­jeed Su­laimani dur­ing his Eid-ul-Fitr ser­mon yes­ter­day at the San Fer­nan­do Ja­ma Masjid at Mu­cu­rapo Street.

He not­ed that COVID-19 has thought every­one to ap­pre­ci­ate what they have in their lives, in­clud­ing their fam­i­ly and health. The Imam al­so not­ed that fast­ing teach­es them the im­por­tance of food and wa­ter.

Dur­ing their fast in ob­ser­vance of Ra­madan, he said Mus­lims would have felt the pain of peo­ple who some­times have no food or clean wa­ter.

Not­ing that dur­ing Ra­madan, every­one at­tend­ed mosque, but now that it has end­ed he ex­pects the num­bers to dwin­dle.

“What we have to do, we have to con­tin­ue what we were do­ing in the month of Ra­madan. You are com­ing and spend­ing every night in the Masjid for one and a half hour, now just spend ten min­utes. What is so dif­fi­cult in that?”

En­cour­ag­ing them to con­tin­ue what they were do­ing dur­ing Ra­madan, he said, “Let us not re­vert back to our pre­vi­ous lifestyle.”

De­fend­ing Is­lam from the bad im­age in which it has been por­trayed since 9/11, he said that at­tack had noth­ing to do with Is­lam.

He said Is­lam teach­es that if some­one takes an in­no­cent life it’s as though he killed the en­tire mankind while if a life is saved it’s like the per­son pro­tect­ed the en­tire hu­man­i­ty.

“Once you have God you have no prob­lems in life,” he added. Not­ing sev­er­al in­stances of sui­cides, the Imam ex­plained that God gives peo­ple ever­last­ing pur­pose and once they be­lieve in the pow­er of God they will con­tin­ue to strive.

He said as Mus­lims they have to stand up against ag­gres­sion and pros­e­cu­tion of Mus­lims every­where, in­clud­ing Ukraine and Pak­istan.

Bring­ing greet­ings, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein said as Mus­lims they must be for­giv­ing and hum­ble.

He said through­out his pub­lic life he has re­mained hum­ble be­cause he is a Mus­lim be­fore any­thing else.

“I know I am in pub­lic life and I por­tray be­ing a hum­ble per­son. I prac­tice it and I al­ways will con­tin­ue to do that be­cause I rep­re­sent the Is­lam­ic com­mu­ni­ty. I am Mus­lim first and every­thing else af­ter.” He al­so ad­vised his Mus­lim broth­ers not to take their wives for grant­ed.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who al­so at­tend­ed the cel­e­bra­tions, said T&T is bet­ter off be­cause here all re­li­gions are recog­nised and ap­pre­ci­at­ed.

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that Is­lam is one of the main pil­lars of T&T.

Young told them that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley would have been at the func­tion but he had just re­turned from Wash­ing­ton DC.

Alms were al­so dis­trib­uted to sev­er­al peo­ple who were gath­ered at the front of the mosque.