Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Ra­madan ob­ser­vances at a Pe­nal mosque have been marred by a bur­glary in which cash and oth­er items were stolen.

The theft was dis­cov­ered around 12.30 pm on Tues­day when a wor­ship­per ar­rived at the mosque. The lock on the col­lec­tion box was bro­ken, and mon­ey, the Imam’s mi­cro­phone, bat­ter­ies, and oth­er items were miss­ing. Paint from a can used to smash a lock was splat­tered on the floor.

“That should have nev­er hap­pened. It is the month of Ra­madan, and peo­ple should re­spect re­li­gious places,” said Ja­maat pres­i­dent Ju­man Ali.

“If this kind of thing is hap­pen­ing—and I can’t say is a mad­man who did it—one would find it in­ex­cus­able that some­one would come in­to a mosque and do this kind of non­sense. We are very up­set about this.”

Ali added that if the sus­pect “had come to us and say he does not have mon­ey or food, we would have in­vit­ed him in. We usu­al­ly give to peo­ple af­ter mosque. There are lots of poor peo­ple who come to us and we help.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that many peo­ple are un­em­ployed and fac­ing fi­nan­cial hard­ships, he said some peo­ple are be­com­ing des­per­ate.

“One has to look at the cul­ture and eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try. Peo­ple don’t have jobs they are scrunt­ing and I don’t think they are pleased with the state of how they are han­dling crime ... I do not think enough is be­ing done for poor peo­ple.

Ali said the doors to the mosque are not usu­al­ly locked be­cause it is a place for peo­ple to go and of­fer prayers.

How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that times are chang­ing rapid­ly and pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures must be tak­en, as this in­ci­dent could serve as an in­cen­tive for oth­ers.

He said mem­bers of the mosque will be meet­ing to­mor­row to dis­cuss im­ple­ment­ing ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.