President of the Islamic Missionaries Guild Imtiaz Mohammed says the United States ought to be the “last to talk” about discrimination against Muslims when it is the US that discriminates against Muslims. He was commenting on the International Religious Freedom Report for 2012, which said several Caribbean countries, including T&T, Jamaica, Haiti and the Bahamas, were discriminating against Rastafarians, voodoo practitioners and Muslims.
The report said during the 2011 three-month state of emergency, 16 Muslim men were arrested for alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate the Prime Minister and three other Cabinet ministers. The report said none of the men was charged with any crime and they were released after a week.
Muslims, the report added, have referred to that incident as “an example of bias against the Muslim community” and several of those arrested claimed to be pursuing legal action against the Government for wrongful arrest. But Mohammed said it was up to the local national security authorities to determine who should be arrested.
“I would not call that discrimination. The national security authority determined who was held during the state of emergency. An explanation, however, for that never came out as to why these people were held,” Mohammed added. He said Muslims in T&T were being discriminated against by the US Government by refusing to grant visas.
“The US really has no moral authority to talk about discrimination. I know of many prominent Muslim businessmen in this country who were refused a US visa. I myself had my commercial pilot’s licence revoked and my children’s visas were also cancelled,” he added. On specific instances of discrimination against Muslims, Mohammed said there were occasional complaints that Muslims were not given enough, whether funding or otherwise, by Government.
Such claims, he added, must be properly investigated. Sheraz Ali, Imam of the Nu-E-Islam Mosque, El Socorro, said he did not believe there were deliberate acts of discrimination against Muslims in T&T but subtle instances which could be viewed as discrimination. Those, Ali added, could be rectified via education and greater tolerance towards Muslims and their culture.
He said there were some instances where Muslim men were not allowed to wear beards which was a strong indication of Islam. He said: “There have been times when Muslim women were told they could not wear the hijab at certain places of employment. “There are instances where Muslims have had difficulty in getting time-off from their jobs to attend juma (Friday prayers) which lasts about an hour. These are a few instances but I do not believe they are done on purpose.”
Asked if he believed there were increasing instances of Muslims being discriminated against in T&T, Ali said that was not the case.