In his Eid mes­sage to the na­tion, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards says free­dom of re­li­gion is a pil­lar of T&T's Con­sti­tu­tion and it is im­por­tant to be mind­ful of that, giv­en what is tak­ing place in oth­er parts of the world, some­times in the name of democ­ra­cy. Richards said what­ev­er was hap­pen­ing else­where in the world, T&T had a his­to­ry of in­clu­sion of peo­ple of all faiths in the build­ing of the na­tion. He said: "Free­dom of re­li­gion is a pil­lar of our Con­sti­tu­tion and it is a right en­shrined-free­dom of con­science and re­li­gious be­lief and ob­ser­vance-in Sec­tion 4 (h). "This is not just a pa­per con­tract but a re­al­i­ty which is lived out dai­ly in the con­duct of our busi­ness, per­son­al and oth­er­wise."

He said a num­ber of Is­lam­ic na­tions were un­der siege and he had no doubt that dur­ing the pe­ri­od of prayer and fast­ing, the sit­u­a­tion would have had a cen­tral place in the pe­ti­tions of Mus­lims in the coun­try.

The Pres­i­dent said: "Would that these cir­cum­stances did not ex­ist in mid­dle and far east­ern coun­tries, but they do and while we need not dwell on them, they give us good rea­son to ap­pre­ci­ate the hu­man rights and free­doms that we en­joy in our own coun­try."

He said those were rights and free­doms that cit­i­zens, what­ev­er their re­li­gious per­sua­sion, or ab­sence of it, must nev­er yield up, for they did so at their own per­il. "This free­dom to pur­sue our dai­ly lives with­out prej­u­dice be­cause of our re­li­gion or par­tic­u­lar sects there­of, should in­spire us to be ever more res­olute in de­fend­ing our coun­try against those who would seek to in­tro­duce, sub­tly or oth­er­wise, el­e­ments that would take us down a path of ero­sion of these very rights. "Let no one change or im­pede our pur­suit of peace," Richards said.