The Trinidad Mus­lim League strong­ly con­demns the killing of US Am­bas­sador to Libya Christo­pher Stevens, and his staff and con­demns all oth­er sim­i­lar acts of ag­gres­sion com­mit­ted against in­no­cent peo­ple world­wide. It is wide­ly be­lieved that these at­tacks were in re­sponse to the pro­duc­tion of a video that er­ro­neous­ly claims to rep­re­sent the Prophet Muham­mad, up­on whom be peace. We all know his bi­og­ra­phy and are ful­ly aware that this por­tray­al in no way rep­re­sents the truth. While we all feel deeply of­fend­ed we be­lieve that it does not jus­ti­fy such vi­o­lent re­ac­tions. As we all know the Mes­sen­ger is loved and revered by Mus­lims world­wide and any com­ments about him could pos­si­bly lead to anger.

How­ev­er as our re­li­gion teach­es us "Al­lah is with those who pa­tient­ly per­se­vere" and the life of Muham­mad is it­self tes­ti­mo­ny to the im­por­tance giv­en to those who for­giv­ing oth­ers and bear­ing pa­tience. Is­lam al­so teach­es us to love, re­spect and ap­pre­ci­ate peo­ples of oth­er faiths. We al­so recog­nise that in­ter­na­tion­al­ly Mus­lims en­joy a good re­la­tion­ship with peo­ple of oth­er faiths. Let us not al­low the ac­tions of a few mis­guid­ed in­di­vid­u­als lead us to hate oth­ers. The Prophet (peace be up­on him) should be our ex­am­ple in every­thing we do, and even though he was at­tacked and in­sult­ed many times through­out his life, he al­ways re­act­ed with com­pas­sion and for­give­ness, nev­er with hate or vi­o­lence. Let us recog­nise that the Quran de­scribes the un­just tak­ing of one life as killing all of hu­man­i­ty. Fur­ther­more the Quran and Sun­nah are al­so strong­ly op­posed to any ac­tion that will cause harm to or loss of in­no­cent lives.

We there­fore con­demn the killing of in­no­cent diplo­mat­ic per­son­nel in Libya. We urge Mus­lims world­wide to de­sist from such acts of vi­o­lence. We al­so be­lieve that peo­ple are free to pro­duce what­ev­er they wish and de­scribe it in what­ev­er ways they wish. These acts in no way will re­duce the love and re­spect peo­ple have for the Prophet up­on whom be peace. The TML wish­es to dis­tance it­self from threat­en­ing state­ments made against the Unit­ed States and Oth­er em­bassy of­fi­cials by per­sons pur­port­ing to rep­re­sent Mus­lims in Trinidad and To­ba­go. As a re­spon­si­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion that holds strong­ly to the teach­ing of Prophet Mo­hammed (up­on whom be Peace) we can­not con­done ac­tions that re­sult in the killing of in­no­cent hu­man be­ings. We of the TML strong­ly be­lief in peace­ful res­o­lu­tion to the emo­tion­al and un­jus­ti­fied up­roar of Mus­lims around the world. Fur­ther­more we wish to ex­press our pro­found sym­pa­thy to the peo­ple of Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and the fam­i­ly of the US Am­bas­sador to Libya and oth­er of­fi­cials who were killed in the up­ris­ing.

Trinidad Mus­lim League

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