The re­cent mur­der of 50 Mus­lims in New Zealand has prompt­ed some lo­cal Mus­lim lead­ers to call at­ten­tion to cer­tain un­re­solved is­sues—in­clud­ing last year’s Car­ni­val plot ar­rests and the de­ten­tion of women and chil­dren over­seas—apart from oth­er se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

This was the feed­back yes­ter­day from lead­ers such as Is­lam­ic Mis­sion­ar­ies Guild head Im­ti­az Mo­hammed and at­tor­ney Nafeesa Mo­hammed, who spoke fol­low­ing last Fri­day’s mur­der of the 50 peo­ple at mosques in New Zealand by an Aus­tralian man.

Im­ti­az Mo­hammed’s group held a memo­r­i­al for the vic­tims last Sat­ur­day in cen­tral Trinidad. At that meet­ing, Mo­hammed called the mur­ders a “ter­ror­ist at­tack.

He added: “It shows the world that not on­ly Mus­lims must be re­ferred to as ter­ror­ists. This at­tack must be used as a cat­a­lyst for the way we re­act to in­jus­tices met­ed out to our Mus­lim broth­ers and sis­ters in oth­er parts of the world.”

Mo­hammed said fol­low­ing Fri­day’s ter­ror at­tack some lo­cal groups called for talks with na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials. A meet­ing has been sched­uled for Wednes­day in Char­lieville with Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, po­lice and army rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein, who is a Mus­lim.

Nafeesa Mo­hammed said if in­vit­ed she would be hap­py to at­tend and par­tic­u­lar­ly looked for­ward to meet­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith since she sees the need for train­ing of po­lice of­fi­cers.

“Oth­er is­sues that need ad­dress­ing in­clude how last year’s so-called Car­ni­val plot was han­dled. It showed Is­lam­o­pho­bia oc­curred at the ex­pense of cit­i­zens’ rights and free­doms and it demon­strat­ed the need for state of­fi­cials to un­der­stand the nu­ances in the so­ci­ety con­cern­ing re­li­gious and cul­tur­al re­al­i­ties es­pe­cial­ly Mus­lims’ own,” she said.

She cit­ed the is­sue of repa­tri­a­tion of T&T women and chil­dren de­tained over­seas fol­low­ing the fall of Isis and the de­ten­tion of peo­ple by Iraqi au­thor­i­ties. She said mech­a­nisms are al­so need­ed to fa­cil­i­tate Ha­jj pil­grim­ages.

“What hap­pened in New Zealand brings to the fore the need to bet­ter un­der­stand that terms like ex­trem­ism, fun­da­men­tal­ism and the like aren’t con­fined to one re­li­gious group. We need to bet­ter un­der­stand the re­al­i­ties of Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause Trinidad and To­ba­go’s uni­ty in di­ver­si­ty is a sto­ry to tell the world,” Mo­hammed added.

Im­ti­az Mo­hammed said he hoped the talks could touch on per­mis­sion for Mus­lims seek­ing to buy $3 mil­lion in for­eign ex­change for pil­grims to at­tend Ha­jj. Ap­peals were made to the Fi­nance Min­istry.