The Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) says the hu­man mind can nev­er rest in equi­lib­ri­um un­til it links back to its orig­i­nal source. In an Eid-ul-Fitr mes­sage to the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, the COP's po­lit­i­cal leader Prakash Ra­mad­har said: "We praise Almighty God for His con­tin­ued bless­ings on our na­tion. We can nev­er thank him enough for his abun­dant mer­cies...Mer­cies which are some­times tak­en for grant­ed, as we seem to for­get that in many oth­er coun­tries around the world, mil­lions of peo­ple live un­der ex­ceed­ing­ly harsh cir­cum­stances, be they nat­ur­al or man-made.

"In this re­gard, as we cel­e­brate Eid, we of­fer a spe­cial prayer of peace for our broth­ers and sis­ters in Syr­ia and oth­er na­tions of the Mid­dle East who are con­front­ed with vi­o­lent in­ter­nal con­flict," he said. "Here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we are of­ten spared nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and our trou­bles are large­ly man-made caused by neg­a­tive be­hav­iours, such as in­dis­ci­pline, greed, poor work at­ti­tude, cor­rup­tion at all lev­els, and oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

"The in­creased Taqwah (God con­scious­ness) dis­played by Mus­lims dur­ing the Holy month of Ra­mad­han is tes­ti­mo­ny that Is­lam is a very peace­ful, prac­ti­cal and dis­ci­plined re­li­gion, of­fer­ing a pro­gres­sive way of life char­ac­terised by the con­cept of good gov­er­nance, char­i­ty, self-con­trol, law and or­der; val­ues wor­thy of em­u­la­tion if we are to ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress our na­tion's prob­lems."