The coun­try’s largest Mus­lim group the An­ju­man Sun­nat Ul Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA) said it sup­ports any ra­tio­nale of any pro­gramme and any means by those in gov­ern­ment to pro­tect the coun­try from those who wish to sub­vert and un­der­mine the le­gal process and neg­a­tive­ly im­pact and in­fringe on the rights as en­shrined in the T&T con­sti­tu­tion.

Com­ment­ing on the re­trac­tion of the old $100 note and the is­suance of the new poly­mer $100 bill, AS­JA through its gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Ha­ji Rahi­mool Ho­sein said it was mind­ful that there would be some cit­i­zens who have earned their wealth le­git­i­mate­ly and who would have cho­sen not to use the ex­ist­ing bank­ing sys­tem for their own rea­sons.

AS­JA said those per­sons are in the “mi­nor­i­ty” and it is hop­ing that “some mea­sure of com­fort” will be giv­en to those per­sons “to pre­serve their life sav­ings with the ap­pro­pri­ate de­c­la­ra­tion of the source of their funds.”

With re­spect to the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty and in par­tic­u­lar, the sav­ing of mon­ey to pay for the pil­grim­age to Mec­ca for Ha­jj, AS­JA said it is “in­cum­bent on the in­di­vid­ual to en­sure that the funds used for re­li­gious in­junc­tion are gained to­tal­ly through le­gal means and has ab­solute­ly no stain that would negate the ben­e­fits of the pur­suit to ful­fil this pil­lar of Is­lam.”

AS­JA is hop­ing that those in au­thor­i­ty will not “pe­nalise those who have le­git­i­mate­ly sac­ri­ficed to put aside fund­ing for the Ha­jj over the course of their life” and will af­ford them “the fa­cil­i­ty to de­clare the same with due dili­gence.”

Ho­sein speak­ing on be­half of AS­JA said: “Any pre­pon­der­ance, as­sump­tion or al­le­ga­tion by oth­ers re­gard­ing the pres­ence of any wealth stored in a cit­i­zens pri­vate do­main is ill-con­ceived, ir­re­spon­si­ble, reck­less and detri­men­tal to the safe­ty of the cit­i­zen and ul­ti­mate­ly casts an as­per­sion on the cit­i­zen and or the com­mu­ni­ty to which he as­so­ciates.”