CARISA LEE

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Re­li­gious lead­ers in this coun­try say they too, like every­one else, are cau­tious about the crime sit­u­a­tion even as they know that their role in so­ci­ety is to help curb crime, through in­ter­ven­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia via Zoom yes­ter­day, Is­lam­ic leader Fuad Abu Bakr said he was on Ob­ser­va­to­ry Street, Port-of-Spain wait­ing for some­one, when he de­cid­ed to move to a safer lo­ca­tion.

“I said lis­ten, let me don’t dwell here be­cause I was wait­ing on some­one, let me make the block, go on Rene­gades Way, which is Char­lotte Street be­cause it’s a bit prob­a­bly safer there,” he ex­plained.

Abu Bakr ex­plained that his de­ci­sion to move was not be­cause he had any “co­coa in the sun”.

He ex­plained that he works in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties with the youth through the Abu Bakr Foun­da­tion and the Kwame Ture Ed­u­ca­tion and De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre and is quite aware that crim­i­nals nowa­days don’t seem to care who they hurt.

“Our so­ci­ety is a bat­tle­field, where peo­ple have con­flicts go­ing on and it’s be­ing played out, and it has no kind of dis­crim­i­na­tion for in­no­cent chil­dren, for me, for you, so I am cau­tious but I am not afraid,” he said.

Bakr said Mus­lims have a tremen­dous role with­in so­ci­ety and are some­times mis­un­der­stood and mis­rep­re­sent­ed by a few with ill in­ten­tions.

Pun­dit Lloyd Mukram Sir­joo feels hope­less and help­less when it comes to the crime sit­u­a­tion in this coun­try.

“Just imag­ine 18 lives lost in two or three days, it can­not be busi­ness as usu­al, some­body is falling down on the job,” he ex­plained.

He said in the weeks be­fore last week­end’s blood­bath, he would tell his devo­tees to, “do not cre­ate an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the crim­i­nals,” but af­ter so many peo­ple were mur­dered in just two days, he’s not sure what to say to them again.

“We have passed that stage be­cause you not go­ing any­where, you are in your home and you hav­ing home in­va­sions and peo­ple are be­ing mur­dered in their homes,” he ex­claimed.

Mukram Sir­joo said law-abid­ing cit­i­zens have no de­fence but as a pun­dit he called for more prayer but it must in­clude the youth.

“If we have to do any­thing that could try to ap­pease the sit­u­a­tion, we have to reach out and get the young peo­ple back in­to the re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions, be­cause they are the ones,” he sug­gest­ed.

Ro­man Catholic (RC) priest and Vic­ar Fr Robert Chris­to said he was sad­dened by the past week­end’s mur­der count. He said help­ing to bring the crime rate down is at the top of the church’s agen­da.

“The church doesn’t have a mis­sion nec­es­sar­i­ly, the mis­sion has a church be­cause the church doesn’t have an end,” he ex­plained.

He said the aim is to find new and cre­ative ap­proach­es need­ed to re-en­er­gise and re-en­gage the youth back in­to the church.

“Young peo­ple would leave be­cause many peo­ple had bad ex­pe­ri­ences and neg­a­tives with the church and church-re­lat­ed peo­ple at all lev­els,” he ad­mit­ted.

Fr Chris­to said young peo­ple want the right ex­am­ple and good wit­ness­es which they were not get­ting.