The Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen will com­mem­o­rate this year’s an­niver­sary of the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup by pray­ing, fast­ing and feed­ing the poor, its leader Imam Sadiq Al Razi has said.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Al Razi said the Ja­maat will not use the day to “dab­ble in pol­i­tics,” as had been done in pre­vi­ous years.

In­stead, Al Razi said this year, the Ja­maat will be fo­cused on a spir­i­tu­al di­rec­tion.

This is Al Razi’s first year as the leader of the Ja­maat, fol­low­ing the death of for­mer Imam Yasin Abu Bakr on Oc­to­ber 21, days af­ter his 80th birth­day.

Ja­maal Shabazz, the of­fi­cial press spokesman for the Ja­maat, al­so said yes­ter­day that the an­niver­sary of the at­tempt­ed coup is usu­al­ly a time of in­tro­spec­tion for those who were in­volved.

“Usu­al­ly, it’s a time where broth­ers and sis­ters who are still alive from the ex­pe­ri­ence do a lot of per­son­al re­flec­tion,” Shabazz said.

Shabazz said Abu Bakr was more than a leader to the Ja­maat.

“Abu Bakr has been a fa­ther, a big broth­er, and at times a guide, so in mo­ments like these you think about him and a lot of the broth­ers and sis­ters who died and moved on and the over­all con­tri­bu­tion they have made both to the Ja­maat and the so­ci­ety as a whole,” he said.

Shabazz said Abu Bakr was al­ways an ad­vo­cate for the “poor and the needy and the poor and op­pressed.”

On Ju­ly 27, 1990, Abu Bakr led the Ja­maat in­to an at­tempt­ed over­throw of the then-Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion gov­ern­ment, which in­clud­ed storm­ing the Par­lia­ment build­ing and tak­ing then-prime min­is­ter ANR Robin­son and oth­ers hostage.

Both Al Razi and Shabazz par­tic­i­pat­ed in the at­tempt­ed coup.

“On a per­son­al lev­el, when I see what is hap­pen­ing to­day in the com­mu­ni­ties, it makes me feel a sense of in­ac­tiv­i­ty. I, on a per­son­al lev­el, need to con­sid­er against the back­drop of 1990, how can I pos­i­tive­ly af­fect this dark­ness that is hap­pen­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty. It is wor­ry­ing,” Shabazz said.

“The young peo­ple in the strug­gles be­fore were so unit­ed and ide­al­is­tic and now they have be­come very di­vid­ed and full of self-hate,” he added.

Shabazz said his mind is oc­cu­pied dai­ly with con­sid­er­ing how he can con­tribute to right­ing this sit­u­a­tion.

“Do I en­gage in po­lit­i­cal ac­tion? Do I en­gage in rad­i­cal ac­tion? Or do I take no ac­tion at all? And how would my lord judge me for the choic­es that I make go­ing for­ward,” he said.

“I want to make a per­son­al ef­fort for what is hap­pen­ing on the streets, where men are mis­lead­ing them­selves and the young peo­ple to com­mit acts of vi­o­lence against each oth­er. All con­scious-mind­ed peo­ple must see a need to make an in­ter­ven­tion to stop this may­hem,” Shabazz added.

“We like to quote from the scrip­tures and talk about the sac­ri­fices of Je­sus, but when it comes for us to take ac­tion to cause mean­ing­ful change in the com­mu­ni­ty, every­body is afraid to be cru­ci­fied.”

How­ev­er, Shabazz said the may­hem and the im­bal­ances in so­ci­ety can­not con­tin­ue un­abat­ed.

He high­light­ed Je­sus feed­ing the mul­ti­tude with five loaves and two fish as an ex­am­ple of how change can be ef­fect­ed.

“The les­son we get out of it for the politi­cians is that the peo­ple felt that what­ev­er lit­tle they had to eat, Je­sus, peace be up­on him, dis­trib­uted it in an eq­ui­table man­ner and peo­ple have a way of re­spect­ing jus­tice,” he said.

Shabazz said his mes­sage to politi­cians on both the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion bench­es is for them to “take a page out of the book of the prophet Je­sus, peace be up­on him.”