Fol­low­ing the call from the Head of Ummah T&T for the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty to come to­geth­er to lob­by for Eid-ul-Ad­ha - much like its coun­ter­part Eid-ul-Fitr - to be made a pub­lic hol­i­day, some Mus­lim or­gan­i­sa­tions are sup­port­ing the move.

On Mon­day Imam Rasheed Karim called on all Is­lam­ic bod­ies to unite to ap­proach the gov­ern­ment to dis­cuss the sta­tus of Eid-Ul-Ad­ha.

While the head of the Is­lam­ic Front, Umar Ab­dul­lah agreed that Eid-Ul-Ad­ha should be a pub­lic hol­i­day, say­ing it was the more re­li­gious­ly sig­nif­i­cant of the two Ei­ds, he be­lieved it was time for the gov­ern­ment to sit with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all the re­li­gions in the coun­try and re­struc­ture the na­tion’s pub­lic hol­i­days, al­low­ing for a bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the dif­fer­ent re­li­gions.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view, Ab­dul­lah said that Gov­ern­ment should al­so recog­nise the im­por­tance of the oth­er re­li­gious groups and their par­tic­u­lar days of fes­ti­vals as well.

“If you look at the land­scape of our coun­try, pre­dom­i­nant­ly, we have Chris­t­ian hol­i­days that oc­cu­py our cal­en­dar. I am of the opin­ion that all re­li­gious groups ought to be looked at and a dis­cus­sion needs to be held with all these dif­fer­ent re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions,” Ab­dul­lah said.

Mean­while, Imam Raf­fa­ic Mo­hammed of the Ma­coon Street Masjid and PRO of the An­ju­man Sun­nat ul Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AS­JA), said he be­lieved both Ei­ds should be cel­e­brat­ed as pub­lic hol­i­days in T&T.

How­ev­er, he be­lieved that dis­cus­sions need­ed to be had with the Is­lam­ic schol­ars who can guide Gov­ern­ment as to the im­por­tance of Eid-ul-Ad­ha.

In the call made by the Ummah T&T head for the day to be recog­nised as a pub­lic hol­i­day, he sug­gest­ed that if not both Ei­ds be­ing a hol­i­day, then Gov­ern­ment could re­place the Eid-ul-Fitr hol­i­day with Eid-ul-Ad­ha.

But Mo­hammed dis­agreed with this.

“You can­not sep­a­rate (it). You’ve had a hol­i­day in Eid-ul-Fitr since – I can’t re­mem­ber the ex­act date – but it’s a num­ber of years now and that has grown so much with the na­tion­al pub­lic,” he said.

“It is im­por­tant that we try and have the Eid-ul-Fitr re­main as a hol­i­day but we should try our best to get Eid-ul-Ad­ha as a pub­lic hol­i­day.”

He said if Eid-ul-Ad­ha is made a hol­i­day, it would help ed­u­cate the pub­lic about the cir­cum­stances around the sig­nif­i­cance of the day.