US Am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond said the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment has reaf­firmed its sup­port to Mus­lims suf­fer­ing hard­ships and dev­as­ta­tion.

At the time, she ad­dressed Mus­lims gath­ered at the Masjid Al Taw­bah, at Low­lands To­ba­go on Fri­day. Bond joined with the Mus­lims on the sis­ter isle for the dai­ly rit­u­al of If­tar (the break­ing of the fast cer­e­mo­ny )which is ob­served dur­ing the month of Ra­madan.

Bond said “We will con­tin­ue to stand with the peo­ple of Turkey and Syr­ia who have lost many loved ones dur­ing the re­cent dev­as­tat­ing earth­quakes and with the peo­ple of Pak­istan who are re­build­ing their lives fol­low­ing last sum­mer’s floods. To­day we re­mem­ber the uni­ver­sal hu­man right to prac­tise, pray and preach our faiths peace­ful­ly and open­ly and to­geth­er with our part­ners the US stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Mus­lims who con­tin­ue to face op­pres­sion around the world.”

Bond said the US ap­plaud­ed T&T for its re­li­gious free­dom as one of the “most re­li­gious­ly di­verse and tol­er­ant coun­tries in the world.”

She said, ” This is a place where re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions work and col­lab­o­rate in har­mo­ny to re­solve many of the most press­ing prob­lems in so­ci­ety and I have had a chance to see that up­front and close and that is a rare rare thing.”

She said the US is com­mit­ted to cre­at­ing strong part­ner­ships and re­la­tion­ships with Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties through its em­bassies and con­sulates glob­al­ly.