Imam on Govt support for US-led Middle East conflict:

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

While Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar faces crit­i­cism over her sup­port of the Unit­ed States and Is­rael’s ma­jor at­tack on Iran, one Mus­lim leader be­lieves the Prime Min­is­ter may be act­ing in what she con­sid­ers the best in­ter­est of Trinidad and To­ba­go, but notes that her hands may al­so be tied.

Imam Raf­fa­ic Mo­hamed, of the Ma­coon Street Masjid, shared his thoughts on the mat­ter af­ter de­liv­er­ing the mid­day Ra­madan prayer at the Vic­to­ria Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do masjid yes­ter­day.

Since the Unit­ed States and Is­rael launched strikes on Iran­ian tar­gets over the week­end, killing Supreme Leader Ay­a­tol­lah Ali Khamenei among oth­er fa­tal­i­ties, ten­sions in the re­gion have es­ca­lat­ed, with Iran warn­ing of re­tal­i­a­tion and re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns mount­ing.

Imam Mo­hamed said one of the rea­sons such con­flicts oc­cur is poor lead­er­ship, not­ing that many lead­ers for­get they are ser­vants of the peo­ple and in­stead en­ter po­si­tions of au­thor­i­ty for self-cen­tred rea­sons.

“Every leader is about him­self or her­self; it is not about I or you,” he said, adding that they “don’t know how to del­e­gate au­thor­i­ty.”

Mo­hamed said there is no mes­sage he would want to send to the lead­ers in­volved in the on­go­ing con­flict, as he be­lieves they would not lis­ten.

“We just have to live our lives nor­mal and for­get what hap­pen. What is to take place, we can’t change that. From the Is­lam­ic point of view, we ex­pect all these things to take place. All these things have to hap­pen. But to stop the blood­shed and what is tak­ing place, we can­not do any­thing about that right now be­cause we al­low our­selves to be­come weak.”

As for the Prime Min­is­ter’s sup­port of US ac­tions, he said crit­i­cis­ing her made no sense.

“She’s just a fig­ure­head there, as I said she has to be very tact­ful in what­ev­er she do­ing. Oth­er­wise, we will be in trou­ble; we have to face re­al­i­ty.”

He said peo­ple fail to re­alise that Trinidad and To­ba­go is “hang­ing on a cliff.”

“What she do­ing is in the best in­ter­est be­cause she don’t have no pow­er. We can’t fight a war ...”

He ad­vised wor­ship­pers to do what is best for them­selves, be re­spon­si­ble and prac­tice the teach­ings of Is­lam in their dai­ly lives.

“So, it boils back to you as an in­di­vid­ual, you have to do what is best for you. And once we can do that, we can have the best love and har­mo­ny among every­one.”