Former ASJA president Dr Mansoor Ibrahim dies

For­mer pres­i­dent of the An­ju­man Sun­nat ul Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA), Dr Man­soor Ibrahim, has died.

Ibrahim, a med­ical doc­tor and promi­nent mem­ber of Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, served as head of AS­JA from 1990 to 2000.

He was al­so a mem­ber of the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) and was award­ed the Cha­co­nia Medal (Sil­ver) in 1997 for Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice.

Ibrahim grew up in East Port of Spain dur­ing the 1940s and 1950s, at a time when the area had a grow­ing Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty but no masjid.

His fa­ther, Ha­ji Mo­hamed Ibrahim, pro­vid­ed fund­ing for what even­tu­al­ly be­came the Queen Street Ja­ma Masjid, near the fam­i­ly’s home.

Ibrahim at­tend­ed Pic­cadil­ly Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School be­fore win­ning a schol­ar­ship to Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege, where he com­plet­ed his Cam­bridge A Lev­els.

In 1959, he trav­elled to Scot­land to study med­i­cine. Dur­ing his time there, he had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet the young Queen Eliz­a­beth. Six years lat­er, he re­turned to Trinidad as a qual­i­fied med­ical doc­tor.

For more than 60 years, Ibrahim prac­tised med­i­cine, earn­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for his com­mit­ment to un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties in Port of Spain, par­tic­u­lar­ly Laven­tille, Bel­mont and sur­round­ing ar­eas.

He was known to make home vis­its to pa­tients who could not trav­el to his of­fice on Hen­ry Street, Port of Spain, of­ten nav­i­gat­ing nar­row roads and the hilly com­mu­ni­ties “be­hind the bridge”. His work in­clud­ed de­liv­er­ing ba­bies and pro­vid­ing med­ical care to vul­ner­a­ble pa­tients in their homes.

Ibrahim fre­quent­ly spoke about the in­flu­ence of his faith on his ap­proach to med­i­cine and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, em­pha­sis­ing that peo­ple should be treat­ed equal­ly re­gard­less of their eth­nic or re­li­gious back­ground.

His con­tri­bu­tion ex­tend­ed be­yond med­i­cine and Is­lam­ic lead­er­ship.

An avid sports­man, Ibrahim rep­re­sent­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go on the na­tion­al squash rack­ets team. He al­so played crick­et and ten­nis.

As a leader with­in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, he re­mained com­mit­ted to Is­lam­ic schol­ar­ship and out­reach, de­liv­er­ing pub­lic lec­tures and sem­i­nars, de­vel­op­ing men­tor­ship ini­tia­tives for younger gen­er­a­tions and pub­lish­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al.

In­ter­faith har­mo­ny was al­so a con­sis­tent theme in his pub­lic work, re­flect­ed in his in­volve­ment with the IRO.

Through med­i­cine, sport, re­li­gious lead­er­ship and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, Ibrahim main­tained a life­long con­nec­tion to the peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

His death marks the pass­ing of a fig­ure who spent decades serv­ing his coun­try while pro­mot­ing ed­u­ca­tion, com­mu­ni­ty re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and un­der­stand­ing across re­li­gious and cul­tur­al lines.