Islamic Missionaries Guild president Imtiaz Mohammed says the Government should seek international assistance to locate two men, believed to be local Muslims, who have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis).
He was speaking the day after Muslim organisations signalled their intention to hold an emergency meeting to discuss reports that locals were being paid US$1,000 a month to join Isis, which has claimed responsibility for the gruesome murders of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning.
Unconfirmed reports said one of the men featured in the Al Hayat video, titled Eid Greeting from the land of the Khilafah on August 2, once lived at Boundary Road, San Juan. Residents there said yesterday that he had migrated to the US but was deported for involvement in criminal activity. They lost track of him when he returned to Trinidad. There was also speculation that the other man featured in the video may be from central Trinidad.
Mohammed, in a telephone interview, said he did not recognise any of the men featured in the videos and it was up to the police to locate them. “Government must keep a check on people who are travelling to the Middle East. They need to try and verify if there are visits there or whether these visits are genuine or not,” Mohammed urged.
He said Turkey was a popular point being used to cross the border to terrorist-controlled areas in the Middle East and while the Government could not stop nationals from going to the Middle East, there must be proper surveillance. “I don’t know how they are going to do it. The United States has put a system in place to monitor people travelling to Turkey. Anybody who is travelling to that part of the world has to go through the US, London or Canada,” Mohammed said.
He said that Government should engage in international co-operation to find Isis fighters who might have roots in Trinidad. Mohammed said Isis was going against the tenets of Islam and last March, Islamic scholars co-signed an open letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of Isis, arguing the Islamic state’s establishment and practices are not legitimate in Islam. Mohammed reiterated that any local Muslim who decided to join Isis would be going against their religion.
Attorney General Anand Ramlogan said involvement by T&T nationals could not be discounted as T&T had suffered from the effects of terrorism within recent times. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar also said at last Thursday’s post-Cabinet press conference that T&T was open to terrorist infiltration.
She said her decision to co-sponsor the US security resolutions against foreign terrorist fighters would allow T&T to benefit from intelligence-sharing and data-gathering on a global scale.
it’s not us—nur-e-islam
The head of one of T&T’s largest mosques, the Nur-E-Islam Independent masjid at El Socorro Road, San Juan, Imam Sheraz Ali, has distanced his organisation from Isis. In an interview, Ali said: “None of our members have joined Isis. We have not had any meetings to discuss this but many of the Muslim leaders are planning to meet but we have not decided the date and venue as yet but it will be soon.”
He said because his mosque was one of the largest in the country, some Muslims would pass through to worship even though they were not members of Nur-E-Islam. He added: “They may live in the area and come to the mosque sometimes. That doesn’t mean they are members of my mosque. “In the San Juan area there are about four masjids. There is a lot of people who come from Port-of-Spain to pray at our mosque. It doesn’t mean they belong to our mosque.
“There is no movement in our mosque to recruit anyone to go to Syria or to join Isis. “It may just be somebody who is attending the mosque who may be affiliated with some other groups and living in the area or may be involved with other groups who may be doing something like that but our mosque is very peaceful and we do not have any of that going on.”
Ali said Muslims must think about the repercussions of their actions and noted that people did not really know what was going on in the Middle East except for what was portrayed in the media. “We need to get to the truth and be careful of what we say before we accept invitations to do anything. We need to know what we are doing as Muslims because it is putting our lives at stake and also our future as well,” Ali said.
He urged local Muslims to listen to their scholars and find out more before embarking in any venture which may bring more harm than good.