What happened in New Zealand could happen in Trinidad & Tobago

(Trinidad Guardian) Pres­i­dent of the Is­lam­ic Mis­sion­ar­ies Guild, Imti­az Mo­hammed, says T&T can­not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ter­ror at­tacks sim­i­lar to what hap­pened in New Zealand on Fri­day tak­ing place in this coun­try.

Speak­ing on the side­lines of a gath­er­ing host­ed by the Guild yes­ter­day in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the fam­i­lies of the 49 peo­ple slain and the 41 in crit­i­cal con­di­tion from the New Zealand at­tack, Mo­hammed said with crime ram­pant in this coun­try all it might take is a mi­nor in­ci­dent to push some­one over the edge.

“We have to be very care­ful. We can­not refuse to ac­cept that what hap­pened in New Zealand could hap­pen here if youths con­tin­ue to be to law­less and have no fear and no re­spect for law en­force­ment agen­cies in the coun­tries,” he said.

He added that there was a gen­er­al feel­ing of con­cern with­in the lo­cal Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty over the ter­ror in­ci­dents that have tak­en place around the world in the past few years.

“Look at the il­le­gal wars against the Mus­lim coun­tries as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya,” he said. “Al­so you have what is hap­pen­ing Myan­mar, what is hap­pen­ing in Pales­tine and Chi­na. Mus­lim are be­ing re­fused the right to wor­ship. You have geno­cide tak­ing place in Pales­tine for over 60 years and the world is not do­ing any­thing about it.

Some coun­tries are do­ing some­thing while some are block­ing things at the lev­el of the Unit­ed Na­tions.”

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, the is­sue of Is­lam­o­pho­bia needs to be dealt with at the lev­el of the Unit­ed Na­tions.

“It is im­pos­si­ble to stop ter­ror­ism. It is in a to­tal mess right now. Many il­le­gal wars have con­tin­ued to fu­el ter­ror­ism,” he said.

So­cial me­dia should demon­strate some lev­el of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and not run live streams or videos of any killing or act of ter­ror, Mo­hammed added.