PM: No anti-Muslim policies in TT

PRIME MINISTER Dr Keith Rowley is urging the Muslim community to reject the idea that there are anti-Muslim policies in TT.

Giving the feature address at the ASJA’s annual Eid dinner at Centre Pointe Mall, Chaguanas on Saturday, Rowley said to entertain those ideas could lead to hostility and misdirection.

“I ask you today to reject all conversations, all misinformation about anti-Muslim policies in TT, if you do nothing else in defence of TT reject that because that is not a fact,” he said

“It might suit one or two persons to carry that conversation but I will end on this note, whatever might be interpreted as being anti-Muslim, there is nothing that could create the reality of a hostility or a misdirection more than a conversation based on misinformation- a conversation that is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

During his address, Rowley recalled working with prominent Muslims throughout his years in politics and said the reality of war-torn countries around the world is not TT’s.

“I distinctly recall watching the news during the Lebanese civil war where thousands of people were being starved to death and when the hunger overtook them, there was a young girl running down an alley way and being fired upon by snipers- that is not your country, that is not what happens in TT, in TT we dwell together in unity.”

Saying it is not uncommon to see a mosque and a mandir on the same street, Rowley said TT is only country in the world where people can be as free as they want. “We know of no other country in the world where we the people gathered here in this room, who live on these island, could be freer as we are than on this island.

Don’t take that for granted, other people have taken their circumstances for granted and countries that have lost their way and ended up in great difficulty, they have done so one step at a time sometimes one person at a time and it starts sometimes with two conversations: one that is right and one that could have been better.”