WHAT is most interesting about Imam Yasin Abu Bakr’s now infamous khutbah at the Eid gar at the Masjid of the Jamaat al Muslimeen on Mucurapo Road, Port of Spain was the response of kafiruns (unbelievers) to what is essentially a Muslim bacchanal.

Clearly, the alliance of Indian Islam with the kafiruns has prompted the response, but what is even more laughable is the call of Indian Islam for the kafiruns to protect them from the Jamaat al Muslimeen.

Rather than engage the Jamaat al Muslimeen on the issue of their authority to collect the zakat, and moreso on what contribution Indian Islam can make towards alleviating the poverty of Muslims in the Ummah of Trinbago, they immediately call upon their kafirun allies to utilise State power to expunge the perceived threat of the Jamaat al Muslimeen.

The present People’s National Movement (PNM) Government must be extremely strategic in the line adopted in response to this Muslim bacchanal.

The PNM must note that this is a bacchanal that is rooted in the racial divide that has split the Ummah asunder, since the resurgence of Islam in Trinbago amongst the non-Indo population during the 1970s.

This racial divide, premised upon and driven by racist hegemony, sparked the move to evict the Jamaat al Muslimeen from the land at Mucurapo Road, Port of Spain that eventually led to the attempted coup d’etat of July 27, 1990.

It was the racist hegemonist Indian Islam that set in train the action that led to July 27, 1990, for which the entire nation of Trinbago paid dearly and is still paying.

The announcement that the Jamaat al Muslimeen would from the next Islamic year collect the zakat is simply the latest skirmish in the war between the Jamaat al Muslimeen and Indian Islam that started since the 1980s.

TnT as a country has paid a high price since then, because of successive parties of politicians making costly, strategic blunders influenced by the fallacy that there is political gain in intervening in the never-ending bacchanal between the Jamaat al Muslimeen and Indian Islam.

In the 1980s, the PNM, closely allied with Indian Islam, moved to erase all traces of the Muslimeen presence at Mucurapo Road, but some good sense prevailed and the Masjid was completed and dedicated.

In the 1986 general election, Indian Islam deserted the PNM and this is so up to today, as Indian Islam is now deeply rooted in the United National Congress (UNC) camp.

Indian Islam used its influence with the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) government to restart the war with the Jamaat al Muslimeen and this also led to July 27, 1990.

From 1991 to 2000, the Jamaat al Muslimeen danced with the UNC thereby lowering the intensity of the war between the Jamaat al Muslimeen and Indian Islam.

But the supposed departure of the Jamaat al Muslimeen from the UNC bed to the PNM bed resulted in a revival of the war with an intensity never before experienced in Trinbago, threatening now to be the match that ignites the race war.

Indian Islam has bought into the UNC, discourse of the Jamaat al Muslimeen as a criminal organisation that is the instrument of Indian oppression in Trinbago as summed up in the kidnapping of Indians.

Indian Islam, with a vitriolic hysteria, has since 2001 attacked the Jamaat al Muslimeen as a criminal organisation outside the pale of Islam.

Indian Islam is then insisting that the Jamaat al Muslimeen is not a Muslim organisation as they did in 1984, when they swore to an affidavit that the Jamaat al Muslimeen was not a Muslim organisation.

Indian Islam is relentless in their attack on the Jamaat al Muslimeen because they blame the Muslimeen for the UNC losing the 2002 general election, their hold on political power and the means to exert racist hegemony. Moreover, they view the Muslimeen as a potent criminal threat to their security as Indians.

In turn, leaders of Indian Islam are insisting that the State must move on the Jamaat al Muslimeen, that the PNM must be at war with the Muslimeen, with the hope of fracturing the PNM towards an electoral victory of the UNC in the next general election.

This is not then for Indian Islam a bacchanal over the zakat but, in fact, an opportunity to put the UNC back in power.

The divide is then based on racist antagonism and hatred intensified by the politics of racist hegemony, and as a Muslim it is my position that there is to be no healing but only the punishment of Allah (swt).

Let the politicians be warned of the potent danger this latest flash point is for the stability of the Trinbagonian social order.

Charging Yasin Abu Bakr with whatever is not going to end this bacchanal; it will only intensify the flash point.

The politicians must remember that the majority of rich Muslims are Indo, and the majority of Muslims trapped in poverty, as members of the working poor and underclass, are urban Africans that belong to the Muslimeen and the Islamic Resource Centre.

It is the duty of the rich Muslims to intervene with the resources necessary to lift their Muslim brothers and sisters out of poverty, but this has not happened, and given the pressures being exerted by the members of the Muslimeen upon the Imam of the Muslimeen for a better material life, he has played this card.

Remember the reality that Yasin Abu Bakr has consorted with successive parties of politicians of the kafirun with no sustainable material benefits accruing to the membership of the Muslimeen, and he has now to deliver.

How can the politicians prevent the Muslimeen from seeking to collect the zakat?

This is a secular State.

The politicians must understand the deep and abiding fear Indian Islam has for the Muslimeen, a fear intensified by the greater fear Indian Islam has for cross-racial physical confrontation.

When visited by the Muslimeen tax collectors, many of the Indian Islam are going to pay up and grumble after, but pay they will.

Many will pay, grumble after and refuse to prosecute the Muslimeen tax collector for extortion, because they would have to testify in court against the Muslimeen.

What does the politician intend then to achieve by politicising this Muslim bacchanal?

Readers should note that I view the Ummah of Trinbago as being divided into two camps or parties: the party of Allah (swt) and the party of the munafiquns/hypocrites.

The party of Allah (swt) consists of Muslims of all races who relate to our Brothers and Sisters of the Deen, regardless of race, for we are one nation.

The munafiqun are those who call themselves Muslims but they define their Islam through a discourse of racist hegemony, thereby dividing the Ummah on the basis of race, relentlessly propagating hate for and amongst the creation of Allah (swt).

The munafiqun are, therefore, divided into the racist Indian hegemonists (Indian Islam, the racist Afro hegemonists (Afro Islam) and other racist hegemonists (Arab Islam).

The munafiquns regularly ally themselves with the kafirun to oppress Muslims and to make war with racist hegemonists within the munafiqun that they are opposed to, thereby relentlessly threatening the social stability of Trinbago.