TT already has ‘Muslim Village’

THE EDITOR: Dr Imran Hosein, Islamic scholar, wants to establish a Muslim Village to protect Muslims and keep them in the fold of Islam. He has miserably failed to achieve this abroad where crime is more rampant and has no courage to tell Muslims abroad to construct Muslim Villages within Muslim countries where crime is flourishing. He should go to Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Middle East and Nigeria and try to set up Muslim Villages where there are millions of Muslims who are involved in drugs, crimes, illegal affairs and non-Islamic activities. He said that Mr Azard Ali’s report of his returning to America and his harassment was untrue. If the Newsday report is inaccurate then he should sue for libel!

I dare Dr Hosein to travel back to the USA any day and attack President Bush for invading Iraq since a believer must never fear a dictator. In fact, President Bush is not a dictator. The late President Zia Al Haqq of Pakistan, the former President Idi Amin and other Muslim leaders were great and true dictators. Imagine this Islamic scholar wants to build a village by stating that the Muslim Village would transcend the politics of race to seek to establish and sustain the healing balm of a racial fraternity. He boasts that Islam binds the races together by binding their hearts together in a brotherhood — hence a Muslim Village.

Imagine Muslims cannot live in brotherhood in Muslim countries but may live in a Muslim Village here! When Dr Hosein asks the question “Can we build a village...” he is not sure it would work. When he says “We believe that Islam can bring the rich and poor together,” again this is an expression of doubt! He further states that “If our experiments succeed...” revealing again nothing cocksure. How can Dr I N Hosein say that the PNM’s black political and economic nationalism had damaged the body politic through racial polorisation? This Islamic scholar does not know that in every community there is already a Muslim Village living side by side with their Christian and Hindu brothers and sisters and have as their religious leaders Imams and assistant Imams.

There is a basic norm or ground norm similar to Professor Kelsen’s ground norm as seen in Jurisprudence and Legal Theory. Dr Hosein must know that there is pure theory and this involves a transcendental epistemological postulate which he must examine thoroughly, if not in the proposed Muslim Village the Muslims will experience a d?j? vu. Dr Hosein may be genuinely an altruistic person but his plan seems amorphous. I finally hope that his one-man vision of a Muslim Village is not a damp squib! The Muslim Village will never work here! The lunch tickets, video, audio tapes, CDs and DVDs will certainly work at his public lecture.

AHAMAD KHAYYAM
Curepe