Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Imam Rasheed Karim of the Masjid-ul-Faaraq in Fe­lic­i­ty, Ch­agua­nas, is call­ing on politi­cians to be hon­est to them­selves and the peo­ple they serve.

Dur­ing Eid-ul-Fitr cel­e­bra­tions at the mosque yes­ter­day, he said, “If you are a politi­cian, be hon­est to your­self and be hon­est to the peo­ple. If you can­not serve or can­not de­liv­er, say it in ad­vance, do not tell lies like what we have been see­ing in the past,” he said.

Karim said he had been as­so­ci­at­ed with many politi­cians in the past, but was cau­tious about hav­ing any deal­ings with of­fice-hold­ers.

“I am try­ing to see how we can bring back some moral­i­ty, with the ex­cep­tion where one politi­cian said pol­i­tics had a moral­i­ty of its own. I beg to dif­fer,” he said.

“I be­lieve that moral­i­ty is obey­ing the com­mands of God Almighty as it was sup­posed to be and no man can de­vi­ate from that and cre­ate a moral­i­ty of his own. I have been say­ing this over and over that this world is bank­rupt when it comes to moral­i­ty,” he said

Karim urged Mus­lims to speak out against the hard­ships be­ing en­dured by the peo­ple of Pales­tine. He said it was up­set­ting to see some Mus­lims show­ing off the elab­o­rate feasts they were en­joy­ing.

“When we see in one cor­ner of the world, es­pe­cial­ly when we see Gaza, we see emp­ty bowls, di­shev­elled hair, we are see­ing peo­ple be­ing killed, mur­dered, ex­e­cut­ed and on the oth­er hand we are see­ing peo­ple en­joy­ing lav­ish meals and they are ben­e­fit­ing.

How can that be Is­lam? Is­lam is not that, Is­lam is uni­ty, Is­lam is what­ev­er you like for your­self, you should give it to your broth­ers and that is not what we are see­ing.

“The Is­lam­ic com­mu­ni­ty needs to wake up from its slum­ber and try to do what is right, not be­cause it might be of­fen­sive to oth­ers or one per­son,” he said.