IN the context of Trinidad and Guyana, Indian Muslims have evolved a different spin in their cultural way of life from other Muslims in the Arab world. This is because, in the Caribbean, our nations’ rule of law respect basic civil and human rights for all our citizens.

Our basic liberties were evolved through generations of struggles. Our civil liberties and human rights extend to all religious groups (Muslims, Hindus and Christians). The degree of respect that we give to our women can rival any democracy in the Western World. Basic civil liberties and human rights for individuals, both men and women, are indispensable to our democracy and our way of life. We would not have it any other way. Nor should we tolerate anyone, who tries to erode or diminish or degrade the civil liberties accorded to our people, both men and women.
An important part of our democracy is respect for our women’s equal rights and dignity. In other nations of the world that are ruled by brutal dictators and despotic monarchs such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Communist China and North Korea, respect for  individual civil liberties and human rights are unheard of, or are totally ignored. Governments in these countries, use religion, culture, class, and feudal traditions to suppress their citizens’ civil and human rights. Religious ideology in these countries is distorted, and used as a political instrument of suppression. By using religion, these nations can engage in suppressing their citizens’ civil liberties and human Rights.
These governments will do anything to maintain their dictatorial regimes. The King of Saudi Arabia and the Emirs of Gulf states, literally sit atop of hundreds of billions of dollars in petroleum reserves. Their main goal is to keep the wealth of their countries for themselves and their princely relatives. They deplete their countries treasuries for their private gain, and ignore their individual citizens’ demand for a better life. These governments brutally repress their citizens and their women folk. They claim that their repressed societies have more freedom than other societies. There are some citizens in these countries, out of ignorance or naiveté or personal gain, support their repressive governments.
We should not allow anyone, whether local or foreign to try and subvert our society, turn us back into feudalism, where we lose our Civil Liberties, including the respect for women’s equality. These purveyors of falsehood claim they are acting to protect religious purity.
In most Middle Eastern and Arab countries such as Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Iraq, Iran (Non Arab), and Saudi Arabia, the people are currently fighting to gain the civil liberties and human rights that we currently enjoy in the Caribbean. The King of Saudi Arabia is trying desperately to suppress his people’s desire for civil and human rights. Women in most Arab countries don’t enjoy much civil or human rights. Historically, clothes and uniforms have been used to distinguish and denigrate lower classes from the more privileged folks. Maids were forced to wear uniforms. Under Apartheid, in South Africa, black Africans were only allowed to wear certain types of clothes. They were prevented from wearing clothes that were considered exclusive to Europeans. Clothes are not ‘innocent.’ They can be symbols of style, culture, heritage, class, or suppression, as in the case of women or poor people.
For anyone to suggest that women deserve to be raped because of the way they are dressed is to engage in the lowest form of degradation of women. This illiterate or caveman thinking is a reflection of an infantile ignorance that is born out of the stunted intellectual growth. Societies that subscribe to this thinking, almost always display a lack of civil liberties and human rights. In the Caribbean, this thinking would put in jeopardy our rights and way of life.
Most Arab countries don’t care for democratic justice with respect for the civil liberties and Human rights for all, including women. We in the Caribbean have passed the stage, when we can use religion to deny civil liberties and human rights of our women. This is why, all our women folk – Muslims, Hindus and Christians are far superior in education and business than most Arab countries. Indian women in Trinidad and Guyana are some of the best educated and successful business people in the world. I remember my mother had boasted that university-educated men/women would ask her for business advice. In today’s world, our women have progressed from kitchen/wash tub technicians to CEO (Indra Nooyi of Pepsi) and Prime Ministers (Ms. Kamla Persad-Bissessar of T&T). We will never progress as a people, if we keep our women in suppression. If Arabs want to suppress their women, we should not contribute or tolerate it.
Rape is wrong under any situation or condition; for anyone to suggest otherwise, it is an abomination to our democratic way of life.
Among the major religions of the world (Christians, Muslims and Hindus) there are many denominations. Some denominations are willing to respect all religions. Other denominations want to impose their way of life on others. In the Caribbean, we have a tradition of respecting other religious denominations. We can’t impose our lifestyle on others.
In India, Hindus in the North wear clothing and eat foods that are different from Southern Indians, because of climatic conditions, history, and availability of resources. Muslims, in India, dress in the same clothes as other Indians, because they share in the same history, culture and traditions. Hindu women wear an ‘Orani,’ while Indian Muslim women are accustomed to wearing a veil over their heads, not the ‘Burka’ of the Wahabbist Arabs. Muslims in Europe (Bosnia, Serbia, and Albania) wear clothing suitable for cold climates, and eat European foods. Christians in Europe, America, Africa and other parts of the world dress in clothing that are suitable for their climates, and eat foods that are part of their cultural traditions.
We have to accept differences among various groups with respect to culture, traditions, music, and foods, etc. At the same time, we can be good Muslims, Christians, and Hindus. We don’t have to be Xerox copies of each other. We are not Robots. We are Humans with the ability to think. Therefore, we must have the rights to express our differences in culture and traditions and still be true to our religion.
Arab Muslims have different cultural practices in clothes, food, and mannerisms due to their history.
Caribbean Indian Muslims are unique and different from Muslims in the Arab world or Muslims in Europe.
The Saudi government and the Gulf states promote the WAHABI denomination, as a political instrument, among non-Arab Muslims of the world to use these people in their fight against Israel and the USA. Wahabbism is primarily a political instrument of the petroleum states of the Middle East to exploit non-Arab Muslims for Arab political causes.
An important strategy of the Wahabbist is to use their base in Saudi Arabia to claim that Arabs are the superior Muslims, and therefore they are the true interpreters of the Muslim religion. In Saudi Arabia, non-Arab Muslim workers, particularly Indians, Pakistanis and Bangla Deshis are treated as second class residents. Suppression of Civil Liberties and Human Rights of people, particularly women are instruments of keeping the masses of the people in a stoical subservience to their Arab masters in Saudi Arabia.
Indian Muslims should be free thinkers and cherish the Civil Liberties they have in the Caribbean. Caribbean Indian Muslims should not allow Arabs to impose their Imperial Neo-Colonialist Wahabbist culture, clothing, and political agenda on them. In Democracies, the development of the individual’s Civil and Human Rights is the symbol of our nations’ apotheosis.