Trinidad’s society (as distinct from Tobago’s) is collapsing. There are signs of societal collapse everywhere, and it takes a statesman to publicly recognise this. The crying need of the moment is not to build highways etc, but to arrest that collapse of society and to try to recover what has so far been lost.
Violent crimes can only increase in a collapsing society, and no police force can ever successfully respond to such violent crimes. Prisons also, do not solve such a problem. They only make the situation worse since the imprisonment of so many breadwinners will reduce an ever increasing number of families to destitution.
When the prisons are filled with the poor, and the rich call for more prisons, then violence is certain to increase in such a collapsing society.
The Government must publicly acknowledge that we live in a collapsing society and that religion is perhaps, better placed than many other institutions to play a strategically important role in successfully arresting that collapse. How much longer must we wait for political parties and politicians to stop their blame game and accept that they do not have all the answers, and that others must also be consulted?
I suggest the organisation of a National Consultation on Crime in order to discuss the subject of violent crime and, perhaps, to search for a greater role for religion in society, and in affairs of the State, that can hopefully arrest the continuous decline and collapse of the society.
Such a consultative convention may recommend, for example, that the three major world religions present in Trinidad, ie, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam, should each be permanently represented in Parliament by a religious scholar who has the knowledge and competence to articulate what the religion has to offer in response to such critical national issues as rampant and escalating violent crimes.
Imran N Hosein,
Islamic scholar