By Raffique Shah
March 15, 2021
Last Sunday, I marked my 75th year on this earth. It was a milestone of sorts, but no great achievement at a time when many people go way past that number, and remain very healthy and fit into their 80s, all praise to them.
My birthday was marred by the mal-effects of crippling, Parkinson’s Disease that I’ve had to cope with since I was 66. Worse than that, the day before, my extended family was struck numb by news that one of my nephews, Qadir, had drowned off Paria bay, and his body had not been recovered. Sadness overwhelmed us, as it always does when someone as young as he was, thirty, and full of life, had met such an abrupt end to what was a promising life.
So Sunday morning was spent in agony, which I imagine everyone who knew Qadir will have endured.
Oh, I had one phone call that I note here: Retired Colonel Faby Liverpool, who was a member of the Guyana Defence Force and trained at Sandhurst when I did, made his ritual birthday call around mid-morning. We exchanged pleasantries, but I told him nothing about the tragedy that had struck my family, for which he might cuss me when he reads this week’s column.
Anyway, everything else screeched to an abrupt halt in the family as we focused on searching for the missing Qadir. We needed to have professionals in maritime matters, which meant the Coast Guard. We would necessarily want the police to be fully informed and maybe involved as the search got underway. We made contact with National Security Minister Stuart Young, and he promptly set up lines of communication that involved the CG, a police search and rescue unit, and the police station in Blanchisseuse.
Scores of hikers, some of them from the group that Qadir was in when the mishap occurred, hunters who had rendered similar service when Andrea Bharatt had vanished a few weeks earlier, Muslim groups, volunteers who owned drones and boats, joined in the search. For six long days and very short nights, my neice-in-law Amirah and other relatives served as the control centre for a massive operation.
The waters off the coastline in that part of Trinidad are usually very turbulent. Factor in bad weather—on Sunday and Monday, visibility was poor…picture that—and a logistics line that extended from Freeport to Blanchisseuse, boats and crews from Chaguaramas to the village, drones aplenty, and you get an idea of what our people are capable of rallying, coordinating and executing at short notice.
They refused to give up, even when conditions were so treacherous, their lives were in danger. In fact, more people volunteered their resources and services. The Qadir factor entered the equation. You see this boy, and I mean no disrespect to his manhood by calling him boy, had touched so many people in his thirty short years on earth, it was incredible.
He had played cricket and football for Presentation College, Chaguanas, like his older brother, Fayaz, had done before him. He would later return as fitness coach to the football team. He schooled himself in fitness and sports, and he earned a degree in Sports Management at The UTT. Described as one of the gentlest fitness trainers, many people I know sang praises to him for the way he trained them and/or their children. I described him as a most pleasant person among my many nephews, nieces and cousins.
The volunteers, working with the Coast Guard and Police, finally recovered Qadir’s body late Thursday and his funeral which attracted Covid breaking numbers, who to their credit had observed as far as possible public health regulations, comprised a cross section of races, classes and religions. He himself was a devout Muslim.
His father, my brother Farouk, told me that a woman and two children turned up at his home while the search was ongoing. The children passed on to Farouk a sum of money ‘to help find Coach Qadir’.
He had touched many lives. But he remained untouched by negative influences such as race, colour and class. Earlier, I mentioned that my friend Faby from Guyana called to extend best wishes. He is Afro-Guyanese and we met in 1965 when Guyana was torn apart by a race war. Race never arose between Faby and me. Through the years I’ve known him we kept a brotherhood going just as I have done with friends of many races worldwide.
Race is what has rendered T&T a divided society. The absence of race as a factor in my family gives us the moral authority to call for an end to tribalism, to ask our people to end this politically generated nonsense for once and for all time.
Do it, people, if only in the name of Qadir Shah.
Thanks for putting a human face to all of this, yes I read the article on his drowning. I was praying about the sixth day that sea would give up his body. So finding his body for me was an answer to prayer. I am truly happy at this end so that his grieving family can get closure. Six days is a long time….
The sad reality is that the sea is tumultuous at certain times of the month and rip tides abound strong swimmer or not. Especially in some beach areas where holes can be found (Mayaro beach comes to mind). I practice self preservation when it comes to the sea. I was at Las Cuevas when a wave emerged out of nowhere and took me up and slammed my head into the sand busting it.
The much touted Maracas Bay is a very dangerous beach. It is a bay and water rushing in, rushes out due to the curvature of the beach creating some serious riptides. I am sure the north coast area is famous for riptides and sudden swells.
The long and short of it, understand the moon, full moon means higher tides, when the tide is coming up, where in the beach you have observed red flags. And stay in waters no deeper than your torso, if the water is rough make it a short dip.
Condolences to his family…
Not so fast, and not so simple.
I condole with you on the sad loss of your nephew, Qadir. Birthdays at best are for children, but I am happy at least to wish you many happy returns of that landmark, and health and good strength to enjoy them.
But… when we address the subject of racial/tribal division in the society, we must let our minds remain unclouded by sentiment of any sort. I am trained as an engineer. No bridge stands, or machine runs, on the basis of mere wish or sentiment, or claimed moral authority. When there is a problem, it is necessary to get to the root of the matter, and to go there unflinchingly. Truth is a hard discipline, but also at bottom a simple one. The only problem of course is that Truth, in matters socio-political, offends. So most of us would rather shrink from it.
For a trained soldier, like a trained engineer, it should not be so. I have the highest regard for soldiers, regardless of race, tribe, ethnicity, or nation. Valor transcends all such boundaries. A soldier must come to terms with a profession that requires the give and take of death. Such a coming to terms also requires of the soldier a submission to Truth. In its simplest expression, as I learned as a young cadet, it is a matter of “kill or be killed”. That is the simple truth of the battlefield. At a higher level of soldiering, one seeks to secure victory without, as it were, firing a shot; Sun Tzu refers, also von Clausewitz and others. That too requires a submission to Truth.
It is a failure to submit to Truth that has brought us in this land to this not very pretty pass. An appeal to Sentiment will not get us out of it. Even less so will an appeal to Falsehood. Our present pretty pass is not “politically generated”. This is a statement often repeated. But it is unworthy of a trained soldier whose job in the end is not so much to win battles as to win and establish peace. As a trained engineer, I protest because I know enough of the problem to be sure that the root of the problem goes far deeper. Therefore, my protest is to insist, however psychically painful it might be to do so, that it is necessary to get to the root… to submit to the engineer’s test, and the soldier’s test as well, of Truth. All right-thinking people would agree.
” If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they SHALL justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.” (Deuteronomy 25:1)
Until our judgments satisfy the foregoing simple requirement, then we have not submitted to the requirement of Truth. To say that the problem is “politically generated” is a way to sidestep this simple requirement. It is a way to condemn the righteous equally with the wicked.
What then is the Truth? In totality that is indeed a big question. But like a good judge, one must learn to identify the simple salients upon which will usually turn the judgment called for in any situation. Scripture requires that we “SHALL” justify the righteous and condemn the wicked.
In the present situation, that is actually not too hard to discern. And it is only the wilful wicked that refuse to see it. Whatever I say will cut no ice with the wilful wicked. Therefore, as a called servant of The Most High (TMH), Iyehawah, and His Son and Redeemer, Iyeshuah, I will give the Scriptural answer. Judgment will flow in accordance with that Scriptural answer, when indeed the Righteous will be acquitted, and the Wicked condemned.
The first salient is that we, the Negro, scattered to the four corners and enslaved, including here in T&T, are the Israelites of Scripture, the Chosen of TMH. We were scattered and enslaved for disobedience, and therefore have suffered the curses of prophecy, as comprehensively laid out at Deuteronomy 28:15-68, Leviticus 26:14-46, and in bits and pieces — little here, little there — elsewhere.
The second salient is that our oppression and enslavement would be accomplished at the hand of our “enemies”:
Psalms 83:1-8:
“Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God.
2 For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head.
3 They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted against thhidden ones.
4 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.
5 For they have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee:
6 The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes;
7 Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre;
8 Assur also is joined with them: they have holpen the children of Lot. Selah.”
These enemies are “confederate” against the Negro. They have taken “crafty counsel” to cut the Negro off even from knowledge that he in fact is Israel, the Chosen of TMH. These enemies “hate” the Negro, and indeed hate TMH. Elsewhere in Scripture, we learn that the hatred is a “perpetual” hatred, moved at bottom by envy:
“Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end…” (Ezekiel 35:5)
The third salient is that this enmity between true Israel and his enemies has taken on the “racial” cast of white-supremacy racism. This manifests today as feelings of “anti-blackness”, and color-prejudice against the Negro. An old poster on this blog once called it the “straight-hair alliance”. All the straight-hair inhabitants of this land, and across the world more generally, have taken up common cause against the Negro. They have sought consciously and unconsciously to oppress the Negro, to put or keep the Negro locked into a lowest caste in the society and to keep well hidden from him what they well know, that the Negro is in fact that Chosen seed of TMH spoken of in Scripture.
We know it to be conscious, because a creature of Law during the slavery and colonial era. The Cedula de Poblacion (1793) is only one blatant example. The Independence and Republican Constitutions consciously tried to undo the legislated inequality of slavery and colonialism by guaranteeing “equality” under Law (though without provision to roll back the consequences of centuries of slavery/colonialism). As early as 1925, we see Indian aspiration to dominate the island “in the field, in the office, and in the shop,”
The East Indian National Congress has today morphed into the United National Congress (UNC). Two weeks after the UNC lost national office in 2015, the Sunshine Newspaper (Issue #123 ca. Sep 18, 2015) reported on and reproduced on its pages an “Indian Policy” document that among others called for “making the country ungovernable”, “making the ‘nigga’ (sic) your slaves”, using “our marking groups” to cheat in the SEA examinations, to give unmerited preference to indo applicants to UWI and thereafter cheat in matters of certification, to use unjust scales in the shops against the ‘nigga’, even to use unclean ingredients in the roti and doubles sold to ‘niggas’, to use their ‘personnels’ as spies in the Gov’t and public-sector entities, etc. etc.
That is all what is written, public, and documented — the conscious and consciously stated program.
On top of that, as to the unconscious program at work, such as Inconvenient Truth, and earlier posters such as Alyssa, have delved deeply into the well-springs of anti-blackness in brahminist and Hindutva religious and political ideologies, manifesting in the deep-rooted cultural behaviors we see in the practice of caste/color discrimination. Even more tellingly, Indian public intellectuals such as Arundhati Roy have delved into this subject. Caste consciousness, and color-consciousness along with it, is so ingrained in the Indian psyche that ALL religious groups in India are infected with it — brahminist Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, etc. — whatever might be the religious protestations to the contrary.
My point is to condemn the wicked and uphold the righteous.
As against that political, cultural, spiritual, and historical trajectory of anti-“blackness” and hate projected unto the Negro, what have we on the other side?
This is the fourth salient. ALL Negro agitators for social justice have sought equality and racial inclusion. Certainly Eric Williams and the PNM to this day. Certainly CLR James in all his writings and Marxist/Marxian postulations. Certainly Buzz Butler in his labor-rights fulminations. Certainly George Weekes likewise. Even Abu Bakr and his Islamic aspiration to Sharia law. Even Mackandal Daaga the “Black Power” advocate, who in his disdain for the PNM, joined with the UNC, notwithstanding their obvious and evident hindutva agenda, which included “ethnic stocking” and wholesale firing of people that “looked like ah PNM.”
It is from these four relatively simple salients that we may get to the Truth of the matter. It is from such Truth that would flow any serious attempt at a solution.
In this endeavor, by all means lay claim to clean hands and good faith. As to a claim of “moral authority”, because of an “absence of race as a factor in my family” that cuts no ice. Where was the condemnation of that odious “Indian Policy” when it came out? Where is the unflinching commentary a la Arundhati Roy, — who took on, at some cost to herself, the essential fraud that was “Mahatma” Gandhi — when there is so much on the indo side of the matter here in T&T that merits condemnation, certainly critical examination. I have not seen it from Mr. Shah, nor indeed from any other indo public intellectual.
In any event, it is only Scripture that lets us know what really is going on, and therefore what we must DO. It is Scripture, not I, that lets us know that we, the Negro, are the Chosen of TMH, emerging from the curses. It is Scripture, not I, that lets us know that we were condemned to the curses because of disobedience. It is Scripture, not I, that lets us know that we as a people are to be a nation of kings and priests, above all other nations. It is Scripture, not I, that lets us know that under the Holy Covenant, equality is not for us an option. Either we are above all others, or set beneath all others. And it is Scripture, not I, that lets us know that the Negro would be redeemed without hand. There is no man-Savior that would save us. Our redemption is reserved for TMH and His Son, our Redeemer. That is what is upon us now. The signs are abundant. The BLM movement is one. Even the Harry-Meghan matter shows the edifice of white supremacy to be crumbling. And in our Black Consciousness, we have become ever more aware that ALL the religions that we were cursed to follow (Deuteronomy 28:64) have been anti-Negro in fact and in essence, calculated to “cut us off” from knowledge of who really we are as the Chosen of TMH. This is the “falling away first” prophesied by Paul (2 Thessalonians 2:3). And where Iyeshuah prophesied that “nation would rise against nation” before the coming of that great and dreadful day, what really he was drawing attention to was really struggle involving “ethnos” against “ethnos” or tribal/racial struggle. This is what we see here in T&T and elsewhere. ALL the other tribes are against the Negro tribe, because they will not willingly submit to a Negro ascendancy. That is the rock-bottom TRUTH.
“Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.” (Matthew 24:9)
Yet for all that, the prophecy is also plain:
“22 Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.
23 And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord: for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.” (Isaiah 49:22-23)
Scripture is thus clear. The fundamental truth is that TMH put us the Negro in the monkey-pants we have been in because of disobedience. To come out of the monkey-pants, we must return to the Law that our forefathers disdained, and do and keep them. TMH has started the judgment of “that nation” that enslaved and abused us for lo these last 400 years, together with all those confederate with them in their anit-blackness. Covid 19 is but one of the plagues that will befall modern-day Pharaoh. The Chosen of TMH must take the “vaccine” of Psalm 91:7:
“A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.” (Psalm 91:7)
As for anti-blackness masquerading as Bim/Bam “politically-generated” strife, the judgment is already set. In spiritual terms, the question of who are the righteous and who are the wicked in this matter is already determined, and in any case should be clear to any observer willing to submit to TRUTH.
Shalom.
Amen
The Truth About Racism In Trinidad | Racism struggles | Trinidad & Tobago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODctqv4h-68
Inconvenient —
Thanks for the link. Interesting video. Unlike most, he tells it like it is.
Shalom.
You are most welcome yoruba!
Did you hear him admitting to indians practicing the caste system in present day trinidadian society? Where do you think the mentality he mentioned about indians liking africans’ food, but SCORNING it when PREPARED BY AFRICANS comes from???? That IS ‘the caste system’ personified! Brahman-ists believe that inferior races are inherently spiritually ‘polluted’ with ‘bad’ karma and it can be transmitted via proximity and physical contact…even with ingesting food. In present day india, a marker is placed at the end of the SHADOW of ‘superior’ races’ homes and inferior races pathway must never intersect!….But dishonest, pseudo historians want us to believe brahmins and other “superior” races lined up to board a crowded ship with “inferior” races (untouchables) to build a future with them. Please!
India Untouched: Stories of a People Apart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvke6ycgkL4
Inconvenient:
Thanks for that new link. I am already familiar with it. But it is good that you post it, so that all may be sensitized to this peculiar, persistent, and morally abominable phenomenon of caste oppression. When I say “all”, I mean both those who are victims or potential victims of it, such as the Negro in societies like T&T, Guyana, Fiji, etc., and as well the indo themselves, of all castes.
The origins of caste structure may be found in Holy Scripture. Just on this thread, I’ve adverted to Israelite social structure under which the role of priests was limited to the tribe of Levi, and only those of the line of David could aspire to the throne. These are rules of order, to avoid unseemly contestation by the wicked, corrupt, and unworthy, for position and office, as we see in so-called democracies today. It is a distortion of such rules of order to evolve and impose a full-blown system of caste oppression. This is clearly what brahminism has instituted. Its origin in Holy Scripture is apparent even in the name, “Brahman,” a variant of “Abraham”. Yes, Israel is a Chosen, a holy seed, a “peculiar treasure” of the Most High (TMH); Exodus 19:3-6; implying a sort of “caste” structure. But… such chosenness was never to be twisted into a justification for instituting a system of oppression. That is what brahminism has descended into. Furthermore, the brahminists are not Israel, rather descended from Israel’s twin brother, Esau-Edom. For the “brown Sahib” brahmins are a branch of the Edomite family tree, a sort of junior branch to the “white Sahib” Edomites who for the moment are still pre-eminent in the world in terms of power and prestige, and who instituted and benefit from white-supremacy racism. It is by design a system of oppression, and its target is the favored twin, Israel, to whom the ascendancy and the dominion will soon revert.
2 Esdras 6:9: “For Esau is the end of the world, and Jacob is the beginning of it that followeth.”
Esau-Edom has been motivated by hatred and envy, the envy of the elder twin that was passed over, for the younger twin that was instead given the birthright and the inheritance. Scripture lets us know that it is a “perpetual hatred”, they can’t let it go:
Ezekiel 35:5: “Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end…”
TMH hates oppression, and Esau-Edom (with individual exceptions here and there perhaps) will pay a heavy price:
Obadiah 1:15: “For the day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head.”
In the Indian context, Arundhati Roy has let us know that the brahminists have established and maintain a system of “full-spectrum dominance” of the society. Under the grant of the temporary dominion given to Esau-Edom, TMH has allowed it, despite the iniquity and oppression it entails which TMH “hates”. Here in T&T and elsewhere, they also seek to establish a system of “full-spectrum dominance”, and it that to which FEM Hosein adverted in 1925, except as an “indo” dominance, not merely a brahminist one. But it will be to their ultimate destruction:
2 Nephi 9:30: “But wo unto the a rich, who are rich as to the things of the world. For because they are rich they despise the poor, and they persecute the meek, and their hearts are upon their treasures; wherefore, their treasure is their god. And behold, their treasure shall perish with them also.”
The matter is deep. Assuredly, it is only in Scripture (I do NOT say religion) that all is explained. Gentile religion uses Scripture, but to hide truth rather than to reveal it, and to twist truth, as we see with brahminism, to worship false gods such as wealth and treasure, and to justify oppression and iniquity. But Holy Scripture was written by our Negro Israelite forefathers, for their Negro descendants of this day, the day of Judgment and Redemption. Accordingly, we are being awakened to the truth of Scripture, and to the knowledge that it was always about us.
Psalms 147:19-20: “19 He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel.
20 He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the Lord.”
I do not mean this in any sense that would merely shift from one brahmin-ocracy to another. For the point of a rule of order, established and maintained without the sword, is to bring about peace, justice, and righteousness, the prophesied millennial kingdom of the ama-Zion.
Shalom.
P.S. We must be careful not to lean too much to our own understanding — warning to atheist/humanist philosophers–in these matters:
2 Nephi 9:28-29: “O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of TMH, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish.
29 But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of TMH.”
P.P.S. I see these matters are in the news these days with the publication of the book by Bernard Yawching, and the angry reaction by deplorable casteists. See today’s Newsday.
You have to many words for the now generation’s short attention span who’s not interested in any of the information you painstakingly gathered & freely presented in the reply. Their attention is on the Net, cable tv, movies, music, the latest trends in far off places, stars, etc.
Addendum to my post, re:
One way to secure victory without firing a shot is to surround the enemy with superior force, and demand surrender. It may require some clever maneuvering, usually requiring artful deception, but great is the general who can pull it off. One wonders now about the PNM, and whether indeed they are now surrounded, within, on all sides, not even recognizing that surrender does not even need to be invited.
Be that as it may, my brief is to bring Scriptural truth to the table. Regardless of the temporal state of affairs, the redemption of the Negro, specifically a righteous remnant, is assured as a matter of prophecy.
Genesis 27:29: “Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee”
Few today would imagine that the highlighted admonition applies to the Negro, true Judah of the seed, not to the impostor, so-called “Jew”, who are actually Gentiles. The following also is a prophetic reference to the Negro, not the impostor, “Jew”:
Zechariah 8:23: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.”
The following explains the disbelief that many would feel that these, and other similar verses, apply to the Negro:
Wisdom of Solomon 5:1-5: “Then shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before the face of such as have afflicted him, and made no account of his labours.
2 When they see it, they shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the strangeness of his salvation, so far beyond all that they looked for.
3 And they repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit shall say within themselves, This was he, whom we had sometimes in derision, and a proverb of reproach:
4 We fools accounted his life madness, and his end to be without honour:
5 How is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints!”
The reference to uncompensated “labours” applies to the Negro coming out of slavery. It does not apply to the impostor “Jew”. Likewise the reference to an object of “derision” applies to the Negro, not to the impostor “Jew”.
The prophetic truth is that all who fight against ama-Zion (notably and principally the Negro) will be swept off the land in that day of judgment (and redemption) now upon us.
Jeremiah 30:8-10: “8 For it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him:
9 But they shall serve the Lord their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them.
10 Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the Lord; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid.”
Therefore, temporal games of deception and maneuver, if that is in part what we face, will ultimately be of no avail.
Regardless, we need to come out of “Babylon” — the unjust world order that has made it its business to suck from the Negro his labour, his talent, and his mines, without adequate or any compensation, while using every satanic stratagem to colonize his mind with false religion and ideologies, all of which separate him from knowledge that he is the Chosen of TMH:
Revelation 18:4: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and receive not of her plagues.”
Shalom.
2 Nephi 10:23-24: “Therefore, cheer up your hearts,
and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life.
24 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the
will of TMH, and not to the will of the devil and the flesh; and remember, after ye are reconciled unto TMH, that it is only in and through the grace of TMH that ye are saved.”