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Author: Letta Tayler
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: June 9, 2007
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/33080.html
The barefoot boys were playing cricket on a street here, awash with sewage and linked with rickety shacks. Yet, for all the desperation of their surroundings, they were a case study in multicultural harmony.
Some players were Indian Hindus. Others were Indian Muslims, Afro-Caribbean Muslims and Christian Amerindians. Their giggles were universal.
"You'll find love here," said Leonard Allicock, the father of the Amerindians.
But Georgetown is also home to Abdel Nur, one of four suspects from Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago named in the plot to blow up John F Kennedy International Airport in New York. Abdul Kadir, a former Guyanese lawmaker was also held in the same plot. The plot has US authorities concerned that radical elements could transform the Cari-
bbean into a terrorist breeding ground.
"The Caribbean is rarely thought of in terms of terror but is of increasing concern as a crucible in the foment of Islamic radicalism," said New York City Police Commissioner R Kelly.
Though Nur is accused of trying to enlist support for the JFK plot from Trinidad's radical Islamic organisation Jamaat al-Muslimeen, which staged a failed coup in 1990, experts say the group has morphed into a drug-trafficking and money-laundering gang.
Iranian influence, though small, is growing in Guyana, where 10 to 15 per cent of the population is Muslim.
The Caribbean has also been visited in recent years by suspected al-Qaeda member Adnan Gulshair Muhammad el Shukrijumah, who has lived mostly in Saudi Arabia and Florida but is part Guyanese and carries a Guyana passport.
A tiny but growing number of Guyanese Afro-Caribbeans, whose ancestors were slaves, are converting to Islam to return to their roots. And many Afro-Caribbeans feel marginalised by Indians.
LA Times -Washington Post
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