SPEECH BY HJ MOHD ALAMI MUSA
PRESIDENT MUIS
AT THE MOSQUE COUNCIL MEETING
SAT, 16 MAY 2009
AT AL-MAWADDAH MOSQUE
The Singapore Muslim community is generally homogeneous. Nearly all of them are from the “Ahli Sunnah Wal Jamaah” (Sunni) school of thought. A majority of them embrace the Shafi’e School of Law. Therefore, they share many things in common from the theological and jurisprudential perspectives. This has in many ways contributed to the unity of our local Muslim community in leading their Islamic life. This spirit of unity is further reinforced as the majority of Muslims share a common language and culture, as they are Malays.
2 Singapore has positioned itself to be a talent magnet in the world. In other words, Singapore strives to make itself attractive to individuals with the knowledge, expertise and capital to come to our shores to work, operate businesses and eventually make Singapore their home. Besides these new resident Singaporeans, there is a sizeable force of transient foreign workers who are now contributing to Singapore in several ways, namely, in the construction industry or the domestic work sectors. There are now about one million of them in Singapore.
3 The local Muslim community is also seeing more foreign Muslims in their midst today. They attend prayers in our mosques and they participate in our religious events. We must make them feel welcomed.
4 I am pleased to say that our mosques have been very open to welcoming foreign Muslims who work and reside in Singapore. In fact, a number of mosques are providing useful services or forging collaborations with them. Mosques like Khadijah and Hj Mohd Salleh (Geylang) allow religious classes to be conducted in the Bangladeshi language for construction workers. The Mujahidin and Sultan mosques conduct skills-based training programmes for Indonesian domestic workers. These are some examples of how mosques in Singapore serve the needs of foreign Muslims in Singapore. Continue reading SPEECH BY HJ MOHD ALAMI MUSA PRESIDENT MUIS AT THE MOSQUE COUNCIL MEETING…
