ALLAH'S OUTLAWS: The Jamaat al Muslimeen of Trinidad and Tobago

'Sacred violence', the long-standing relationship between religion and violence, takes unique forms shaped by local cultures. While the conditions that produce phantom revolutionary groups vary widely, those groups that invoke altruistic declarations for radical social change drawn from religious texts often resort to violence to attain their goals. In this article, it is argued that, although the social conditions conducive to the formation and initial religious revolutionary appeal of the Muslimeen of Trinidad and Tobago were economic and cultural, the subsequent gangsterism in which it engaged alienated the group from the mass support required for an effective revolutionary movement.