PRESIDENT and chief executive officer of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN) in New York, Dr Benjamin F Chavis Muhammad has urged Jamaicans to rescue and support the youth, who may be heading towards a “destructive path”.

Dr Muhammad, a muslim minister, argued that the current crop of young people were the best generation of youth Jamaica has ever had and therefore, “need the best love, the best nurture, the best upliftment and the best commitment”.

He added that what some see as decay “can be something that can help something else to grow, and in what some people see ethically or morally as something negative, under girding that negativity, may in fact, be something very positive”.

Dr Muhammad was speaking last week at a symposium hosted by the Mona School of Business at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.

He was addressing the theme, “Redefinition of Values, Reshaping Attitudes and Reformation of Behaviour toward Revitalization of Family, Community and Business: The Case for Jamaica, America and the World”.

“So don’t discard the youth who may be immersed in the decadence. Let’s resurrect them, let’s rescue them, not discard them,” he said.

In addition, the muslim minister noted that Jamaica can solve the problem of crime and violence without outside intervention.

“Some of us underestimate who we are and where we are coming from,” he noted. “We are not going to find the solutions to violence in Jamaica if we try to find the solutions and borrow that solution from Europe or from America. The solution is in Jamaica. If the problem is here the solution is here,” he maintained.

The aim of the symposium was to provide a forum where members of the academia, media and entertainment professionals, church leaders, educators and public officials and civil society could explore the factors behind the breakdown in human values and the rise in anti-social behaviour in the society.

The symposium came against the background of the prime minister’s announcement that he would be once again placing the issue of values and attitudes on the national agenda. After the October elections last year, he said that a new campaign would be launched to promote positive values and attitudes and reverse anti-social attitudes and behaviour in the society.

A new phase of the Values and Attitudes campaign, headed at the Cabinet level by Information Minister, Senator Burchell Whiteman, was recently launched under a National Steering Committee chaired by Reverend Marjorie Lewis.