Out of the Pan and into the Fire

MUSLIMS LIVING AS MINORITIES Out of the Pan and into the Fire

Rising Islamophobia places Sri Lankan Muslims in challenging situations

BY MISBAHUDDIN MIRZA

In April this year, the Sri Lankan cabinet approved a proposed ban on wearing full-face veils including burqas, despite a UN expert’s comment that it would violate international law. Considering the ruling party’s parliamentary majority, there is real fear among Muslims that this could now be enacted into law. Public security minister Sarath Weerasekera has called burqas, an outer garment that covers the body and face worn by some Muslim women, a “sign of religious extremism” and said a ban would improve national security (“Sri Lanka cabinet approves proposed ban on burqas in public,” April 28, 2021; https://www.aljazeera. com/news/2021/4/28/sri-lanka-cabinet-approves-proposed-ban-on-burqas-in-public).

This is yet another outrageous and highly discriminatory step in Colombo’s systematic and sustained harassment of Sri Lanka’s Muslim minority in recent years.

Islamic Horizons spoke to Rohan Sourjah, president, Sri Lankan Muslim Association of California, and with Amina Salley, a U.K. law student and daughter of Mohammed Azath Sanoon Salley, former governor of the Western Province and leader of the National Unity Alliance, who is currently imprisoned on reportedly false charges.

Talking about the challenges confronting Muslims, Sourjah said burqas were temporarily banned after the 2019 Easter Sunday bomb attacks that killed more than 260 people. Two local Muslim groups that had pledged allegiance to ISIS were blamed for the attacks at three churches and three high-end hotels.

Sourjah explained that there have never been any issues between Sri Lankan Muslims and Christians, and thus it was unimaginable that a native-born Muslim would be involved in these massacres. The delay in releasing the investigation report, he added, is spawning rumors about the culpability behind those horrendous atrocities.

Krishnadev Calamur, writing in The Atlantic, quoted C. Christine Fair, an expert on terrorism in South Asia and an associate professor at Georgetown University, “It doesn’t make sense,” for the National Thowheed Jamath had never attacked churches previously. Moreover, Sri Lanka has generally not seen tensions between Muslims, who make up 10% of the population, and Christians, who are about 7%. It’s far more likely, she stated, that an outside group, such as ISIS or al-Qaeda, based in the Indian subcontinent is involved in some way (“What’s Different About the Attacks in Sri Lanka,” April 22, 2019).

Buddhists account for 70% of the island’s population; Tamils, who are mainly Hindu, comprise about 15% of the population. ISLAM IN SRI LANKA Islam arrived in Sri Lanka primarily through Arab traders, some of whom who settled down and married local women. Later on, some Tamil-speaking Muslims from India migrated. Also, the Dutch colonialists exiled some Muslim Malays to the island.

Muslims span the entire spectrum of life in Sri Lanka, ranging from gem traders, merchants and businessmen to teachers, farmers and mechanics. Due to their business acumen, they have been quite successful financially. Ironically, after the long and bloody conflict (1983-2009) between the minority Hindu Tamils and the majority Buddhist Sinhalese ended, Islamophobic groups such as the ultra-nationalist Sinhalese Bodu Bala Sena (BBS; Buddhist Power Force) started raising their ugly heads. Led by its general secretary Venerable Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, they started targeting Christians and the relatively prosperous Muslim community. Subsequently, following the June 2014 Aluthgama pogrom against Muslims, Gnanasara’s visa to the U.S. was cancelled.

In his “‘Fascists’ in saffron robes? The rise of Sri Lanka’s Buddhist ultra-nationalists” (July 18, 2014), CNN’s Tim Hume explains that the BBS has emerged as a troubling presence on the Sri Lankan political landscape in recent years and is blamed by many for inciting the deadly violence in Aluthgama.

Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives, told CNN that he believed the BBS, which he described as a purveyor of “classic hate speech,” had become emboldened by the lack of censure over Aluthgama. “Their more violent or aggressive demonstrations of power, involving even criminal acts, have gone unpunished. They seem to have a lot of support, if not protection, from within the regime itself.”

The same phenomenon is happening in Myanmar, where the monk-led anti-Muslim 969 Movement has been blamed for instigating deadly clashes. Speaking on his 79th birthday, the Dalai Lama called upon Sri Lanka’s Buddhists to desist from violence against Muslims (https://www.cnn.

com/2014/07/07/world/asia/dalai-lama-muslim-violence). But some Sinhalese Buddhists do not consider the Dalai Lama as their head because he belongs to the Tantra School, the Tibetan version, which bears scant, if any, resemblance to Sri Lanka’s Theravada School.

Political scientist and former Sri Lankan diplomat Dayan Jayatilleke said that the rise of militant Buddhism should not be surprising, for a “fanatical strain [has been] running through Sinhala Buddhism for years” (www. amren.com/news/2014/07/fascists-in-saffron-robes-the-rise-ofsri-lankas-buddhist-ultra-nationalists/). After all, a monk named Talduwe Somarama Thero had assassinated Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike in 1959. But overwhelmingly, Muslims have been the target due to such issues as halal certification, the largely expectedburqa ban, mosque construction, da’wa and alleged militancy — in a country with no history of domestic Muslim-connected extremism.

So why are Muslims suddenly in the crosshairs? Jayatilleke said that anti-Muslim sentiment within the Buddhist clergy arose in 2009, when the 25-year civil war between the government and separatist Tamils ended. “When the war was over, the Sinhalese looked around and found that while the two major communities were bashing each other, the Muslims had been at peace and had prospered,” he said. “They found more mosques, stores, better educated young Muslims — a changed profile after years of war. And they lashed out.”

Saravanamuttu said the BBS’s anti-Muslim rhetoric tapped into concerns about global jihadism, an “atavistic fear” of “high” Muslim birth rates and resentment of their business community’s perceived success. All of this fed into a dominant ideology of aggressive Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism that was pushed by the government as a way of making itself seem “eternally relevant and needed,” he said. “It’s a range of arguments to make the Muslims into ‘the other’ and say that the Sinhala nation is under threat and requires protection,” he stated. Saravanamuttu told CNN, “If this is a country of law, it needs to be brought to bear on whoever breaks it — irrespective of whether they’re in robes or not.”

In his “Buddhist Extremists and Muslim Minorities” (2016), John Clifford Holt writes, “Observers have been quick to notice that the BBS and its allies bear a resemblance to India’s right-wing Hindutva organizations, such as the VHP (Vishva Hindu Parishad) and the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), who target Muslims and Christians and who espouse a narrow Brahmanical definition of the Hindu religious heritage. Recent developments indicate that the BBS aspires to emulate these militant Indian Hindutva groups by organizing a Sinhala Buddhist counterpart organization.”

Amina Salley, who is also vice president of the charitable Azath Salley Foundation, described Mohammed Azath Salley’s — her father — persistent persecution for simply demanding an end to the relentless oppression and harassment of Muslims.

On Aug. 3, 1990, during a quiet evening in the tiny east coast and almost all Muslim town of Kattankudy, heavily armed gunmen with automatic weapons and grenades massacred 147 men and boys in four mosques while the villagers were prostrating during the isha prayer. Colombo blamed the outlawed LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), which promptly denied its involvement and alleged that the government had launched it to obtain weapons from Muslim countries. The army units, which delayed their response citing the possibility of landmines, led some to suspect government involvement. The LTTE had graduated from carrying out terrorist attacks and was now engaging the Sri Lankan army and navy in pitched battles. The army, having suffered a series of major battlefield defeats, was now in complete disarray and thoroughly demoralized.

IRONICALLY, AFTER THE LONG The LTTE established a de facto sepa-

AND BLOODY CONFLICT (19832009) BETWEEN THE MINORITY rate state in the north, collected taxes and even had its own traffic police. In 1990, the LTTE ethnically cleansed HINDU TAMILS AND THE MAJORITY the country’s northern province,

BUDDHIST SINHALESE ENDED, ISLAMOPHOBIC GROUPS SUCH expelling 72,000 Muslims from Jaffna, Mannar and other towns to create a “Tamil homeland.”

AS THE ULTRA-NATIONALIST When the entire north was lost, SINHALESE BODU BALA SENA (BBS; the Sinhalese Buddhist-dominated government turned to the country’s BUDDHIST POWER FORCE) STARTED Muslim minority and neighboring

RAISING THEIR UGLY HEADS. Pakistan for military assistance. The Muslims, who had a proven record of martial prowess, as well as experience with the pre-independence’s elite Malay Regiment of the British army, readily responded and served in uniform as well as in intelligence gathering. Pakistan armed, equipped, trained and converted the army into a modern fighting machine. Using the Muslims as the proverbial wind under its wings, the military regained control over the lost northern provinces. The Sinhalese Buddhist majority’s recent persecution of Sri Lankan Muslims reminds one of the famous American fable in which the frog agrees to rescue a drowning scorpion on the promise that it won’t sting him; later in midstream, when the scorpion stings it and the dying frog asks for an explanation, the scorpion replies that it is in his nature to sting. As if this wasn’t frightening enough, Lt. Col. (ret.) Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who had officially opened a BBS-linked academy shortly before becoming the country’s eighth president in 2019, was photographed with Gnanasara. The terrified Muslims nervously contemplate their fate and earnestly hope that the world will unite against the brutal oppression of Sri Lanka’s innocent minorities. ih Misbahuddin Mirza, M.S., P.E., a licensed professional engineer registered in the States of New York and New Jersey, served as the regional quality control engineer for the New York State Department of Transportation’s New York City Region. The author of the iBook “Illustrated Muslim Travel Guide to Jerusalem,” he has written for major U.S. and Indian publications.