Stop this cold war!

There are deep concerns within the Muslim community on the on-going state of hostility or cold war between certain State institutions and the country’s Muslim community including its long-cherished institutions. The subjective belief appears to centre around the universally condemned Easter Sunday attacks of 21/04/2019 continuing to be exploited by vested interests to cage the community and its institutions even after close upon four years of the 21/4 disaster, which the community had condemned and disassociated itself unequivocally!

Such hostile impositions are discriminatory and appear to be part of the anti-minority moves that began as hate campaigns in an organised manner in 2012. The role of war mongering foreign hands and their agents in progressively alienating and radicalising the country’s Muslims need to be kept under close watch. Prompt rectifications of matters perceived by the disgruntled youth as continued injustice may help prevent some of them becoming pawns in foreign organised disastrous counter moves. A country in economic dire straits or even otherwise, cannot afford to allow anyone to create divisions amongst or within communities that may lead to costly conflicts.

The community is distressed that Muslims, the community’s religious dignitaries both past and present, its historic institutions and its civil society have been continuously singled out for damaging coercive action. Such actions may be seen by the UN HRC mechanisms as oppressive and in violation of the Constitution of Sri Lanka as well as contrary to many multiple international treaties. Terrorists and criminals are one thing and the community and its institutions are another!

The aragalaya activists for instance cannot be dealt with as terrorists, though the country needs peace and social order. It is vital that the national political leaders learn lessons from the rise of the LTTE from amongst two prominent minorities in North Sri Lanka in the 1970s, the uprisings of 1971 and 1989 from the majority community and avoid creating confrontational issues with the Muslim minority, though it has not shown any capability to mount even a simple street protest!

With a pacifist political and business leadership at the helm of this community, oppressive actions on sensitive religious cum cultural issues could create new radical elements prone to violence. This country cannot afford to push anyone into violence! Hence the need to resolve these issues expeditiously.

The following are some of the instances, though there are many others, which require the urgent attention of the government in the interest of justice and fair-play on the one hand and ensuring unity and promoting trust amongst the communities on the other:

State mechanisms have been continuously used, often without any legal mandate to openly enter and survey a number of Muslim civil society organisations without any complaint or court warrants.

These regular visits and phone calls have had the effect of silencing Muslim organisations and reducing their services to the community and the country. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN HCHR) had identified the State institutions which had indulged in action violative of the freedom of association and freedom of expression in this regard. Lately a number of respected Muslim religious intellectuals have also been questioned by State institutions, which the UN HRC may consider as unwarranted harassment. In the circumstances Government must consider all State institutions being made accountable to Parliament, in the backdrop of allegations that some suicide bombers were also funded by certain State institutions, though the allegations may be unfounded.

The Parliamentary Select Committee on Easter Sunday attacks in its Report (page 93 onwards) dated 23rd October 2019 and the Presidential Commission of Inquiry in its Final Report (pages 361/2) dated 31st January 2021 have blamed the majoritarian extremism in the country, ‘igniting majoritarian extremist groups to attack Muslims, escalating the latter into violent extremism resulting in the Easter Sunday attacks’. But the prosecutions and actions taken by the Police Department and the Attorney General’s Department were so far, only against the Muslim minority with no prosecutions as per the said reports, against those who ignited and contributed to anti- Muslim violence in Aluthgama (2014), Gintota (2017), Ampara (2018), Digana (2018) etc. The State and its forces must guarantee on the ground that minorities are protected from majoritarian extremism. That is the best guarantee against minority extremism.

Meanwhile the Easter attacks were extensively and unjustifiably used with widespread indiscretion to blame Islam, its teachings, the Holy Quran, Islamic books, respected foreign and local Islamic scholars, the Mosques, the Madhrasas, Muslim marriage laws, the Wakf Act, Muslim civil organisations, in other words the Muslim community as a whole, in order to cover up the majoritarian extremist violences, which according to the findings of the two reports referred to earlier, contributed to the 21/4 Easter Sunday’s avoidable disaster. The reports had also recommended (page 372) that “the Government should take concrete steps to identify the root causes of religious intolerance and tension and promote trust among the different ethnic and religious communities….” It must be noted that under cover of the Easter attacks, a cold war on the Muslim community as a whole appears to be going on, often below the radar. This undeclared war on the believers of Islam in Sri Lanka may radicalise and compel some within the community to seek relief from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR). We need help to stop them.

A serious matter continuously raised by the Church leaders in Sri Lanka was that, though there were adequate time and opportunity to avert the 21/4 Easter attacks, those responsible for taking action to arrest and prevent the multiple suicide attacks criminally neglected for over 16 days to take any preventive action whatsoever to avert the terror attacks.

The Island