Family members of Priyantha Kumara, who died in the Sialkot mob attack, taking part in religious rites at his funeral.

By Ameen Izzadeen
COLOMBO, Si Lanka, Dec 13 2021 (IPS)

Every time, breaking news of a barbaric crime or terror act is reported from anywhere in the world, peace-loving Muslims the world over feel dejected and wish it had not been another tragedy that will make others glower at them with suspicion as though they too are complicit in the crime.

But often, what they dread is the case, for more than 90 percent of such inhumane and barbaric acts – like the Sialkot slaying of a Sri Lankan factory manager and the Easter Sunday massacres — are associated with Islamic extremism.

Last Friday’s lynching of factory Manager Priyantha Kumara Diyawadanage in Pakistan by an extremist mob will not be the last of such acts.

No amount of ‘We Are Sorry Sri Lanka’ placards, flowers and candles at makeshift memorials and political statements denouncing the crime can bring back his life that was cruelly brought to an end as a burnt offering on the altar of bigotry in an expression of savagery that has no place in civilized society.

However much Pakistanis who are humiliated by extremism dissociate themselves from the horrible act, however profound their apology is, however remorseful Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, who decried the incident as Pakistan’s day of shame, is, the country will continue to be plagued by violent extremism unless and until extremism is rooted out by radical social reforms in line with the peaceful message of Islam.

The Priyantha Kumara lynching by a mob linked to an extremist outfit called Tehereek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, for tearing off a political poster that allegedly had some religious verses in Urdu warrants the immediate revocation of Pakistan’s blasphemy law or its amendment in keeping with the Islamic virtue of tolerance and magnanimity.

Research shows a higher prevalence of extremism in countries that have blasphemy laws than in countries that do not have such laws. Blasphemy laws are often misused to persecute the minorities or treat them as second-class citizens. Such laws are incompatible with the Islamic teaching which calls for protection of the minorities and non-interference in their worship.

If the Pakistan Government fails to make use of this heartrending incident as an opportunity to bring about radical reforms, it itself will be committing an act of blasphemy because its inaction allows the badly constructed law to distort and disgrace Islam.

Pakistan was carved out of the British Raj for the Muslims of the subcontinent. Its founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah promoted a theory of two nation two state, saying that the Muslims and Hindus were two different nations and belonged to two different civilizations and therefore needed to live in separate states.

The world’s first nation-state to be formed on the basis of religion, Pakistan, however, has never been a theocracy.

In a 2017 BBC interview, historian Ayesha Jalal pointed out that Jinnah envisaged Pakistan as a “homeland for India’s Muslims”, as opposed to an Islamic state. But she said that his theory had been used by Islamists “as an ideological device” to justify claims for Pakistan to be a theocratic state.

This is Pakistan’s existential crisis. While the extremists fight for the setting up of a theocracy, secular politicians skillfully make use of Islam and side with Islamists to swell their vote banks or to whip up nationalistic emotions against archrival India.

Perhaps, this was why Pakistan’s Defence Minister Pervez Khattak was seen belittling the gruesome murder of Priyantha Kumara, by calling it “youthful exuberance of Muslim youngsters” and “happens all the time”.

He reportedly added, “When the youth feel Islam has been attacked, they react to defend it.” This was while Premier Khan vowed to bring the murderous mob to justice and Pakistan police arrested more than 130 people.

If we play with fire, we get burnt. Pakistan has been burnt enough, yet it appears to have not learnt enough. Seven years ago this month, extremists carried out a gruesome school massacre in Peshawar. In this terror attack some 134 schoolchildren, aged between 8 and 18, and 16 staff members were brutally gunned down by the Pakistan Taliban. So why pamper the extremists?

In 2011, Pakistan’s Punjab Province Governor Salman Taseer was shot dead by a police guard over his opposition to the country’s blasphemy law that calls for death sentence to those who insult Islam or its holy personalities.

Taseer was also calling for the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who was falsely accused by her neighbours of insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Taseer’s assassin was hailed as a hero by a large number of extremists who took to the street to celebrate the murder.

As a result of violent extremism, many non-Muslims find it difficult to accept the Muslims’ assertion that Islam is a religion of peace. What many do not understand is that there is little Islam in today’s world, although about 2 billion Muslims constitute one fourth of the world’s 8 billion population.

In Islam, jihad or holy war is not the norm, but a last resort exception to defend the oppressed. Vigilante justice has no place in Islam. The accused should be heard, Islam commands.

To whatever religion they belong, the problem with extremists is their ignorance of the teachings of the religion they are supposed to follow. As historian and comparative religions expert Karen Armstrong would say, “Terrorism has nothing to do with Muhammad, any more than the Crusades had anything to do with Jesus.”

Certainly, violence is not the answer to blasphemy. According to the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad was heaped the worst form of scorn. He was called a liar, a magician, a madman, and possessed. Garbage was thrown over his head and stone-throwing street urchins were set upon him.

Yet as commanded by God, he exercised beautiful patience — Sabran Jameelan — and when his companions sought permission to retaliate, he would teach them the virtues of patience and remind them that he was sent as a mercy to the whole world. He befriended his persecutors by practising the Quranic injunction which exhorts the Muslims to “repel that which is evil with that which is good (and virtuous)”.

Unfortunately, the verses on defensive wars the Prophet and the early Muslims were forced to fight were misinterpreted by latter day Muslim rulers and terrorists for political purposes. Glorification of violence in the name of Islam became the norm. Islam’s peaceful message was forgotten.

Also overlooked is the Quranic message against violence as explained in the story of angels who expressed their deep concern over bloodshed and mischief on earth when God wanted to create man. (Quran 2: 30.)

It appears that instead of Islam, some Muslims are following a violent creed and calling it Islam. The fake Islam is largely practised while the real Islam remains buried. The task before the Muslims is to search for the buried Islam, resurrect it and live it.

Ameen Izzadeen is the deputy editor of the Sunday Times, Sri Lanka. He also writes a weekly column for the Daily Mirror, Sri Lanka, on international politics and good governance issues; and is a visiting lecturer in journalism and international politics.

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US President Donald Trump addressing the UN General Assembly. Credit: United Nations

By Ameen Izzadeen
COLOMBO, Nov 13 2020 (IPS)

What has happened to the Republican Party? Picking Donald Trump in 2016 as the Republican candidate, giving him victory in primary after primary and later tolerating his idiosyncrasies and unpredictably dangerous behaviour and policy decisions were bad enough however much one tries to digest them as vagaries of the democratic tradition.

But some Republican leaders going to the extent of endorsing Trump’s refusal to concede defeat is shocking if not outright sycophancy and the ultimate insult to the Grand Old Party. Among the praiseworthy exceptions are former President George W. Bush and Senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney who had called President-elect Joe Biden to congratulate him and urged President Trump to concede defeat.

Past Republican presidents, if they are alive, will be banging their heads on democracy’s wall in disbelief and, if dead, will be turning in their graves if they hear that Senate Republican leader Mitchel McConnell and some other Republican seniors, tacitly or otherwise, back Trump’s claim without evidence that the November 3 election was a fraud.

Joining this cabal was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who told journalists there would be a smooth transition to Trump’s second administration. Trump-appointed Attorney General William Barr, meanwhile, ordered the Justice Department’s election crime unit to initiate a probe on Trump’s election fraud claims, prompting the head of the unit to resign in disgust.

According to a poll conducted by Reuters and Ipsos on November 5, as much as 30 percent of the Republicans believed Trump’s claim that he had won the election – an indication of the extent to which Trumpism had penetrated the Republican grassroots.

The party today stands stripped of its hallowed ideology that was the standard bearer during the civil war under the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, a martyr hero who laid his life for abolishing slavery and upholding democracy as highlighted in his immortal Gettysburg speech.

Trump has hijacked the Republican Party and made it a party of and for stooges and illiberal and irrational extremists, conservatives and racists.

Ahead of the 2016 presidential election, some concerned Republicans did foresee the danger to the party and the country if Trump was to be elected as the president of the United States. The then House Speaker Paul Ryan, a loyal Republican and vice presidential candidate in 2012, worked out a framework to protect the party from any harm that an opportunist and wild card entrant like Trump could cause. At a party seniors’ meeting, Ryan presented a set of proposals, describing it as “This is Trump inoculation Plan.”

In the type of politics Trump dabbles in, principles have little place. As president, he became unruly, dismissing democratic traditions and not doing what rightminded people thought was right. As a result, the Republican Party lost its identity and soul. Republican politicians one by one started defecting to Trump’s camp.

All 51 Republican senators sided with Trump to defeat the impeachment resolution passed by majority vote in the House of Representative although there was evidence to back the impeachment charges that he obstructed justice, violated emolument clauses and undermined the independence of the judiciary.

If only two Senators had desisted from voting, the Trump era could have ended in December last year, but the Republican politicians propped him up, though he was the biggest presidential misfit in US history.

That Trump officials kept resigning in frustration or got fired for not carrying out his irrational bidding only confirms the chaos associated with the billionaire businessman turned president. One White House inside source described the chaos as a 12-year-old in an air traffic control tower of a busy airport.

The Republican Party is known with its honorific Grand Old Party (GOP) in recognition of its historic achievements such as abolishing slavery and saving the Union. The party was founded on classical liberalism which believes in freedom, liberty, and equality. Free trade and free market activism, as had been advocated by Reagan-ism, were part of the party policy.

Though the country is politically divided along the lines of Republican and Democratic party affiliations, until Trump came to the scene the two parties had been united by a common belief that republicanism is democratic while democracy is rooted in republicanism. The two parties had their roots in one single Democratic-Republican Party that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison founded in 1792.

Republicanism has its origin in the ancient Greco-Roman democratic tradition. The word Republic is derived from the Latin word Res Public – meaning the thing of the people. Rome was once a republic and had been so since the 5th century BC for more than 500 years.

The excuses trotted out by those involved in the Julius Caesar assassination plot were that he had destroyed the constitutional republic and had established himself as Rome’s first dictator for life.

In ancient Greece, Plato insisted that the republic’s ruler should become a philosopher, or a philosopher should become a ruler to promote the people’s welfare through knowledge. But Trump spurns science and knowledge-based governance and is widely known to be a demagogue acting on impulse, as has been seen in his costly mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While not respecting the will of the people and not cooperating with President-elect Biden’s team to facilitate a smooth transition, the Republican renegade is throwing multiple legal challenges to his rival’s victory.

Meanwhile, his hardline supporters, his Proud Boys, to whom he told stand down and stand by during an election debate, are flocking to Washington DC to stage tomorrow a show of force dubbed the million MAGA march. It could even be a mini coup d’état if the President’s actions of firing Defence Secretary Mark Esper and appointing loyalists to key positions in the National Security Agency and the Pentagon were an indication. Similar shake-ups are also expected in the CIA and the FBI.

The March for Trump and the President’s intransigence raise fears of further chaos or even a civil war, similar to what is often seen in weak democracies where rulers care little or no two hoots about democratic governance. The manner in which Trump behaves makes him in league with dictators in ‘shithole’ countries, to use his own words.

As the US is being plunged into uncertainty and its democracy’s darkest days, perhaps the hope for the Americans is in the unlikely possibility that his stubborn behaviour is only a face-saving exercise or a narrative to claim he won the election but was deprived of his second term by the establishment or what he and his supporters derisively refer to as the deep state.

It is high time the Republican Party found its sole to once again practise principled politics and save itself from the ignominy of being lumped together with rightwing political parties which have destroyed the democratic fabric of the countries where they operate.

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Excerpt:

Credit: United Nations

By Ameen Izzadeen
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Feb 10 2020 (IPS)

In the wake of the latest coronavirus outbreak, movie buffs are drawing an eerie parallel with the film Contagion, a 2011 thriller based on a lethal airborne virus called Nipah and how the world’s medical community battled to find a cure for the pandemic.

The movie, which is much in demand on streaming sites, attributes the origin of the virus to a bat.

Another movie that comes to mind is “Cassandra Crossing”. This 1976 thriller casts Richard Harris and Sophia Lauren in the lead roles. The story begins with an abortive attempt by three terrorists to bomb the US mission at a global health organisation in Geneva. In violation of international conventions, the US has developed viruses and stored them in containers in the mission.

Security officers kill a terrorist and wound another. One escapes but not before he knocks over a container and is splashed with its harmful content. He stows away in a train taking nearly a thousand passengers to different European capitals.

The American military officer in charge of the secret biological weapon programme knows the customized virus is virulent, airborne and contagion. There is no cure. He rebuffs advice that the train is stopped, the terrorist arrested and quarantined.

He fears that most of the passengers have, by now, been affected by the virus. He insists that the train be rerouted to a disused railway line that goes to a former Nazi concentration camp in Poland so that the passengers could be quarantined there.

But the train has to cross the dangerously unsound Cassandra Bridge. It is a deliberate attempt to prevent a pandemic by killing all the passengers, regardless of whether they are affected or not.

Biological weapons. Credit: United Nations

As the coronavirus continues to spread, China would not take such inhuman measures and eliminate the entire population in the city of Wuhan, though it is accused of taking horrific measures to eradicate what it sees as a social virus in its Xinjiang province where millions of Uighur Muslims are alleged to have been kept under social quarantine until they disown their religious and cultural identities which the Chinese authorities see as symptoms of major social epidemic that poses an existential threat to China.

The movie “Cassandra Crossing” is fiction, but, in reality, countries do develop biological weapons –germs, viruses and fungi targeting humans, livestock and crops.

This is not to imply that the latest coronavirus outbreak is a biological weapon test going wrong at a Wuhan laboratory — or an enemy nation has released a deadly virus in a highly populated Chinese town with the aim of sabotaging China’s global ambitions.

But the truth is biological warfare – or germ warfare — has been part of war for millennia.

History records that as far back as 400 B.C. armies had poisoned enemy wells and used poisoned arrows. History also records that in the 18th century America, the British colonialists gave small pox infected blankets to Native Americans with the intention of killing them in an epidemic.

Then, during World War I, Germany developed anthrax, glanders, cholera and a wheat fungus and allegedly spread plague in St. Petersburg in Russia.

After the end of World War I, nations agreed on the Geneva Protocol to curtail biological weapons. Yet, during World War II, Germany, Japan, Britain and the US disregarded the protocol and developed plague, syphilis and paralysis-causing botulinum toxin.

It took 22 years after the end of World War II for the so-called civilised world to acknowledge the evil of biological weapons that fall into the category of weapons of mass destruction, along with chemical weapons and nuclear weapons.

Some 179 states have ratified the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning an entire category of weapons. It requires the parties to give an undertaking that they will “never in any circumstances develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise acquire or retain” biological weapons.

But the convention allows nations to conduct ‘defensive’ research so that they will be prepared to face or survive an attack or a virus outbreak. In other words, they are allowed to make a virus to kill a virus.

Laboratories in Australia, Hong Kong and Europe say they have cultured the coronavirus — 2019-nCoV in a race to develop a medicine as the death toll from the outbreak reached over 800 in China alone, as of February 9, while the number of cases stood at more than 28,000 in China — mainly in the Hubei Province — and nearly 200 elsewhere.

However, it is believed that some countries also develop offensive biological weapons and chemical weapons. There is little distinction between the chemical and biological weapons from a definitional aspect.

For instance, Agent Orange the United States used during the Vietnam War may be a chemical weapon, but the harm it caused was no different from that of a biological weapon. Similarly, the use of depleted uranium by the US in Iraq also falls into the grey area between chemical and biological warfare.

During the Bosnian war, the Serbs used shells containing the Cold War-era nerve agent benzilate in the bombing of Srebrenica, and in the ongoing Syrian conflict, the government forces are accused of using similar weapons.

The US is not the only big power which stands accused of using banned weapons. Take Russia. Despite its accession to the 1972 BWC and the 1993 Chemical Weapon Convention, it drew worldwide condemnation for the killing of a dissident Russian spy in 2006, by using a highly radioactive polonium-210 poison and a similar attack in 2018 on another dissident spy and his daughter.

The possibility of terrorists using portable biological weapons topped the international agenda after more than a dozen people were killed in the Sarin nerve gas attack carried out by the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo in three Tokyo subway stations in 1995.

Adding to the concerns is the anthrax scare that hit the US days after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to media offices and politicians.

Five people died and 17 were infected in the bioterrorism attack that continued for weeks. Suspicion fell on two bioweapon experts. One was cleared; the other committed suicide before he was formally charged.

All this indicates the ineffectiveness of the BWC, a gentlemen’s agreement which largely requires the parties to submit only annual reports of compliance. The convention lacks a formal investigation mechanism to deal with violations.

And what better time than now to reinforce the convention when the world is gripped by the coronavirus threat?

*Ameen Izzadeen is Editor International and Deputy Editor, Sri Lanka Sunday Times

A boy in the Bedouin refugee community of Um al Khayr in the South Hebron Hills where large scale home demolitions by Israeli authorities took place. Credit: UNRWA

By Ameen Izzadeen
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Feb 3 2020 (IPS)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu was slapped corruption charges last week while he was hobnobbing with US President Donald Trump in Washington. Bibi has, apparently, done his homework in psychology. He knew the quickest way to get around Trump was to flatter him.

Addicted to praise, Trump is incapable of understanding that there is a great deal of deception if someone praises him too much. In a June 16, 2017 article, USA Today opinion columnist Windsor Mann wrote, “Flattery is Trump’s cocaine — he’s addicted to it — and, like cocaine, it’s not always genuine.”

Rarely does he get sincere praises from honest people. So, Trump often self-praises himself.

On Tuesday, when Trump announced his Middle East peace plan, Bibi was superlative in his praises. As the drama unfolded in a White House room full of sycophants ready with applauses to ego massage praise-addict Trump and insincere Netanyahu, it became obvious that the peace plan was not worth the paper it was written on.

It also became clear that Trump did not have a thorough knowledge of the Middle East, for he failed to identify a typo in the text on the teleprompter. He read al-Aqsa as al-Aqua.

Many believe that the timing of the announcement was aimed at bolstering the political base of both Trump and Netanyahu – Trump embroiled in an impeachment battle was trying to appease pro-Israeli evangelical Christian voters, a key component of his support base, while Netanyahu used the occasion to go one-up over his political rival Benny Gantz in Israel’s election battle of the right-wings.

When Trump, impeached by the House of Representatives, and Netanyahu, an indicted suspect in a corruption case — a paper pharaoh and fake Moses – make a plan, it will be far from being value-based.

No wonder, the peace plan they unveiled promotes anything but peace and is an agenda to legalise Israel’s illegal land grab on the West Bank. No wonder peace analysts are unanimous in condemning the Trump plan as ‘dead on arrival’. (DOA)

It is one-sided and a travesty of justice in breach of the hallowed legal principle Audi alteram partem —which requires that the other side also be listened to. There was no Palestinian side in this ex-parte ruling that Trump’s pro-Israeli son-in-law Jared Kushner was instrumental in drafting.

If there is one US president who cares no two hoots about the Palestinians, it is Trump. He stopped aid to Palestine and his country’s annual US$ 360 million contribution to the United Nations Relief Work Agency which cares for more than five million Palestinian refugees.

Trump, Kushner and Netanyahu could not find a single Palestinian to endorse the plan made by Zionists for Zionists to continue their crimes in Palestine. Pro-American Arab states, however, have welcomed the peace effort but avoided extending support for the content of the plan.

Key regional powers Turkey and Iran, meanwhile, have given an outright thumbs-down to Trump’s plan, which declares Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel, thus ignoring the Palestinians’ aspiration of making East Jerusalem their future capital. The Palestinians are condescendingly told they can have their capital anywhere east of Jerusalem.

Rejecting the Trump plan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Jerusalem and “all our rights are not for sale and are not for bargain.”

The Palestinians have dismissed the plan as Balfour 2.0, whereby one country (the United States) is trying to hand over chunks of another’s country (Palestine) to a third country (Israel) just as Britain in 1917, through an atrocious colonial act of injustice, allowed the Zionist movement to set up a homeland in Palestine.

In 1947, the United Nations adopted a partition plan that unfairly divided historic Palestine, giving the Jews who were a little more than 30 percent of Palestine’s population, 55 percent of the land. Most of them were European migrants who came to Palestine following the 1917 Balfour declaration. The indigenous Palestinians who were about 67 percent of the population were given 45 percent of the land.

The Trump plan will leave the Palestinians with a mere 15 percent of historic Palestine. In other words, 85 percent of Palestine will come under Israel’s sovereignty while the balance to be declared as the State of Palestine will be bits and pieces of territory – or Bantustans connected by tunnels and roads guarded by the Israeli military.

Trump’s plan was unofficially conveyed to Arab leaders more than two years ago. This came after the Trump administration on December 6, 2017 recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital.

At the US-sponsored Middle East economic conference in Bahrain in June last year, the plan was partially unveiled by Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East envoy Kushner. The Palestinians boycotted the event where they were promised billions in development aid if they accepted the plan.

To promote the plan, Kushner partnered Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. On December 3, 2017, a New York Times report said the Saudis had summoned Palestinian President Abbas to force him to accept Trump’s plan, where, instead of Jerusalem, the neighbouring town of Abu Dis that overlooks the Dome of the Rock mosque, was offered as the Palestinian capital.

When news leaked out that the Saudis were backing Trump’s plan and had no qualms over al-Aqsa– Islam’s third holiest site –being placed under Israeli sovereignty, the Saudi royals became jittery, fearful of the reaction on the Arab streets.

King Salman invited Abbas to Saudi Arabia again and assured his support for the Palestinians’ stand. Abbas’ Saudi visits indicated that the Saudi establishment is divided over the Palestinian issue. Once the old king becomes history, the kingdom is likely to endorse Trump’s plan.

In December 2017, after Trump misused the US veto to quash yet another United Nations mechanism to bring peace to Palestine, the world community overwhelmingly passed a UN General Assembly resolution asking nations not to establish diplomatic missions in the historic city of Jerusalem.

They did so, defying Trump’s threat to developing nations that they would face an aid cut if they voted for the Jerusalem resolution. Just as the then US president George W. Bush’s 2003 Middle East peace roadmap, Trump’s plan, touted as the deal of the century, is bound to collapse, because it is not founded on justice. It is the fraud of the century.

It ignores international law, numerous UN resolutions, principles of justice, and norms of decency. Sri Lanka, as a true friend of Palestine, should not endorse Trump’s plan which promotes chaos and conflict instead of peace.

*Ameen Izzadeen is Editor International and Deputy Editor, Sri Lanka Sunday Times

The genie is out and it is difficult to put it back into the bottle, say concerned Sri Lankans as anti-Muslim hatred spreads far and wide, evoking fears of a major ethnic riot which the country last witnessed in July 1983.  But the voice of the concerned citizens is a murmur against the raucous anti-Muslim hate speech.

At dusk on Friday, April 12, a small group of concerned Sri Lankans gathered for a candlelight vigil outside a state-owned building which houses the head office of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), a group that has become synonymous with the anti-Muslim hate campaign. The protesters charged that the BBS and its hardline monks were tarnishing the image of Buddhism and violating its precepts such as compassion and non-violence.

Barely an hour into the peaceful protest, police broke up the vigil and dragged a few outspoken among them to a police jeep while BBS office staff took pictures of the crowd.

Angry protesters, among them members of the social-media group ‘the Buddhists Questioning Bodu Bala Sena’, claimed that the police action once again proved that the anti-Muslim hate campaigners had state patronage.

Visakha Tilekeratne, a member of a civil society network working to create a Sri Lankan identity, says the vigil was a good move, though it was badly organised. “The protest was a good thing because the Bodu Bala Sena’s true colours came out and the government’s bias was exposed,” she says. “They may have succeeded in dispersing the demonstration. But people have begun to question the BBS. This is a blessing in disguise.”

But she also admits that the seeds of hatred have been planted deeply even in tender minds – children. Members of civil society have to play a big role to reverse the trend, she says adding that like-minded people have come forward to form a network called “Citizens for Secure Sri Lanka” to strengthen moves to create a “Sri Lankan” identity irrespective of religion, ethnicity or language.  She says they were concerned because 65 attacks on Muslim and Christian places of worship have taken since a mosque in Dambulla came under attack 12 months ago.

But BBS denies the group is anti-Muslim. Its Chief Executive Officer Dilantha Vithanage says his group’s main focus is to protect Buddhism. “We are not a Buddhist army. Ours is a non-violent intellectual force that seeks to protect Buddhism,” he says.

But others disagree. They say the BBS’s hand is visible in regular attacks on mosques and Mulim-owned businesses, the latest being a mob attack on one of the well-known fashion stores in suburban Colombo in March.

“We have not harmed a single person. Instead, we have made peace among communities,” Vuthanage says challenging anyone to prove that the BBS has taken part in violence or condoned it.

But people who have listened to BBS speeches or watched YouTube clips of its rallies disagree. In one such clip, a monk claimed that an underage Sinhala girl was raped in the head office of the fashion store. The Muslims say this was the lie that led to the attack on the store. In yet another tape, a monk urges the Sinhalese not to eat Muslim food, because the Quran says that Muslims should spit three times into food before serving it to non-Muslims. Another untruth. When confronted, Vithanage says these were remarks uttered by guest speakers and his group has little control over them.

But Muslims and civil society activists say the BBS has floated several front groups and their hate-speech has done irreversible damage to the coexistence between ethnic groups.  They say they have reason to be worried about the situation because the country’s Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, is seen to be backing the BBS.

Described as the most powerful Sri Lankan, he was the chief guest at the opening of a BBS training centre in the southern city of Galle in March. The Defence Secretary also played a key role in resolving a dispute over the ‘halal’ label on food items. But the Muslims say the solution he helped worked out was in favour of the BBS which spearheaded the anti-halal campaign.

However much Secretary Rajapaksa says he has little to do with the BBS, the Muslims are not convinced. A retired Muslim businessman from Matara, a city south of Galle, refused to be interviewed on phone because he feared the phones were tapped. Other Muslims believe that state intelligence officers have been keeping a tab on mosques. “They wanted to know which mosque recited ‘Qunut an-Nazila’ {a special petition to God during times of crisis},” a Muslim youth said. The mosques have since discontinued the practice.

At the centre of the anti-Muslim hate campaign is the increasingly noticeable Muslim identity in this Buddhist majority country. In the country’s commercial capital, Colombo, there are more mosques than Buddhist temples. The crowd at the Galle Face esplanade in the evenings makes any foreign visitor wonder whether Muslims are really a minority in Sri Lanka. The sight of Muslim men in long beards and ‘Arab thaub’ or Pakistani Shalwar Kameez and Muslim women in black Abayas at this sea-front leisure park is conspicuous.

Adding to the Sinhala Buddhists’ worries are the latest census figures, which record a significant increase in the country’s Muslim population. Muslims now constitute nearly 10 per cent of the country’s 21 million population. The Sinhalese make up 70 per cent and the Tamils 17. These worries have given rise to groups such as the BBS and Sinhala Ravaya in the past year or so. Their message is: Buddhism is under threat in Sri Lanka, the chosen land to preserve the Buddha’s teachings in their pristine form.

Scores of anti-Muslim social media sites claim that the Muslims control the economy, procreate at a faster rate than other communities, build mosques from funds from Gulf countries and Muslim men marry Sinhala girls and forcibly convert them.

These websites urge the Sinhalese not to sell property to Muslims and to boycott Muslim businesses. Some even warn that the products the Muslims sell contain substances that affect the fertility of the Sinhala people.

With little action from the Government to check on these anti-Muslim websites, the Muslims fear the hate-campaign will sooner or later trigger a backlash like the July 1983 ethnic riots against the Tamils or the recent anti-Muslim riots in Myanmar, where the Buddhist group 969 has raised similar concerns about a ‘Muslim threat’ to Buddhist culture.

Peace activist Tilekeratne and the BBS’ Vithanage say they do not believe an ethnic riot is on the cards. But many Muslim leaders fear a major clash is just a stone throw away. It almost happened in Kuliyapitiya in February when anti-Muslim demonstrators protected by police carried an effigy of a pig naming it Allah. Angry Muslim youths wanted to hit back, but elders restrained them, saying the protesters could be defeated if they were not provoked.

The Muslims say the Sinhala Buddhist extremist groups which have succeeded in removing the Halal label now want a ban on Niqab. BBS’ Vithanage says they want Niqab out. “The government imposed a ban on dark tinted glasses in vehicles for a particular reason. Such considerations should be there for Niqab also,” he says.

According to a Muslim lawyers’ collective which maintains a hotline to support victims of hate-campaign and compiles incidents of attacks on Muslims, the latest anti-Niqab incident took place at Colombo’ National Hospital, where a female doctor angrily removed the niqab of a Muslim patient and threw it away.

With sections of the private media also whipping up the hate, civil society members, engaged in bringing about ethnic harmony, face a hell of a task. Only about three hundred people turned up for a Colombo rally on Sunday April 28 to promote the message “hate has no place in Sri Lanka”. However, the positive sign was that among the crowd were prominent figures, academics, diplomats and politicians. At this rally former diplomat Dayan Jayatilleke told the media that because of the activities of some ethno-fascist groups, it had become increasingly difficult for diplomats like him to defend Sri Lanka abroad.

As a solution, Moulavi As-Shiekh M.S.M. Fazal (Madani), says the situation the Muslims in Sri Lanka are facing is similar to what the Muslims faced in the early days of Islam in Makkah.  “We should not create a differentiated identity through our appearance. Other people should not look at Muslims as a different community or a strange community. The Holy Prophet (PBUH) always dressed like everyone else in the community.  Within the Islamic dress code, one should try to identify himself or herself with the community where he or she lives in. This helps promote harmony.  What may be suitable for a Muslim majority country may not be suitable for a country like ours where Muslims are a minority,” he says. Controversial though his remarks may be, there appears to be some food for thought in what he says.

(The writer is International Editor of the Wijeya Newspaper Group, Sri Lanka and deputy editor of the Sunday Times. He writes a weekly column for Daily Mirror, Sri Lanka. He is also a lecturer on international relations)