Hardline Buddhists target Muslims in Sri Lanka

Sectarian violence on the island nation of Sri Lanka again threatens to tear the country’s fragile fabric apart.

Government commando forces have stepped up security around Muslim-owned businesses and homes around the nation after a mob of hundreds of Buddhist extremists set fire to a clothing store and warehouse in Pepiliyana, a suburb of the capital of Colombo, on Thursday.

The crowd also smashed vehicles and pelted stones before an army unit was called in to disperse the rioters. No arrests were made, however.

The attack injured at least five people, including journalists seeking to cover the event, and appears to reflect the continuing hostility directed at minority Muslims from hard-line members of Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese Buddhist majority.

Muslims account for about 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s population.

“We are deploying more mobile patrols in vulnerable [Muslim] areas [across Sri Lanka],” a senior police officer told the Agence France- Presse news agency.

The Muslim Council of Sri Lanka warned that Thursday’s disturbances pushed religious and ethnic tensions to the island to a new high.

“It has created a fear psychosis among the Muslims,” N.M. Ameen, the council president, told AFP. “[But] we know a majority of the [Buddhist] people do not support this type of activity.”

Indeed, one of Sri Lanka’s most vocal and prominent Buddhist nationalist group, the Bodhu Bala Sena, or BBS, which means “Buddhist Force,” denied they were involved in the latest altercations.

“We condemn this attack in the strongest terms,” BBS spokesman Galaboda Aththe Gnanasara told reporters in Colombo.

But BBS has a history of making inflammatory remarks against Muslims, having already forced Islamic clerics to withdraw halal certification on local foods, citing that it “offends” non-Muslims.

BBS officials have also claimed that Muslim students receive favorable treatment in schools and are carrying out illegal practices related to the slaughter of livestock. Some nationalist Buddhist monks also accuse Muslims of constructing too many mosques, seeking to forcibly convert Buddhists to Islam and of having too many children in order to increase their influence in society.

Akmeemana Dayarathana, founder of another ultra-nationalist Buddhist group, Sinhala Echo, said that Muslims have a history of destroying Buddhist communities and cultures across South and East Asia.

“[Sri Lanka] is the only country for the Sinhalese,” he told BBC. ”Look around the world — Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and others — they were all Buddhist countries, but the Muslims destroyed the culture and then took over the country. We worry they’re planning it here too.”

The violence in Pepiliyana echoed an incident from January, when another Buddhist mob threw stones at a Muslim-owned clothing store outside Colombo, while other Buddhists have called for a boycott of Muslim businesses.

Over the past year, a number of mosques have been attacked, vandalized and defaced.

An extraordinary facet of these attacks is that they are often led by robe-wearing Buddhist monks.

Sri Lanka has already endured a devastating multidecade civil war that pitted the majority Sinhalese Buddhists against a group of separatist ethnic Tamils, who are Hindu. The Tamils were brutally crushed by the army in the final stages of that civil war.

Muslims generally stayed out of that conflict, maintaining a low profile, although they suffered many casualties.

Now, fearing a renewed wave of violence, the government’s Minister for Justice Rauff Hakeem (a Muslim) has asked Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne to call a cabinet meeting to discuss security issues and the vulnerability of Muslims in the country.

Colombo police have also established a phone hotline for people to complain about anyone seeking to “incite religious or racial hatred.”

Some analysts believe that extremist Sinhalese Buddhists, fresh off their defeat and demoralization of Tamil Hindus, are now targeting another visible minority — the Muslims.

“The country is seen today as Sinhala Buddhist,” said Sanjana Hattotuwa, editor of groundviews.org, a journalism website.

“The end of the [Sinhalese vs. Tamil civil] war ironically has given the space for new social fault lines to occur.”

Hattotuwa’s organization has cited that in the early 1980s Buddhists committed a type of pogrom against Hindu Tamils, which eventually precipitated a multidecade civil war. Now they fear the government (dominated by Sinhalese Buddhists) is not doing enough to prevent another potential conflagration.

“The vandalism of mosques around the country are ominous signs,” an editorial in Groundviews states. “The inaction by the authorities, and in some case the support of the organization by members of the government, is paving the way for further racism.

“For a nation that prides itself on being ‘multinational,’ such racist sentiment will only serve to damage its future. Nationalistic ideals fueled by racism cost the country 30 years [in the civil war]; unfortunately, four years on from the end of the last conflict, Sri Lanka appears to be headed down the same path.”

Sri Lanka Buddhists disrupt mosque’s prayers

A mosque in Sri Lanka has been forced to abandon its Friday prayers amid community tensions in the central town of Dambulla.

About 2,000 Buddhists, including monks, marched to the mosque and held a demonstration demanding its demolition, along with a Hindu temple being built in an area designated as a Buddhist sacred zone.

Monk Inamaluwe Sri Sumangala Thera told the AP news agency that the construction area was inside the zone and that erecting houses of worship for other religions there was illegal.

He demanded the authorities stop the construction immediately.

Shortly after the protest, the mosque was evacuated under police protection and its Friday prayers cancelled.

Many Buddhists regard Dambulla as a sacred town and in recent months there had been other sectarian tensions in the area.

Last September a monk led a crowd to demolish a Muslim shrine in Anuradhapura, not far from Dambulla.

M Rahmathullah, a trustee of the mosque, disputed the Buddhist claim.

“We do not agree to their claim. The mosque was in the area for more than 50 years,” said Rahmathullah.

Overnight the mosque had been targeted by a fire bombing, but nobody was hurt.

Buddhism is the religion of the majority of Sri Lanka’s 20 million people.

About 74 per cent are Sinhalese, who are mostly Buddhists, while about 18 per cent are Tamils, who are predominantly Hindus or Christians. About seven per cent of the total population are Muslims.

Sri Lankan Muslims under threat

A CURIOUS story in a local English daily caught my eye the other day. It seemed the Sri Lanka Muslim Council had given in to demands that meat could be sold without halal certification. This is a huge success for radical Buddhist groups who have been orchestrating an anti-Muslim campaign for the last few years.

Mosques have been attacked, prayers disrupted, and Muslims in general accused of being anti-state. The Muslim Tamil National Alliance has written to the Secretary General of the United Nations, asking him for protection, and protesting against this nasty campaign.

Leading the anti-Muslim charge is a group called the Bodu Bela Sena, or Buddhist Force. Headed by ultra-nationalistic monks, the group follows a xenophobic agenda of “Sri Lanka for the Buddhists”. Of late, Buddhist monks have begun playing a growing and retrogressive role in the island’s politics.

The monks first flexed their muscles to shore up the Rajapakse government’s resolve to crush the Tamil insurgency. First, they blocked any possibility of compromise by offering the Tamil Tigers greater autonomy. To build up pressure, they formed a political party and won enough seats to take a place in the coalition government.

Then, when President Mahinda Rajapakse’s brother, defence secretary Gotabaya, was facing difficulties in finding enough recruits for the army, a group of monks fanned out across the Buddhist areas to motivate thousands of young men. These recruits were assured that they would not lose karma by fighting and killing in a war as they would be doing so in the cause of Buddhism.

The brutal civil war ended nearly four years ago in a bloodbath that is now the subject of intense scrutiny and criticism from abroad. The ongoing session of the UN Human Rights Commission at Geneva is about to vote on a resolution initiated by the US, demanding an international investigation into the fate of tens of thousands of Tamils said to be killed in the last days of the fighting in the north of the island.

Against this backdrop, it is odd that the government is doing so little to clamp down on the anti-Muslim campaign. Should it gain support and traction, the results could be very bad news. Muslims are mostly concentrated in three areas: in and around Galle and Colombo, and in the coastal areas of the north-east. The latter are mostly poor fishermen, while urban Muslims are heavily represented in business and the professions.

According to unofficial reports, the 2011 census indicates that Muslims form around 10 per cent of the total population of 21.4 million. This is a substantial increase from the 7.6 pc in the last census. One reason the new census figures have not been officially released is said to be the disquiet the increase in the number of Muslims might cause among the majority.

Already, Muslims in the north have been subjected to ethnic cleansing by the Tamil Tigers in the early nineties. Thousands were driven southward from their homes and farms in the mostly Tamil north. After the war ended, and they tried to reclaim their property, they were subjected to great hostility by Sinhalese farmers who had grabbed much of the land. Most of the displaced Muslims have settled around Colombo, and their children consider the capital their home.

One factor that is probably driving the anti-Muslim campaign is envy. Urban Muslims have fared relatively well over the years, and have cornered the lucrative gemstone market. Others have gone into real estate and construction. Many have made a name for themselves in the legal profession. And while a few have gone into politics, they recognise that they can never hope to rise to the top. By and large, they have kept a low profile.

A number of Muslim families in Galle and Matra pride themselves on their descent from Arab traders who settled in Sri Lanka centuries ago. Others have come from the Indian coast. There is a small and wealthy Bohra community in Colombo. Many northern Muslims descended from Malays who settled along the coast.

Thus, Sri Lankan Muslims represent an ethnic mix who have helped in creating prosperity and diversity. So far, at least, they have got along well with their neighbours. However, despite centuries of living together, integration has been slow. Like most minorities, Muslims tend to stick together, maintaining their dress code and diet. Women usually wear some form of hijab, and many Muslim men wear beards and skull caps.

Even liberal Sinhalese accuse Muslims of not keeping their streets clean, and generally staying aloof from the mainstream.

Inter-marriage between Muslims and Sinhalese are limited to the elites. But everybody acknowledges their hard work and sound business ethics.

The civil war and the way it ended has exploded the myth of the peaceful Buddhists. There is thus a genuine concern over the ongoing anti-Muslim campaign: observers recognise the potential for a vicious pogrom should the government not step in.

However, the ugly reality is that the Buddhist majority are a far larger vote bank than the Muslims.

Many are puzzled by how and why anti-Muslim feelings have spread so quickly. After all, after the end of the civil war in 2009, it had been widely assumed that the restoration of peace would heal the ethnic wounds opened during decades of conflict. Sadly, the government has made little effort to reach out to a defeated and demoralised Tamil community.

One theory is that the triumphant Sinhalese fringe elements on the extreme right need a fresh target for their xenophobia. Some in the business community are eyeing the assets of their successful Muslim competitors. Politicians are seeking to tap into the strong sense of Buddhist identity that was pumped up during the last stages of the war. The recent execution of a young Sri Lankan maid in Saudi Arabia on flimsy charges provided more ammunition to the extremists.

None of this is good news for the peaceful and prosperous Muslim community in Sri Lanka. Hopefully, the government will check the vicious propaganda doing the rounds and prevent an explosion.