Rising anti-Muslim attacks: Home grown or imported?

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2017-06-14

By Riza Yehiya

The Muslim community in Sri Lanka are neither political nor economic migrants into this country unlike the wave of migration to the West.

They are an indigenous community of this land having inhabited here for more than twelve centuries. Their blood, culture, ethos and aspirations are more Sinhalese than Tamils, but with a distinct religious belief and a value system. The difference between the Muslims and the majority Sinhalese are their religion and language to a lesser extent. By religion, the Muslims profess Islam and by language, a majority of them speak a variant of Tamil distinct from the Tamil language as spoken by the Tamil community. The majority of the young Muslims are fluent in Sinhala and are trilingual. How Tamil became the widely used language of the Muslim is their heritage from the Muslim mariners' dominating the regional seas and Tamil being their medium of religious instructions hailing from South India since colonial times. Other than these two factors distinguishing Muslims from the Sinhalese, their socio-economic, political and historical aspirations and links with the Sinhalese are well bonded at the national levels. Their bonding with their Tamil counterpart is regional and is of a lesser degree. It is this bond with the majority Sinhalese that made Muslims to sacrifice their lives, properties and domicile in the North and the East to protect the Sri Lankan State against the Tamil separatist movement. The Muslim-Sinhalese embrace is one of mutual strength from time immemorial reinforcing national security. Any polarity between them would sap mutual security of both and undermine national security and territorial integrity. The current trends of anti-Muslim attacks seemingly are a ploy to polarize Sinhalese-Muslim bond to sap Sri Lanka to make it malleable for regional geopolitical advantages.

Symptom

Symptomatically, what is emerging is not a reflection of conflict between the Sinhalese and Muslim at the grassroots level,but an orchestrated seedling of conflict to nurture into bigger conflicts to make way for regional geopolitical interests and to define the future leadership of Sri Lanka in favour of such interest in time to come.

In the complex world of today, a picture does not reflect the true scenario behind the imagery. To understand this requires deep insight and knowledge of how the picture has evolved. Seemingly, what is happening is an attempt to unleash a low-intensity war against the Muslims to provoke them to respond, so that the consequence would enable a high intensity war on Muslim leading to destabilization of the country. Potentially, this is a calculated action to start with the Muslims and weaken the Sinhalese to give inroad and leverage to regional powers to interfere in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka once again. 

In the politics of post-modern societies, globally, Muslim bashing is a common phenomenon via media manipulation at the behest of Western powers, ably choreographed by the Israelis. The former is hell-bent on repossessing energy/resources from Muslim countries while the Israelis want to dismantle and destroy Islam.The hypocrisy of accusing Muslims for violence whilst committing widespread crimes against humanity on the Muslims in the name of war on terror is sufficient evidence.

Regionally, Indian geopolitical interest in Sri Lanka exploits the Islamophobic phenomenon to subtly undo and create schism between the historical and traditional bond of the Muslims and Sinhalese. For India to have a weak, dependent and docile Sri Lanka on its southern tip is a factor for consideration. Therefore, post war nation building in Sri Lanka, homogenization of its people and unity within Sri Lanka are aberrations and irksome to Indian interests. Hence, spawning of conflicts between communities in Sri Lanka may give them extra leverage, which they lost in 2009 due to Sri Lanka successfully ending the war.

The statements made by Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera and the collectives of Bodu Bala Sena, Ravana Balaya and others, hyping on a pack of lies that the Muslim community is a threat to the Sinhalese and that which is followed by a series of attacks on Muslim owned business places and mosques is a typical script of the RSS, Shiv Sena and BJP cabal. These also have all the tell-tale marks of several intelligence agencies working hand in glove. These collective extremist vigilantes merging with the emerging Hindutva groups is a marriage brokered not for nation building, but to polarize communities seeking strife and conflicts in the country. In the emerging scenario, it could be seen that Gnanasara Thera is either indenting as an agent importing new conflicts from abroad or he is influenced by foreign handlers to carve a niche for his surrogates or to his handlers. This will potentially cause serious national security issues. The government seems either complacent or complicit contributing to erosion of national security by their inability to govern responsibly. If not, there is a bunch of ignoramuses warming the seats of governance. The people are losing hope in the government on its role in upholding national security and good governance. However, the people have unshaken trust in the police, military and the intelligence community who are eyes and ears protecting national security even if the government fails.

The government's bragging about good governance, reconciliation, nation building and environmental stewardship are hollow when law and order fail, State agencies fail to respond, and when man-made and natural disasters are not diligently managed. The government's failure to arrest Buddhist extremist vigilantism taking law unto their hands would seriously undermine government authority, national security and cause instability eroding all what was gained in post-war Sri Lanka. 

Ground Reality 

Three decades of conflicts and its aftermath damaging society, economy and the environment has caused deep scars in our psyche to abhor conflict and seek peace at all cost. We know very well that in an integrated society harming others, be they social, political or economic would boomerang upon them as well and sink the whole society. Therefore, trending anti-Muslim attacks is not in the best interest and most of the Sinhalese do not subscribe to what is happening.

Further, the historical bonds between the Sinhalese and Muslims and the commonality of socio-economic and political problems both are facing, with the emerging understanding of integrated and mutually dependent world, their will to live and cohabit is ever stronger than before. The cosmopolitan mind-sets of the majority of the Sinhalese and Muslims will not let new fissures to form in their bonds. This is proven by the fact that Muslims live widely spread amongst the Sinhalese in the country than the mono ethnic Northern Province. There are no conflicts between these two communities as their bonding was nurtured over centuries of cohabitation and integration. Any conflict to emerge in such a well-bonded society should be orchestrated like what happened in Aluthgama after Gnanasara Thera and BBS' adventure in Aluthgama in 2014. It was not a conflict between Sinhalese and Muslims.

It was an organized group of extremist Buddhist mobs from outside attacking the Muslims in Aluthgama. The recent attacks on Muslim shops and mosques too are terror attacks not by the ordinary Sinhalese of the regions but by organized outsiders based on a clear plan of action of intimidation and assault to provoke Muslims to counter attack.

These attacks, seen in isolation, seem individual unsuspecting issues but mapping the frequency and scale of attacks shows that this is a calculated low intensity war unleashed against the Muslims so that the silent majority of innocent Sinhalese are kept in an oblivion of an atypical 1983 pogrom in the making due to prevailing media blackout when isolated incidents are not news worthy.

Importing destabilization

Since the end of the war in 2009, the country is slowly emerging and is poised to a better take-off after three decades of stagnation due to conflicts. The emerging trends show that a new cycle of violence is going to be imposed to send Sri Lanka back to a second cycle of stagnation to ensure the regional geopolitical giant to dictate to mother Lanka to surrender its sovereignty again. Hope this time sanity prevails among the countrymen and women to understand the implication and speak out against the destruction of Sri Lanka by the robed saboteurs.