How does harthal and peace rallies help?
Posted on June 20th, 2014
Dr.Reffai
What happened this week, no doubt is horrendous. We must show our protest. If we keep quiet we will be attacked again and again. But how we show our protest must be evaluated carefully.
On 19.6.2014 Thursday many may say we had a successful harthal – many Muslim shops were closed- but what is the outcome? From the point I can see, it is a loss for us the muslims only.
When we close shops we inconvenience the customers. the shop owners loose the income for one day. Does the government feel the pinch? Does it in anyway affect the culprits who caused the mayhem at Aluthgama / Beruwela/ Dharga town? Not at all.
Similarly someone asked me “why not organise a peaceful procession of women, muslims and non muslims”? – my reply was “What for?”
when we want to show protest we must use our aql -wisdom – not do what is done usually. These measures may have good outcome in some situations, such as people of all religions gathering in once place as a show of protest reflects solidarity. But the effects and results of any protest mode must be evaluated before being launched. Specially not to cause loss to ourselves.
Let’s hope the leaders who lead the masses to show their protest willa ct wise and think with their heads(wisdom) not with their hearts ( mere emotions) .
June 20th, 2014 at 4:52 pm
Thanks Mareena for sanity.
But there is another side to this.
Anyway only UNWISE people will patronize Muslim shops now at their OWN RISK. Sinhalese have OVERCOME this DISGUSTING episode but ARABIC extremist elements have told Muslims to do harm to non-Muslims. Those who go to Muslim shops deserve to be poisoned, video taped inside FIT ON rooms, consume out of expiry date medicines and suffer permanent health damage, sexually abused inside shops, etc.
So no harm closing shops even if closed permanently! There is NO business to lose anyway.
The TRUST GAP will not be filled anytime soon.
June 20th, 2014 at 5:14 pm
I wrote a comment in the Times of India in an article titled “Sri Lankan Muslims cut back Friday prayers after unrest”. It is under “world news”:
“Excuse me for I am only a Buddhist”. Maybe that is what Buddhists need to say to the world. Of all the major religions of the world excluding Sikhism and Judaism, Buddhism has been on the defensive for a thousand years. India was her birthplace and Buddhism gave to the world her first Universities. With the onset of Islam the famous Buddhist University of Nalanda was not simply destroyed, it was obliterated by Mohammed Kilji. That act ended the illustrious age of Buddhism in India that reigned from 500 BC with the teachings of Buddha, rose to prominence under Emperor Ashoka in 300 BC and was snuffed out in 1197 by the Muslim invader and vandal Mohammed Kilji. a period of 1600 years of Indian Buddhism came to an abrupt end.
In the 20th century Buddhism again was attacked by Communism (or an extreme version of Secularism). China the largest Buddhist nations succumbed to Maoist Communism. Vajrayana Buddhism in Tibet fell to the same fate. In the early the mid 20th century Buddhism was on the retreat attacked by Islam, Christianity, Communism, and Secularism from alien cultures. Sri Lanka is the oldest unbroken Buddhist nation in the world with a civilization who has the pride to state it has also an unbroken written history. Only China shares that and even then it was under Buddhism. Then Sri Lanka had to face the specter of Hindu Tamil separatism for 30 years since she got her independence. Again Buddhism was attacked and valiantly defended to defeat the Tamil Separatists and once more unite the nation.
Now it faces the insidious expansion of Islam on the one hand and evangelical Christianity on the other. “Buddhist” Sri Lanka has faced such attacks upon her faith before to a world that thought it morally right to do so. Now the world simply ignores the expansions of these alien faiths in Buddhist land calling it “a harmonious existence of diversity”. It is not. It is the very act of tearing apart the nation, culture and religion. Muslims know this quite well and have set up barricades in their Sharia law to avoid alien faiths from entering their nations, but use the laws of the host nation of a non Muslim nation to expand and negate the dominant faith. Sri Lankan maids have been raped by Muslims in the Middle East. Their lives ruined forever. When a Sinhalese boy faces the same in Sri Lanka the inevitable backlash is received by the world as the acts of “radical Buddhists” and not that of the mindset of a nation wounded by the brutal acts of Arabs and the expansion of Islam in Sri Lanka. So maybe a Buddhist should first say “please excuse me for I am Buddhist. Any infringement on my culture is okay for I dare not take action for you see I am simply a Buddhist, You Muslims can do what you want where you want when you want and the world will condone it. Excuse me for I am only a Buddhist”
June 20th, 2014 at 7:01 pm
Some TERRORISTS have set fire to a NO LIMIT store in Panathurai.
NOT GOOD.
It may be Muslim owners to get INSURANCE. Or it may be Tamil terrorists. Or it may be Sinhala terrorists.
It is NOT acceptable.
Instead everyone should BOYCOTT Muslim shops indefinitely until they STOP their extremism.