Probe religious institutions and individuals promoting religious extremism
Posted on February 20th, 2015
Ranjith Soysa
I wish to refer to the request made to the President to appoint a commission to inquire into the “hate campaign and violence against Muslims in the last four years..” byMP ,Faiszer Musthapa and member of Central Provincial council , Azath Sally. While agreeing with the motive of the request i.e to arrest religious violence , I wish to request the President if he is keen to appoint a commission to broaden the scope of the probe to include following areas and to expand the period covered from 1977 to date when the foreign funding started up to beef up the extremist religious sects on a massive scale. Such funding were used not only to train armed cadres to aggressively and violently spread religious beliefs but also to harass and harm people who were not seeing eye to eye with the vision of the perpetrators.
If following issues are probed by a commission and concrete remedial measures are proposed while taking a determined action to implement the steps proposed, genuine co-existence of religious groups can be anticipated.
1 The registration of religious bodies should preclude unethical conversions. Unethical conversions should be banned.
2 When the religious institutions are to be sited a proper evaluation of the site and connected issues should be examined.
3 Illegal prayer centers should be curbed.
- Foreign funding of religious organizations should be scrutinized thoroughly. The reporting of the utilization of such funds to a recognized organization such as the Central Bank
should be made compulsory. - The extremist armed religious groups must be exposed and banned.
- Regarding the disputed places of worship eg Kuragla , an impartial inquiries should be conducted and a settlement should be reached.
7 The establishment of a powerful tribunal to take up , discuss and settle religious issues so that disputes can be settled locally preventing violence etc
Ranjith Soysa
Muslims want panel to probe hate campaign and violence”
February 15, 2015 10:24 am
Faiszer Musthapha, MP of the Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and Azath Sally, Member of the Central Provincial Council, has asked President Maithripala Sirisena to appoint a commission to inquire into the hate campaign and violence” against Muslims in the last four years and take appropriate measures to ensure that all Sri Lankans are protected.
Your Excellency is well aware that the instigators of the pogrom in Aluthgma and Beruwela have not been brought to justice as promised by former President Rajapaksa,” they said in a letter to Sirisena, according to the New Indian Express.
Musthapha and Sally pointed out that several other promises made to the Muslims had not been kept and submitted a document giving details of hundreds” of incidents of violence suffered by the Muslims.
Giving a few examples, they said that government has not kept its promise to allow the construction of a small prayer centre at Dambulla, till alternative land is given for the construction of a mosque.
The older mosque has been under a threat of demolition by the authorities under pressure from the head of a local Buddhist shrine and Buddhist extremists from outside.
The government has not kept a promise made by its predecessor that land would be given for the expansion of the older mosque at Swarna Chaithiya Road, Grandpass, Colombo, whose expansion was halted by the threat of a major riot of the 1983” variety. That promise had been made by Dinesh Gunawardene and Champika Ranawaka, both ministers in the Rajapaksa cabinet.
The site in Kuragala associated with the great Islamic saint, Qutab Muhiyadeen Abdul Cader Jailany, who had visited Sri Lanka over 1,000 years ago, is now under threat by the Bodu Bala Sena. Since appeals to other authorities to protect the shrine had not borne fruit, the two Muslim leaders appealed to Sirisena to do the needful.
TAGS : Muslims , Sri Lanka , Faiszer Musthapha , Azath Sally , Aluthgma , Beruwela ,
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February 20th, 2015 at 7:48 pm
soyza even if muslim saint have come to kuragala this land is not theirs they were traders and worriers they come and go they have no right to claim that place is theirs . Sinhalese never wanted to be non Budd hists but they were converted by force kuragala is a budhdhist place . any body can come and go but they cant own Sinhala country .
any one in the world knows how muslims treat others if there were muslims in this country what was their language at that time and how did they communicate with majority Sinhalese. truth is that they leant Sinhala and became Sinhala ‘ present muslims are laborers were brought by English .these coolies have no right to sri lanka . did they fight with british to defend sinhale