By Rohana R. Wasala
Gravitas
News (wionews, World is One News) web portal reported Tuesday December
21, 2021: Riyadh holds 4-day EDM carnival”. Commenting on the electronic dance
music extravaganza, unprecedented in Saudi Arabia, the young news
anchor said, The defacto leader of the Islamic World, the Guardian of
the two holiest sites in Islam, Saudi Arabia, did the unexpected this weekend.
It’s through a giant rave party, a four day electronic music festival complete
with psychedelic lights and international DJs….”. With video footage of densely
packed dancing men and women taken from the exhilarating event held two
or three days previously flashing across the background screen, the newscaster
continued: …the images that you see are from Saudi Arabia (where) a giant
party was held in the deserts of Riyadh with the blessings and money of the
Saudi royal family, the House of Saud. They fully endorsed and sponsored this
carnival. It was attended by artistes from all over the world. Tiesto, Martin
Garrix, David Guetta, Afrojack…you name them, the world’s leading DJs,
performed at the rave. Their excitement was evident in their statements”. One
of the DJs was heard saying: It was the first time that there was going to be
women and men being able to dance together, and there was also a very historical
moment, and I am happy to be part of this……….. Of course, there’s more things
to be done to improve the country, but I think they opening, are really going
to the right direction giving more rights to women like four years ago women
couldn’t drive ……they can come and dance…. It’s a huge evolution…”.
That
was what one of the DJs taking part in the massive musical show said about its
underlying significance for a socio-culturally changed future for the kingdom,
the birth place of Islam, with a previous reputation as the exporter of Islamic
fundamentalism. The news presenter then dwelt on the fact that the exuberant
Western type of music festival in the traditionally conservative Saudi Arabia
did indeed symbolise a ‘huge evolution’. She went on:
(QUOTE)
Saudi men and women dancing with abandon, swaying to the beats of Western
music, no gender segregation, no full length robes, no face veils, no any
religious restrictions for that matter……All this was unthinkable in Saudi
Arabia just a few years back. Now it is happening ……….By the way, this rave
party comes close on the heels of the ……… Red Sea International Film Festival,
the first of its kind to be held in Saudi Arabia. It was a star studded affair
with women walking the red carpet in sleeveless gowns, a woman film maker
winning the best director award, and an openly queer man winning the best actor
award….What do you make of these changes? The sands are shifting in Saudi
Arabia, it’s evident. The socially conservative kingdom is trying to shake off
its regressive image. It’s limiting the rule of religion in public life and
fitting itself as a modern liberal and tourism friendly kingdom. And this, we
say, is a welcome change. Although critics of Saudi Arabia say it’s a
facade (and) insist (that) the Saudi society is not making any fundamental
meaningful change…., ever since Mohamed bin Salman was made the crown prince in
Saudi Arabia, he’s embarked on a liberalisation drive, with loosened gender
segregation norms, he’s reopened cinemas, allowed women to drive, to go to
stadiums, take the haj without a male guardian….In a way MBS has defanged the
country’s religious police that not too long ago would dictate every facet of
daily life. And those are all remarkable reforms, they deserve applause…. But I
have also to say they are only half-measures, and very late at that. Some very
problematic issues persist in the Saudi society. Saudi Arabia continues to
arrest dissidents, …to extend prison terms of activists. It continues to detain
the rich on allegations of corruption, a tinkering with power structures,
arbitrary reshuffling whom the crown prince thinks are potential challengers.
Political reform remains taboo……”. (END OF QUOTE)
The
foregoing is based on a news item from an independent online news source that
represents the international free media. The comments on the piece of news are
those of the newscaster, about which we listeners and viewers may or may
not agree with her, or regarding which we may just remain neutral. But the
piece of news is true, and so is what she says about the Saudi crown prince’s
commitment to a ‘liberalization drive’ and his determination to rid his country
of its ‘regressive’ image. What it indicates is that the tide is turning
against violent Islamic extremism. It is the same in other countries too. Isn’t
this good news for people all over the world who are faced with forms of
violent Islamism? For, in this global anti-extremist background, we need not
entertain exaggerated fears about the menace or resort to measures that are
likely to breathe new life into it instead of letting it die a natural death.
The
Saudi crown prince Mohamed bin Salman’s brave initiative is an extremely
praiseworthy example in a world where, in spite of the steadily rising
awareness, particularly among the educated youth, of the dangerous insanity of
excessive religiosity and the increasing rejection of its political backers and
sympathisers by the civilized world, the backward ruling classes seem to
believe that they are required to tolerate or even appease the few extremists
in order to win the hearts and minds of the ordinary faithful. The Saudi
leader’s reformist gestures make good news for non-Muslim majority countries including
Sri Lanka where a few opportunistic Muslim politicians maintain secret dealngs
with extremists while pretending as if they had nothing to do with
them.
It
was justly suspected by many around the time of the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide
bombings (i.e., both before and after the unspeakable horror) that a handful of
opportunistic Sri Lankan Muslim politicians with a communal mindset were
maintaining treacherous links with suicide-bombing extremists for personal
political advantage. It is now well known now that these sham champions
of Muslims try to create the illusion of a non-existent Buddhist-Muslim conflct
or disharmony in the country through false propaganda, which is a part of their
scheming to position themselves between foreign donors inspired to genuinely
help their Sri Lankan co-religionists that, they have been persuaded to wrongly
believe, are being persecuted by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority. All our
political, civil and religious leaders need to unite to convince the leaders of
friendly Islamic nations not to be misled by these duplicitous, self-seeking
Muslim politicos who ultimately betray not only the interests of Sri Lankan
Muslims (hardly 10% of the country’s total population) whom they claim to
represent, but those of the whole nation.
I
dealt with this subject in ‘MWL should separate the wheat from the chaff’/The
Island/ May 4, 2021), where I wrote: What should be of greater concern for the
government is the fact that, by contriving to get themselves identified as
constituting the whole Muslim community of the country, the handful of
Islamist extremists who are widely believed to have provided tacit or explicit
support for the suicide bombers are also foisting themselves on its (the MWL’s)
powerful patronage”. By the wheat” in the title I meant the traditional Sri
Lankan Muslim minority who have co-existed peacefully with the majority
Sinhalese Buddhists and other minority communities over the centuries; by the
chaff” I meant opportunistic Muslim politicos who secretly associate with
extremists, while masquerading as champions of the generality of peaceful
Muslims. These duplicitous Muslim politicos manage to enjoy the best of both
worlds by making shrewd changes of their loyalty at the right time to join the
incoming administration, under whichever major party’s leadership it gets
formed. Leaders of both major parties don’t hesitate to cut deals with these
communalist Muslim politicians at critical moments.
This
reminded me of certain statements that businessman-turned-politician Shiraz
Yunus made recently which were critical of the government, of which he is a
partner. He attacked the government while claiming to be prime minister Mahinda
Rajapaksa’s national coordinator for Muslim affairs. The PM’s media division
has since denied that Yunus holds any position in the government and that he
was expressing his individual personal
opinions.
This
is according to a statement in Sinhala from the Prime Minister’s Media Division
published in the online news portal lankacnews on December 4, 2021 (a
day after the Sialkot incident); it was signed by Rohan Weliwita, the PM’s
media secretary. The statement was carried under a headline that
translates into English as Mr Shiraz Yunus has not been appointed to any post
in the Prime Minister’s Office”:
QUOTE
I
wish to announce that Mr Shiraz Yunus does not work as a coordinating secretary
to the Prime Minister; such a position has not not been granted by the Prime
Minister’s Office.
This
is to declare that the PM’s Office has no connection with the statements that
Mr Shiraz Yunus makes claiming that he serves as the PM’s coordinating
secretary.
Meanwhile,
he has not been given a post of any description in the PM’s Office.
I
wish to further state that his statements are completely personal and
that neither the prime minister nor the Prime Minister’s Office endorses those
ideas.
END
OF QUOTE
Why
shouldn’t we ask the PM’s media unit to: Tell it to the marines? This is hardly
more than mere wordplay. In the following You Tube interview published more
than five weeks ago, Shiraz Yunus didn’t ever once refer to himself as a
coordinating secretary; he claimed to be the prime minister’s ‘National
Coordinator for Muslim Affairs’. This interview took place more than a month
before Priyantha Kumara was lynched by an Islamist mob. By denying after more
than one month what Yunus never claimed (he never said he is/was acting as PM’s
coordinating secretary” for Muslim affairs), the PM’s media unit seems to be
trying to eat the cake and have it, too. Did it have to take a heinous crime
like beating to death of a helpless man and desecrating his dead body by burning
it on a main road in Pakistan on December 3, 2021 by a lynch mob for alleged
blasphemy, for the PM (who is also the minister of Buddha Sasana) to dissociate
himself at long last from Yunus’s baseless attacks on the Gotabaya loyalist
faction in the government? Yunus’s criticisms include the false charge of
anti-Muslim discrimination as allegedly exemplified in the mandatory burning of
Covid-19 dead, ignoring the religious sensitivities of the Muslims (and of
others, for that matter) as an absolute necessity in the circumstances.
Government and Opposition leaders have an unavoidable responsibility to ensure
the protection of the non-Muslim majority of the population and the moderate
Muslims from the excesses of Islamist extremists. Politicians, please don’t
sacrifice these innocents on the altar of political correctness to please the
opportunistic ruling elite of the Muslim community.
During
an interview conducted in Sinhala on a You Tube channel on October 27, 2021,
Shiraz Yunus, who describes himself as Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa’s
National Coordinator for Muslim Affairs, laments that by now there is clearly a
split in the government between a faction that supports the President and
another that stands by the Prime Minister. According to Yunus, the latter has
been reduced to a nominal PM and rendered powerless. This, Shiraz Yunus says,
is in spite of the fact that the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) came to
power due to the influence of Mahinda Rajapaksa. Yunus’s claim is not
exactly true: What reaches me through the grapevine from Sri Lanka is that
ordinary people whisper among themselves that the politically experienced
Mahinda has ruined Gotabaya by restraining his actions, the latter being a
neophyte in statecraft; Mahinda’s family bandyism and his softness towards
certain notorious elements among his loyalists had already dented his heroic
image, which helped the 2015 plot against him. The resounding victory of the
SLPP in 2020 was not exclusively due to Mahinda regaining his old popularity.
Probably a more important contributory factor was Gotabaya’s image as an
uncorrupt person and his reputation as an able civil administrator.
Yunus
avers that the Rajapaksa government has lost all its credibility. If an
election was held today, 98% of the Muslims would not vote for the SLPP; their
(i.e., Muslims’) only hope is for this government to fall; Yunus asserts
that the same hope is shared by all Sri Lankans. Only the remaining 2% of the
Muslims will want the SLPP to gain power again! And who are those Muslims?
Businessmen and wheeler-dealers”, as Yunus claims, including presumably the
likes of Rishad and Hakeem, who are communalist minority politicians.
Rishad threw stones at a judge’s house, but was not arraigned in a court of
law, Yunus remembers. (In the past, Rishad enjoyed the indulgence of the
government, whichever of the two major parties was in power.) Yunus complains
that although he wanted to contest the last election from the SLPP, he didn’t
get the ticket for it. Now he won’t even vote for the SLPP if there’s an
election for it is sure to lose! My hunch is that though, as is well known,
Muslims did not make any extraordinary contribution to Gotabaya’s or SLPP’s
victory, they gained the whip hand over both (Ali Sabry over the former and
Muslim wheeler-dealers like Yunus over the latter).
The
PM’s National Coordinator for Muslim Affairs, is no doubt, performing his duty
to the satisfaction of his employer. Surprisingly for a Mahinda loyalist, he
argues that Rishad and Hakeem emerged and flourished during Rajapaksa times,
which, however, is not an untruth. In his opinion, the majority Sinhalese were
opposed to the 20th Amendment (that repealed 19A and restored the executive
powers of the President that it had clipped). When enough MPs (required to form
the two thirds majority) were not available to pass the 20A bill, some
potentate arranged to cut a deal with the two to get their support. Yunus
addresses himself directly to the duo (MPs Rishad and Hakeem) through the
CP/Pnone/TV screen, and takes them to task for sacrificing Muslim interests for
personal political gain! He shouts lajjai, lajjai” shame, shame” at them.
Rishad and Hakeem must have guffawed in private if they watched him performing
his dramatic feigning. However, towards the end of the You Tube channel
QA session, Yunus betrays his hypocrisy by inadvertently revealing that he, in
addition to being a disillusioned politician, is a disgruntled businessman as
well, with interests at least in fertilizer importation and hydro-electricity
production. He asked for a permit, he tells the interviewer, for importing what
he calls liquid organic fertilizer, but his application was not granted by the
agriculture department (which, he implies, does not know what sort of organic
fertiliser is good for the country).
Yunus
makes the patently false claim that the two and a half million Muslim community
live in fear today, implying that all Sri Lankan Muslims are being condemned,
and discriminated against, as violent Islamists, which allegation is a figment
of his imagination. Which community does he hold responsible for this alleged
anti-Muslim bigotry? The majority Sinhalese, of course. This is not the place
to produce evidence to disprove his false charge (Yunus knows the truth to be
otherwise). Even before the April 21 attack took place, some young Sinhalese
Buddhist activists and monks made credible claims that hauls of swords and
knives were being concealed in mosques. Nothing was done to check the veracity
of these alleged wild fabrications”. When hoards of newly imported swords were
discovered in mosques during police searches following the 2019 Easter Sunday
attacks, the Sinhalese Buddhist activists’ claims were found not to be
fabrications; the yahapalana government didn’t seem to take exposures
seriously. The reality is that this close Mahinda Rajapaksa associate has been
repeating the same sort of nonsense in his FB and Twitter accounts and in other
mainstream and social media channels.
It
is also clear that Shiraz Yunus is better received among global Muslims than
the PM himself who supposedly consults him on Muslim issues. Yunus says
that he has acted as Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Muslim affairs coordinator since March
23, 2018 (that is, well before MR became PM). He stresses that he has no
connection with the Muslim Cultural Department, which is paid separately. His
job was earlier done by an MP, Yunus said. In his capacity as national
coordinator he looks after all Muslim affairs. Yunus complains that those that
he calls new ‘viruses’ that recently gathered round the PM have failed to
communicate the true message to the Muslim public. There are contextual hints
to say that Yunus’s alleged viruses are officials from the Muslim Affairs
Department and the Muslim businessmen that allegedly surround him. But, doesn’t
he himself belong to the same category?
He
makes passing references to the problem of Muslim objections to the cremation
of their Covid-19 dead and the Muslims’ perception of the cow slaughter
ban as discriminatory towards them as a community. Why didn’t Yunus, as PM’s
paid overall Muslim affairs coodinator (advisor/consultant in practice),
prevent the PM from so egregiously mishandling both issues? At that time,
cremation of covid dead was ordered by the Director General of Health Services,
who had been appointed as the competent authority to decide on the way such
bodies were to be disposed of. The DGHS made it mandatory to cremate bodies of
Covid dead on perfect scientific advice in view of the water table situation of
the country that made burial Covid virus infected bodies dangerous to public
health. However, the government could have asked the experts to devise a safe
way to bury the bodies of those Covid dead whose families insisted on burying
them on religious grounds, such as impervious concrete walled coffins.
Ironically, even the fiery Ven. Gnanasara Thera wanted Muslim sentiments
accomodated in this regard, and burial permitted. But that was running counter
to what scientific opinion demanded.The decision belonged to the authorities.
The DGHS implemented what the health experts recommended. The government
took it for granted that people of all religious persuasions would prioritise
science over religion, and accept his decision. That agreed with president
Gotabaya’s approach to the issue. But the biased media interpreted this as Sri
Lanka forcing Muslims to cremate their Covid dead (in violation of their
religious sentiments). However, some conservative Muslims and the few
opportunistic Muslim leaders didn’t relent.
It
was rumoured that PM Mahinda Rajapaksa embarrassed himself by asking Maldives
to accept bodies of Corona dead Muslims for burial.That was probably the most
clumsy decision the veteran politician took in his generally illustrious
political life until then. The Maldivian leaders responded positively which
could only be expected, but it appeared that no dead bodies were transported
there for burial. However, the PM’s clumsy response to the problem projected
Sri Lanka as a country that was not sensitive to the feelings of religious
minorities, even at a tragic moment like that. (NB: We are made to understand
that PM Rajapaksa never asked Maldives to bury Covid-19 dead Sri Lankan Muslims
in its soil, and that the offer actually came from the Maldivian authorities.
Be that as it may, whichever alternative was actually proposed, it would have
fed the totally unfounded canard that, in Sri Lanka, Muslims are being
discriminated against.) Then, reportedly MR had arrangements made for such
bodies to be taken to Ottamavadi in Batticaloa, where the shallow water table
problem was not there. Later a boastful controversial Muslim politico
from that province claimed with responsibility” that the bodies of some Muslim
dead were buried normally in Colombo, while their empty coffins were ‘cremated’
to satisfy the official requirement. He was actually betraying the PM, for he
implied that this was done with the knowledge of the latter. (This piece of
news was carried, if my memory is correct, in the online Sinhala news outlet
lankacnews, but I cannot remember the date it was published.)
This
handful of communalist Muslim politicians have a niche in both major parties.
While this is the truth, many SLPP speakers have rubbished the Janatha Vimukti
Peramuna for having included, in the past, business magnate Ibrahim (father of
two suicide bomber sons who perished while carrying out the April 21 Easter
bombing attacks) in their national list! But the JVP may not have known that
they too had been infiltrated by the same traitors, who use religion as a
secret weapon in business and politics. Let’s hope that the emerging Jana Bala
Vegaya (People’s Power) movement and other new patriotic alliances beware of
the danger. Majority party politicians need not worry about losing the support
of the few Muslim political crooks who are at present ruling the roost within
the Muslim polity. They are being exposed, and their days are numbered. The
future belongs to young Muslim politicians like national list MP (from Wimal
Weerawansa’s National Freedom Front or NFF) Mohamed Muzammil (41), whose
non-communalist politics, incorruptability and secular credentials are beyond
question. By the time of the next general elections, there will be enough new
youthful Muslim leaders of his calibre to elbow out the blighters.
