{"id":67038,"date":"2017-06-17T16:25:30","date_gmt":"2017-06-17T22:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=67038"},"modified":"2017-06-17T09:09:04","modified_gmt":"2017-06-17T16:09:04","slug":"barking-up-the-wrong-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/06\/17\/barking-up-the-wrong-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"Barking up the wrong tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

A writer by the name of Dr M. Harris Z Deen (Attacks on Islamic places of worship and properties go unabated despite assurances\/The Island Features\/May 22, 2017) begins his feature article with these words:<\/p>\n

The patience of the Sri Lankan Muslims is at a breaking point and can certainly boil over if the government does not take any immediate positive steps to bring the rabble mongers to book we are likely to see more bloodshed than the butchery that happened during the thirty years of civil strife between the Sinhala and Tamil communities\u201d.<\/p>\n

This unnecessarily provocative opening sentence is an utter misrepresentation of the prevailing\u00a0 factual situation, which is fairly well known to those \u00a0whom Harris Deen roundly condemns as rabble mongers\u201d (obviously, a slip of the pen for rabble-rousers\u201d); it is an exact reversal of the truth. That the monks have genuine concerns to express is even better known to the shady characters on the side that Harris Deen is naturally sympathetic to, and supports, probably in ignorance or more probably in righteous deception. Harris Deen is insulting the Sri Lankan Muslims by identifying them with a few fundamentalist elements who are at the root of the problem. A certain Muslim minister (one of them against whom these monks are allegedly armed with concrete evidence) also made the same warning a few weeks back. People ask: Are you people privy to something sinister happening? Please don\u2019t jump to conclusions before these so-called Attacks on Islamic places of worship\u201d are properly investigated by the authorities and the culprits are apprehended or until the authenticity of the charges is duly established. Do not play with fire. We, the citizens of this beloved motherland of ours, have a duty to do and say whatever we can to make it as happy, as healthy and as secure a place as possible for our children and their children and for all future generations. It is in that spirit that I am writing this reply to you, Dr M. Harris Deen!<\/p>\n

Galaboda Aththe Gnanasara Thera (who has earned the dubious reputation of having already seriously damaged a worthy cause by giving verbal expression to his explosive temper which is entirely out of character with a Buddhist monk) and many other deeply concerned monks have long been raising their voice against the activities of certain dangerous fundamentalist Christian and Islamic sects which are considered a threat even to the traditional Christian and Muslim communities. They are also playing leading roles in a number of \u00a0nonpolitical youth movements which are active against the aggressive encroachment on, and deliberate destruction of, ancient Buddhist archaeological sites in the North and East provinces where our millennia old island civilization had its roots. I have no personal knowledge of these things. I depend on what is publicly available in the media, particularly in the uncensored social media. It is when some Muslims, thought to be sponsored by a fanatical Islamist sect with foreign backing, put up unauthorized structures in ancient Buddhist historical sites under the very nose of certain unconcerned government officials who are officially responsible for their protection, that these monk activists apparently try to take the law into their own hands. The inaction of the government functionaries including law enforcement authorities in those areas in the face of encroachment and vandalizing of Buddhist historical places is the main reason why Buddhist monks get involved in this problem. So the ultimate responsibility rests with the government. It is not a religious or political problem. It is a failure of good governance.<\/p>\n

These historical and archaeological places are of importance not only to the Sinhalese whose ancestors built edifices in them that are now in ruins, mostly buried in the earth, but also to the other Sri Lankan communities, because we are the common inheritors of those treasures. These monks\u2019 agitations are not about politics, but about safeguarding the Sinhalese Buddhist cultural heritage of our country. The state has the primary responsibility to prevent conditions from arising that force our monks to resort to modes of protesting that are incompatible with their traditional image of inner calm and \u00a0characteristic forbearance. In practical terms, this means that all those elected members in parliament, whatever their status (whether they are in the government or in the oppositions, whether they are ruling at present or ruled in the past), must be held accountable; since the problem involves Buddhist monks, the Mahanayakes take equal responsibility. But we know that nearly all of them have been unpardonably remiss in doing their duty. The genuinely concerned citizens of this country are more worried about the fact that \u00a0the patience of the monks (and that of the Sinhalese Buddhist community who are aware of the evil that is happening to them) is wearing thin than about the unwarranted threats (full of \u2018sound and fury, signifying nothing\u2019, though) of a handful of ministerial nincompoops who are almost entirely to blame for the present deplorable state of affairs (if the evidence alleged to be in the monks\u2019 possession is true as they claim). That the monks are not alone should not be forgotten.<\/p>\n

But for the social media the provocative unlawful activities of the fundamentalist elements go almost entirely unreported. The mainstream media observe a judicious silence in the name of reconciliation. Rightly or wrongly the ordinary people are kept in the dark about what is happening in the background to which these monks and their young supporters are reacting. A slightly more fortunate\/or significantly more unfortunate minority of us \u00a0avail ourselves of informal uncensored newscasts on the social media, and are aware of many recent instances of aggression on our ancient Buddhist historical sites by non-Buddhists in the northern and eastern provinces, apparently in defiance of the law enforcement authorities in those areas. There is much credible video evidence to confirm this on the internet. Anybody interested can check out. Minister Wijedasa Rajapakse visited a certain place in the East in response to days of agitation by Buddhist monks and lay activists, inspected the vandalized spots, and promised to take some practical steps to stop the situation deteriorating further, like setting up some guard posts at vulnerable points. This happened not many weeks ago. I think he kept his promise. However, since the problem seems to persist, we must conclude that nothing very effective has still been done. How long is this going to go on? We do not know if the information bruited about in the internet about the desecration and even destruction of sacred Buddhist sites in the said provinces is true or false. It is up to the responsible government authorities to investigate and inform us of the truth, and take corrective action on behalf of us all.<\/p>\n

Harris Deen also wrongly believes that the thirty year civil conflict was between the Sinhala and Tamil communities\u201d. In this, he is seriously mistaken or knowingly misleading. Or perhaps he himself has been misled about it. Again it is difficult to think he is deliberately making misleading comments. But to say that the conflict was between the Sinhala and Tamil communities is an absolute lie. Throughout the period which saw civilian massacres , suicide bombings, and other atrocities committed by separatist terrorists, there were no retaliatory attacks on Tamil civilians. Even the attacks on Tamils in 1983 were carried out by some criminal elements (probably used as agents provocateurs by some outside power with a view to destabilizing the country); they did not represent the whole Sinhalese community. The majority of the ordinary Sinhalese sheltered the victims as best they could under the unfortunate circumstances then prevailing for which the UNP government of the day were to be held responsible.<\/p>\n

Even during the deadliest phase of the armed separatist conflict, the previous government never failed to feed the ordinary (mostly Tamil and Muslim) inhabitants of \u00a0the north and east provinces with or without the assistance of the UN bodies normally active in such situations. It was well known that the rebels stole much of the food stuffs sent to the north for civilian consumption. The Tamil civilians in the affected areas were not starved even though the LTTE cadres stole their food: The latter who controlled the distribution of food sent to the embattled areas often inflated the numbers of civilians who were to be fed in order to get extra food supplies. After the war was over, TV news teams showed how the Tamil rebels had used sacks of lentils, rice etc sent for the civilian population as sand bags from behind which to fire at the enemy from their bunkers! The government also sent medicines to the hospitals in the North. It was known that the rebels also made use of these drugs just as they ate the food that was meant for civilians. Salaries were paid to government servants in those areas. Schools functioned without much interruption. Even terror leader Prabhakaran\u2019s children studied in government schools in Kilinochchi until the end of their A-Levels, after which they were sent to Britain for higher education by Prabhakaran. Towards the war\u2019s end, some 295,000 displaced Tamils, held as a human shield by the LTTE, were taken to makeshift refugee centres amidst intense LTTE obstructions including shooting at escaping\u00a0 civilians; although things were not easy initially, these refugees were later accommodated in better camps, where\u00a0 facilities were soon provided for children\u2019s schooling and for public healthcare.<\/p>\n

So, if the war-winning government of the time didn\u2019t think much about countering the anti-Sri Lanka propaganda blitzkrieg launched by the defeated separatists and their sympathizers, it was because the then rulers were too absorbed in the tasks of rebuilding the war-devastated areas and in resettling the displaced Tamil civilians and in improving their general lot. In the final stages of the humanitarian operation (so dubbed because its purpose was to rescue the Tamil civil civilians held hostage by the LTTE to ensure their own physical survival); even those Tamil refugees started praying for a decisive victory over their would-be saviours, which demonstrated the fact that the conflict was not between the Sinhalese and the Tamil communities, but between the state and a rebel group that challenged its authority. \u00a0Harris Deen himself seems to hint at this towards the end of his article in these words: The Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim people irrespective of linguistic or religious leanings welcomed the ending of the war despite protests from vested interests losing their \u2018avenue\u2019 of \u2018revenue\u2019 through illegal arms sales and other activities including dealing in drugs\u2026\u201d (though these \u2018vested interests\u2019 had been motivated by far more dignified goals than those suggested by Harris Deen).<\/p>\n

In seeming to apportion the major part of the blame for ethnic tensions in post-independence Sri Lanka to the majority Sinhalese community, particularly to Sinhalese Buddhists, he shows his general ignorance of the factual background. It was not what he calls the \u2018result of 1958\u2019 that ultimately led to the emergence of Tamil separatist terrorism. The unjustified separatist sentiment was crystallized by S.J.V. Chelvanayagam who, in 1949, founded the Illankai Tamil Arasu Kacchi\u00a0 (Lanka Tamil Kingdom\/State Party) in the form of its ideology. The Sinhalese majority never grudged the minorities\u00a0 living with them in peace, enjoying equal rights, although they have no other country to call their homeland. The separatist ideology is being kept alive by foreign \u2018vested interests\u2019 with their own specific geopolitical axes to grind. The Sinhalese are indigenous to Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese Buddhist culture evolved there. Sri Lanka is the motherland of the Sinhalese. It is only those who regard it as their\u00a0 one and only motherland, their inalienable property, who genuinely love Sri Lanka. But this does not mean that the country is exclusively for the Sinhalese.<\/p>\n

When some Muslims (like Harris Deen) write or say, The patience of the Sri Lankan Muslims is at a breaking point\u2026.\u201d, they seem to assume that there are no sectarian divisions among them. Such an assumption is erroneous. However, a nearly homogeneous Muslim community was what existed in Sri Lanka about 40 to 45 years ago. But at present the situation is different in that respect. The spiritual tradition of Sufism, like in other parts of South Asia, is dominant among Sri Lankan Muslims (9% of the population where almost 70% are Buddhists). The two communities have been living together peaceably for centuries.\u00a0 Although the usual ethnic harmony between the Buddhists and the Muslims still holds for the most part, unfortunately, of late, an element of mutual distrust and aloofness has begun contaminating Buddhist Muslim social relations. This is due almost entirely to the activities of a movement called the Thawheed (Monotheism) dedicated to the propagation of the ultra-fundamentalist ideology of Wahhabism which is deadly opposed to Sufism.\u00a0 Wahhabism is the official version of Islam in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

The present Saudi kingdom was founded in the early 1930s by British prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Abdu Aziz Ibn Saud. In the first half of the 20th<\/sup> century, the British and French imperial powers divided up the Middle East into kingdoms as a part of their divide and rule strategy. They did this with a view to promoting their strategic and commercial interests in the region. The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-1974 (imposed against the United States by the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the OPEC) in retaliation to its support for Israel) made Saudi Arabia extraordinarily rich. The new riches have enabled the Saudi Wahhabists to pursue their expansionist dreams. The movement which is well funded by the rich Saudis is opening religious schools or madrases in Sri Lanka as they are doing in other countries allegedly for the propagation of Wahhabism. Suddenly, however, Qatar has reputedly emerged as an even more fanatical sponsor of this particularly expansionist brand of Islam.<\/p>\n

Understandably, Buddhists led by the monks are looking on such developments with apprehension, because they believe that the Wahhabists are out to destroy the Sinhalese Buddhist cultural foundation of Sri Lanka. There is a lot of evidence that is cited to support that belief. They are undermining the traditional goodwill that exists between the\u00a0 Buddhists and Muslims. The Wahhabists do not represent the mainstream Muslim community in Sri Lanka who are predominantly Sufis. The Wahhabists treat the latter as heretics, and often visit violence on them. When the Sufi order Thareekathul Mufliheen opened a meditation centre at Kattankudy in 1996, the Wahhabists attacked the place with grenades and guns; they shot at the members of the Sufi sect. This happened in May that year. Eight and a half years later, late night on October 31, 2004, about 500 Wahhabi jihadists set fire to the aforementioned meditation centre again. They destroyed the centre\u2019s library, along with houses and businesses owned by the Sufis.<\/p>\n

Just a few days ago, on the night of June 8, 2017, at 11 pm, an armed group, allegedly members of the Thawheed Jamad Organization, attacked a mosque at Ottamawadu and completely destroyed it. The mainstream media hardly give any publicity to such incidents. Incidents of violence, allegedly committed by Buddhist monks-led Sinhalese \u2018gangs\u2019, are freely reported, without any regard for the necessity of verifying the accuracy of such reports. Some attacks are said to be self-inflicted so as to throw suspicion upon members of Sinhalese Buddhist organizations who only want to draw the government\u2019s and public\u2019s attention to the criminal activities of communalists and religious fanatics who are hell- bent on destroying the traditional Buddhist cultural heritage of the country. The monks are reacting to mischief; they are not mischief- makers. On June 11, a fire gutted a tea factory at Nawalapitiya owned by a Muslim. Minister Rauf Hakeem strongly suggested that it was the work of a certain (Sinhala Buddhist) organization. But the owner of the factory said that the fire was caused by an electricity leakage. Rauf Hakeem is among the Muslim ministers who, the monks charge, clandestinely support invasive Islamist sectarianism.<\/p>\n

Trying to browbeat, in the name of reconciliation, the innocent while mollycoddling the real perpetrators of\u00a0 communal and religious violence, will not solve the problem. What must be done, and what the monk activists are demanding, is that the authorities investigate the reality behind these vociferous mutual recriminations by\u00a0 Buddhist and Muslim groups and individuals, and that appropriate remedial measures be taken expeditiously and impartially to arrest the rot before the situation worsens as so wickedly expected by unseen mischief makers from outside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala A writer by the name of Dr M. Harris Z Deen (Attacks on Islamic places of worship and properties go unabated despite assurances\/The Island Features\/May 22, 2017) begins his feature article with these words: The patience of the Sri Lankan Muslims is at a breaking point and can certainly boil over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rohana-r-wasala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}