{"id":88135,"date":"2019-05-02T23:18:50","date_gmt":"2019-05-03T05:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=88135"},"modified":"2019-05-02T16:16:23","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T23:16:23","slug":"an-australian-journalists-attack-on-the-sinhalese-buddhists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/05\/02\/an-australian-journalists-attack-on-the-sinhalese-buddhists\/","title":{"rendered":"An Australian Journalist’s attack on the Sinhalese Buddhists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr D.Chandraratna<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

As peace loving Sri Lankans we are\ndismayed by the surreptitious accusations and innuendos cast on the majority\nSinhala Buddhist community by Waleed Ali, an Australian TV presenter in his\nColumn in the Daily telegraph, on the recent tragic events in Sri Lanka. This\nterrorist activity in Easter Sunday was directed at the Christians, but not\nlimited to Christian churches is obvious as bombings have been carried out in 5\nand 6 star hotels in Colombo where the majority of the patrons are Sinhalese\nand Europeans as the numbers of dead and the injured reveal.  The terror\nextended to the North and the East of Sri Lanka is indicative that the North\nand the East where the majority are Muslims have become a fertile ground for\ninsurgent activity. Waleed Ali’s reference to Sinhala Buddhists is an\nunnecessary digression, populist, irresponsible racial backsliding to distract\nthe Islamic terror and mitigate the blame that should squarely fall on the\nradical Muslims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generally the Western media has been for\ndecades noted for their historic partisanship. There assertions implicating the\nSinhala Buddhists were tantamount to encouragement of Tamil separatist\nterrorism in Sri Lanka. The scant sympathy they extended to the Sinhalese\nvictims is still reverberating in our memory for which we have forgiven.  Yet some have seen in the recent events a\ngolden opportunity yet again to cast aspersions and accusations on the majority\nSinhala Buddhist community in Sri Lanka. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us respond to this man in detail.  He writes, ‘ (E) very terrorist attack in which\ninnocent people are killed is devastatingly tragic. Every one of them is\nheinous. But what we\u2019ve seen in Sri Lanka this week exists on a rarefied level\nof depravity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, there\u2019s the supreme violation\nof slaughtering people in worship \u2013 now an established feature of terrorism and\nparticularly Islamic State\u2019s violence’. We are in total agreement with Ali and\nmight we also add that we extend our sympathy to the dead, both innocent and\nthe misguided guilty, for it is a wanton waste of a precious human life as\nCardinal Malcolm Ranjith said at the Easter mass in Colombo. As Sinhalese Buddhists\nwe cultivate no hatred towards other religions for we have no concept of ‘infidels’\nand we seek no revenge for not being Buddhists. As intelligent people we must\nuse our words carefully. There is certainly no hatred between the Buddhists and\nthe Christians, just like between Muslims and Christians that Ali is proud of. Moreover\nthe Sinhalese and Christians are frequently consanguineal blood relatives, in\nthe thousands. We have no religious, dogmatic taboos about marrying non-Buddhists\nand that is how we have been for centuries. The link between Christians and\nBuddhists is from time immemorial. The previous President is married to a\nCatholic family and the current Prime Minister hails from a Christian family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waleed Ali described the 30-year terrorist\nwar as between Sinhalese Buddhists and Hindu minority is absurd nonsense. He does\nnot know that it was an insurrection against the state. Was there a Hindu\ntemple in Colombo ever attacked, did a single Buddhist ever murder a Hindu, we\nask. To keep a 20 odd million agitated Sinhalese subdued when bombs were flying\nall around them, prevent attacking a single Tamil in the 30-year war is a\ntribute to the culture of the Sinhalese Buddhists. Yet, in disturbing contrast\nare his references to the extremism, muted, cagey and sheepish, showing double\nstandards? A Sri Lankan commentator added, quite rightly, that in the Sunday\nMassacre ‘we haven\u2019t seen outpouring of outrage from\nMuslim \u2018civil society\u2019 of the kind witnessed when the comparatively baby-like\nacts of violence perpetrated against Muslims by extremist Buddhists in Digana\nand Teldeniya last year or when similar violence was unleashed in Aluthgama a\nfew years before. One has to ask if it is because Buddhists constitute a soft\nand preferred target as far as \u2018civil society\u2019 outfits are concerned’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This uninformed man must understand the nature\nof violence, which happens sporadically in a multiracial, politically active\nsociety where people are scrambling for the limited resources, in a competitive\neconomy. No society is ever immune to such sporadic episodes for humans are\nemotionally charged being.  Race riots\nthey are but terrorism they are not. Reality has to be grasped properly. Mob\nviolence is round the corner in any multicultural, multi religious society when\nthere is an immediate event that arouses the sensibilities of people. The\nrational beings control their impulses but the same does not hold with the\nunder educated and irrational subjects. The Sinhalese – Muslim skirmishes that\nhe so loudly proclaims to mitigate the depravity of the terror must be examined\nin its proper light. The Aluthgama riots were allegedly over the incident\ninvolving Muslim youth desecrating a temple by throwing a severed head of a cow\nand the Digana Kandy riots were due to the killing of a Sinhalese lorry driver\nby Muslim youth. These are not terrorist activities in any definition or there\nwere no caches of weapons discovered to indicate they were intent on massacring\ninnocent people. How many lives were lost, perhaps none. But to call something terrorism\nagainst a racial group needs a confluence of many things. It cannot happen in a\nday or two. It is organized as in a war situation by bringing weapons in large\nquantities. Illegal weapons,\nexplosives, detonators, communication equipment, forged passports, National\nIdentity Cards and vehicles.\nThere must be hundreds and thousands of agents to carry out the mass violence. That\nis terrorism. The Thowheed Jama’th speaks of 200,000 followers according to Muslim\nsources. To write that in Digana, houses are set on fire, reminiscent of the\nold gruesome story of death inside their own home as in 1983, is over the top. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take the case of the Sinhalese attacks\non mushrooming Christian sects. Waleed Ali and others like Amanda Hodge must be\nfactual in what they write. The truth of the matter is that Sinhalese Christians\nwere annoyed as much as the Buddhists owing to the numerous evangelical sects\nmushrooming in the island after the tsunami. Converting poor Sinhalese was a\npast time on the pretext of assisting them materially out of the funds collected\non the pretext of the disaster in Western countries was an irritant to the\nestablished Christian religions as much as to the Sinhalese. For conversion of\ntheir brethren the Sinhalese killed none. Unlike in the Muslim community these\nincidents do not end in blood letting and in a multi religious society these\nare events the state has to control through legislation. That silence gave the\nspark to the radical elements in the events after the Tsunami and they were a\npassing phase. No traditional churches were ever attacked by the rioters. Freedom\nof religion also has limits for you do not live in isolation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These uninformed characters should note\nwhat Muslim intellectuals have to say. A respected scholar domiciled in\nAustralia says that in a multi racial society that is Sri Lanka, there was a\nself-inflicted alienation which was widening the gap between some Muslims and\nother communities, primarily the Sinhala Buddhist community, arousing\nsuspicion. Dr Ameer Ali is emphatic that the vast majority of Buddhists are not\nfanatics and a vast majority of Sinhalese are not racists either.  He said a minority, who is very vocal and is\ntrying to grab attention should not be allowed to take the country in the wrong\ndirection. The small radical element among the Sinhalese are legally punished\nand put in jail. At elections these elements are bundled out but the Muslims still\ngo by ethnicity in all-political matters and make democracy really unworkable.
\n
\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\nfar as the Muslims are concerned, it must be understood that the new doctrine\npromotes a vicious cycle<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of\nself-alienation that leads to exclusivism to extremism ending in radicalization\nand terrorism.           Self-alienation
\nstarts in many ways.  To give a few\nexamples, the Muslim schools operate on a different calendar. It prevents the\nMuslims children from interacting with other communities. Muslims do not hoist\nthe national flag in front of our mosques and schools and other institutions on\nthe day of Independence, a symbolic meeting point for everyone. Kaththankudy, the\nnewly discovered hot bed of terror was spending  millions of rupees to make it look like\nArabia? The planned Arab University premises present an Arabic desert environment\nwith date palms. The other vexatious issue was with halal and cattle slaughter,\nanother reason for the skirmishes. Even moderate Muslims urged anyone with any\nhumaneness to see the way the cows were being slaughtered; the way cows were\ndragged into the slaughterhouse in a Buddhist country where the slaughter of\nthe cow is abhorrent to the Buddhists. Sri Lankans in general will not tolerate\nsuch a practice. A call for a ban on cattle slaughter has to be seen in this\ncontext. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nother issue of differentiation is the black dress the Burka that is covering\nthe whole female body, except the eyes, which is alien to Sri Lanka. This\nattire is only misconstruing Islam.
\nWhile Muslim women in the 70s wore sarees, the radical women of today are\nmaking a political statement, a misreading of Islamic scriptures that had led\nto the current situation. Such extremism should be countered through education,\nwhich should be done by Muslims themselves. Surely the Peradeniya campus where\nnot one wore the Burka in days gone by is now over strewn with it.  Wahabism from Saudi Arabia and the rising\nIslamic militant rhetoric in the East has had an impact in places like\nKattankudy where allegedly, large scale overseas funding from Middle Eastern\ncountries was fuelling a foreign brand of toxic Islamic revival, Building mosques\nsurplus to requirements is unwarranted when the existing mosques are empty.
\n
\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nbrand of Islam imported from Saudi Arabia is intolerant in its teachings and it\nis increasingly becoming intolerant of others. This new brand is a\nmisrepresentation of Islam and its scriptures.  The\npresent Director of the Department of Muslim Religious and Cultural Affairs,\nrecently disclosed more than 500 unregistered mosques in the country? It would\nbe pertinent to raise the question, how many of these 500 mosques are involved\nin “preaching and practicing religious intolerance’. The teachers from\nabroad are purveyors of the radical ideology contamination the young” Does\nthe government have the political will and the Peace Loving Moderate Muslims\nthe commitment to shut down these 500 illegal mosques and deport the imams for\ngood?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a known fact some mosques and madrassas are used\nby extremists for their destructive activities the world over. While religious\nfreedom is guaranteed in our constitution, it is the state\u2019s prerogative to\nmonitor what goes on inside the religious places of every denomination. By\nmobilizing the Peace Loving Moderate Muslims membership (PLMM) in actively\nsupporting government efforts to contain and prevent further extremist\nactivities, the moderates can now make a worthwhile contribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silence is complicity. All those who are\nspeaking of inter-faith peace and unity now, irresponsibly ignored extremist\nIslamic thought on social media for years. They dismissed it as rants of some\nmad men. An exasperated Muslim journalist remarked that although there were\nmany opportunities to nip such thoughts in the bud, they did not do so. ‘Now\nthat the knife is at your throat you are crying hoarse that terrorism must be\ndefeated and there is no room for violence in Islam’. Now it does not cut with\nthe rest. ‘When more and more religious schools were established, abayas and\nother masks took root as default symbols of our superior \u2018culture\u2019’. Stop\nbashing the Sinhala Buddhists.  Speak the\ntruth and not degrade the vocation of journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr D.Chandraratna As peace loving Sri Lankans we are dismayed by the surreptitious accusations and innuendos cast on the majority Sinhala Buddhist community by Waleed Ali, an Australian TV presenter in his Column in the Daily telegraph, on the recent tragic events in Sri Lanka. This terrorist activity in Easter Sunday was directed at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-donald-chandraratna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88135","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=88135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}