Inter-Religious Empathy That Waits To Be Harnessed

By Jehan Perera -June 9, 2014 

Jehan Perera

In addition to being subjected to international scrutiny on account of war-time human rights violations Sri Lanka is now coming under international scrutiny for religious intolerance.  Several incidents have highlighted the rise of Sinhalese nationalism that is at odds with the requirements of national reconciliation that includes the ethnic and religious minorities.  These have included attacks on mosques and churches.  The attacks on Christian churches have been going on for the past two decades at least.  Most of these attacks have been against the new churches that are active in attempting religious conversion allegedly by unethical means of providing for the material needs of those whose conversion is sought.  However, as most of these conversions take place at the local level and in relatively poor areas, they do not receive much media publicity. They are one of the unacknowledged problems concerning inter-community relations in the country.

On the other hand, the attacks on the Muslims have received considerably more media publicity.  This on account of the higher visibility of some of the targets that have been located in more densely populated urban areas.  The institutions attacked have been both mosques and commercial establishments owned by Muslims.  One of these attacks was on a media conference organized in a Colombo hotel by the Jathika Bala Sena (JBS) in which a mixed group of Muslim and Buddhist clergy sought to explain the resettlement of Muslim IDPs in the North.  It has been alleged that the resettlement of Muslims was on a forest reserve meant for wildlife preservation and that a Muslim Minister of the government was behind this anti national action.

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