Extremists Are Running This Country; Yet Again

By Lukman Harees –November 20, 2016

Lukman Harees

“The dangerous enemies of your species are fundamentalism, intolerance, separatism, extremism, hostility and prejudicial fear, be it religious, atheistic or political.” ― Abhijit Naskar

The hate filled events which Sri Lanka has been witnessing these days are both shameful and dramatic belying the grandiose promise of promoting national reconciliation and denying oxygen to the destructive forces of hate and racism. Tell-tale signs are obvious and their slogans are just hollow pretensions. The extremist Sinhala Buddhist forces led by rogue elements among the Maha Sangha, appeared to have joined hands and on a united spree to demonise, stigmatize and hurt the Muslims on all fronts – socially, politically and economically. These vicious forces of hate still continues to enjoy a near free reign despite a change of government which came to power by promising tough action against them and on a platform of promoting National Reconciliation and equal treatment to all communities. BBS and their likes with their new found cousins Sinhaley have begun to re-enact many episodes which the country saw in the MR era. –street protests, boycott calls, attacking Muslim places of worship and businesses. Nay, they have even found a patron saint in this government too, who speak their language; then it was the Defence Secretary and now it is the Justice Minister.

It is however not surprising that the well –orchestrated anti-Muslim hate campaign in Sri Lanka which had a upward swing during the MR Regime, has once again begun to surface in full ferocity, having had a illusionary dip during the early stages of the Yahapalana rule. Firstly, the climate of fear and cultural mistrust, which has becomes one of the grim aspects of our present day society did not happen by accident. Secondly, it is also a grim reality that at a time when Muslim bashing has become a cottage industry on a global plane, it needs no rocket science to discern that many vested interests and highly organized networks as part of a million dollar industry which preach the virulent Islamophobia, have their local agents too in this country.

Video – Yesterday’s anti-Muslim campaign in Kandy

It should be kept in mind that extremist Buddhist monks who are thankfully still a minority, are confounding; they directly contradict a canonically nonviolent religion often perceived as apolitical. Like radical monks in Myanmar, these Sri Lankan hard-liner post-war hate movements reserve special ire for Muslims. In the last decade, activism by Buddhist monks has grown more overtly political, consolidating their political power to lobby for a majoritarian state ,thus placing minorities in a dependent and a subservient situation. As Analyst Jayadeva Uyangoda argued, many tragic events that transpired in post-independence Sri Lanka could be attributed to Buddhist leaders and Buddhist monks campaigning for policies that exacerbated ethnoreligious violence. It was a matter of shame that the successive governments do not seem to learn lessons from history of the dangerous consequences of pampering to these hate lobbies for political gains, which are hell-bent on making a bogeyman of Muslims – a community which has had a rich history of over 10 centuries of standing up for territorial integrity and unity of this country .

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