A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Saturday, May 6, 2017
On countering the Islamophobic hate campaign
Are there sinister foreign forces trying to foment another civil war in Sri Lanka, in which some of the Israeli-returned Sri Lankans could play a special role?
( May 5, 2017, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) There
is now widespread concern, even a touch of alarm, among many Muslims
over what they regard as a very successful Islamophobic hate campaign.
The hate campaign of the BBS that was obviously foreign funded and
foreign backed, and had the blatant blessings of powerful personages in
the last Government, subsided with the change of Government. But,
according to a well-informed contact, the campaign has been going on
steadily in the social media. Recently we had the revelation, provided
by one of the chief campaigners against this writer, that the BBS was
backed by Israel. There are good reasons to suppose that Israel would
have wanted a continuation of the hate campaign: one reason is that the
apartheid system in Israel can survive only if the rest of the world
comes to share the view that the Muslims are a lesser breed who deserve
to be treated as such.
The Government can of course be expected to ignore all that. The reason
is that this Government, like all our previous Governments, prioritizes
having a good time while the going is good, putting aside all serious
problems until they become too urgent to ignore. It would be foolish of
the Government to view a recent development in that perspective. Muslims
participated with Tamils in a hartal against the Government. That, for
several reasons, is too fateful a development to be put aside until the
good time of the baila session is over. Since the anti-Muslim riots of
1915, the Muslims have been acutely conscious of their vulnerability and
therefore sided with the Sinhalese against the Tamils – not a strategy
of which this writer has approved. They have scorned the blandishment of
a linguistic commonality between the Tamil-speaking peoples. Their
getting together with the Tamils in a hartal seems therefore thoroughly
uncharacteristic. What is the explanation? An explanation is that the
Islamophobic hate campaign has been very successful, the Muslims are
coming to feel abandoned – for instance over the grotesque injustice of
refugee Muslims being denied their lands – and could come to think that
they have no alternative to turning to the Tamils. It is time to stop
the baila session, send the Navy Band home, and address the problem of
the Islamophobic hate campaign. We must not panic over a single
development. But it could be a portent of things to come.
The hate campaign against this writer, steadily sustained over weeks,
months, and years, can be understood in more ways than one, but it can
be wholly understood only in terms of an international Islamophobic
campaign that has been under way in pursuit of Theodore Herzl’s neo-Nazi
Zionist vision of a racist new world order in which the Muslims are
regarded as not much better than pariah dogs. In that international
perspective this writer is an insignificant creature – as the Tamil
Islamophobes will shortly yell. Quite true, but it takes no more than a
few Hasbara shekels to make a few Tamil Islamophobes carry out their
bucket attacks in which fact and reason don’t count at all and only the
flung filth does.
Consider the following inescapable facts. When this writer started
contributing a weekly column to the Island he had a solid reputation –
based solidly on his writings – as being outspokenly and daringly
sympathetic to the Tamils. Suddenly he came under concerted attacks in
which it was made out that he had been for decades a notorious
anti-Tamil racist and also that he had always been notoriously
anti-Indian. He refuted the charges with solid evidence from his
articles, but to no avail because the charges continued to be made. And
they still continue to be made by the two chief propagandists against
this writer, Backlash and Kettikaran. Whose interests are being served
by such attacks? Certainly not Tamil interests. It could be the
interests of an Islamophobic hate campaign that holds that every Muslim
should be treated as dirt.
A new Islamophobic campaigner has appeared in the Colombo Telegraph,
Lester, possibly in response to the fact that this writer’s recent
articles inspired many anti-Israeli comments. Lester seemed sober and
well-informed but he soon declared his dog-like devotion to Israel. He
holds that the Prophet Mohammed was a “madman” and that there is
something “primitive” in the Arabs which makes them incapable of
civilization. He does not recognize that the Omayyad and Abbasid Arabs
achieved high civilizations. He concedes that there was a Persian
civilisation, but those Persians were not Arabs. It is unbelievable mad
drivel. But there is a method in his madness: he is using the tactic of
the bucket attack, the favorite tactic of the Islamophobic campaigners,
in which fact and reason don’t count and only the flung filth does. He
keeps flinging filth at Islam in the expectation that more and more
people will come to believe that Islam is filth.
Another campaigner requiring analysis is Real Sama who has been going on
relentlessly, month after month after month, blackguarding the Muslims
for denying their Tamil identity. He holds that except for an
infinitesimal minority of the Sri Lankan Muslims who can claim some
degree of Arab ancestry, the rest are nothing but Tamils. Next, he
insists that they are low caste Tamils, sometimes declaring that they
are really the products of intermarriage with the Sakkilis, the lavatory
cleaners. There is a contradiction in Real Sama’s position. On the one
hand he wants the Muslims to share in the glorious heritage of the
Tamils while on the other he wants them to degrade themselves into low
caste status by acknowledging their Tamil identity. According to a
contact who has studied the devious ways of propagandists, the
contradiction is only an apparent one. Sama’s underlying purpose is to
affirm an identity of blood, which is much more powerful than an
identity of language, to prepare the ground for a coming together of
Tamils and Muslims in a common struggle for Eelam. The Eelam project is
not dead.
One reader, Muhandiram, came out with information of sensational
importance based on a report in Ceylon Today of August 17, 2013. Sri
Lankan workers going to Israel for just six months were given military
training at Maduru Oya and Minneriya training camps. The reason given
was that “Life in Israel is harsh, especially with the weather”. But
Israel is a Mediterranean country with weather conditions that are
comparatively mild and equable. Muhandiram cited statistics to show that
weather conditions in Sri Lanka are harsher, and besides workers going
for long periods to the Gulf countries where the weather conditions are
much harsher are never given military training. He points out that the
attacks on Muslims in Aluthgama and Beruwela took place in June 2014,
and those deploying the thug stuff were brought in from outside. Were
they Israel-returned Sri Lankans? Muhandiram adds that it could be
significant that the Ceylon Today news report can no longer be tracked
down through the internet. This writer must add the following. The links
between the BBS and the Wirathu gang were well established, pointing to
a common force or forces behind them. It is known that the Wirathu gang
inspired the massacre of the Rohingya Muslims, which has brought for
Myanmar international contempt and hatred. Are there sinister foreign
forces trying to foment another civil war in Sri Lanka, in which some of
the Israeli-returned Sri Lankans could play a special role?
Backlash’s revelation about Israel’s backing for the BBS probably had
behind it the behest of his foreign masters who may have had in mind a
warning to the Muslims. According to Backlash the support for the BBS
was justified because it was in retaliation for anti-Israeli demos by
the Muslims. He claims that those demos stopped abruptly after the BBS
campaign got going. So the warning could be that if material inimical to
Israel continues to be published, Israel could retaliate. The following
facts should be considered. There has been no significant anti-Israel
campaign in Sri Lanka over a long period, understandably because Israel
helped Sri Lanka during the war. But the Islamophobic hate campaign has
continued causing widespread anxieties among the Muslims, and even some
amount of alarm. That campaign therefore follows the dynamic, not of SL
Muslim attacks on Israel, but of a world-wide Islamophobic hate
campaign. The Muslims are not asking for the closure of the Israeli
Embassy or anything like that. All that they are asking for is that
their legitimate interests be safeguarded. Those legitimate interests
include their being safeguarded against a foreign-backed Islamophobic
hate campaign that is proving to be dangerously successful. Is that too
much to ask of the Government?