Sri Lankan Muslims: the new ‘others’?

From the town of Digana, in central Sri Lanka’s Kandy district, where anti-Muslim violence erupted in early March this year.

BY TISARANEE GUNASEKARA-23 APRIL 2018

Afew days after Kandy District in central Sri Lanka experienced a spate of violent incidents targeting Muslims, resulting in deaths, injury and destruction of property, the country’s election commissioner made a startling observation. “The claim that a majority of Sinhalese were against the recent attacks on Muslims is wrong,” Mahinda Deshapriya said at a workshop on ethnic harmony; “Most Sinhalese are happy about the riots.” He then drew a parallel between this and the majoritarian reaction to Black July: “A majority of Sinhalese were happy to see the Tamils too being attacked in 1983, only to regret it a few years later.” He also spoke of an increasingly visible trend towards cultural insularity on the part of some Lankan Muslims, arguing that this was worsening the problem of communal distrust.

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