Trying to make sense of the Sri Lankan Tragedy
By Habib Siddiqui
Thanks to the state and non-state actors, our world is
increasingly becoming insecure and unsafe for ordinary civilians. No place is safe and secure for them!
A shooter rushed inside a classroom Tuesday (April 30, 2019)
and opened fire killing two students when 30 other students were attending a
liberal studies class at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The
police was able to arrest the shooter. Four other students (including a foreign
student from Saudi Arabia) were injured.
A gunman opened
fire in a synagogue in Poway, California, near San Diego, on
Saturday (April 27, 2019) killing one person and wounding three others.
While those figures above are low by mass-shooting standards
these attacks have wider implications. Anywhere, everywhere, a student or a worshipper
might fear similar violence waiting to happen. The same anguish descended on
Muslims after a deadly
attack on three mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019.
These attacks infect the innocent with suspicion and fear. With no way to know
where or when more random violence could erupt, hearts palpitate every time
someone unknown enters the doorway. Could he/she be the next shooter?
In both the California and New Zealand attacks, the shooters
posted notice, motive, and evidence on the anonymous message board 8chan. They
were terrorists who wanted to justify their heinous hate crime. But not all the
killers leave behind such messages. Consider, e.g., the nihilist attacks in Sri
Lanka on the Easter Sunday (April 21, 2019).
On that day 253 civilians died and another 500 inured in Sri
Lanka as a result of a series of highly coordinated bomb blasts.
While the vast majority of the victims were Sri Lankans, at least 38 of the
victims were foreign nationals (e.g., from Australia, Bangladesh, China, Denmark,
India, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia,
Turkey, the U.K., and the USA) of which six were Muslims. The Sri Lankan
government later blamed National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ), a little-known radical Wahabi group, which had not done any
such attacks before. As it has done in the past, Daesh or the so-called ISIS
promptly took credit for this latest tragedy.
Interestingly, Sri Lanka’s security forces were warned of the
attacks at least ten days before, but, apparently, they did not take the
warning seriously. A year ago, the local Muslim community had also complained
to the authorities about this radical group, but nothing was done to allay
their fear, as if the authorities wanted the NTJ to do something bad so that such
acts could be used to justify new sanctions against the already discriminated Muslim
community towards further marginalizing it.
As feared, within hours of the terrorist attack on the Easter
Sunday, the members of the Muslim community were attacked and beaten in a few
places; mosques and homes were attacked,
and Muslim-owned shops set on fire by Christian gangs and members and
supporters of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), while the police watched. [BBS is a
Buddhist fascist organization that wants to transform the island nation’s
multi-lingual, -ethnic and – religious character into a purely Buddhist fascist
state a la Myanmar style, by violence, if required.] Niqab or face-covering
scarves, worn by some conservative Muslim women, have also been banned by the
government. Several Muslims (including infants) have died as a result of
combing operations of the security forces. Most Muslims are now living in fear
and are afraid to go out of their homes or mosques.
Like many observers I am at a loss to understand the motives
behind this senseless violence whose victims included people of all faiths
(including an 8-year old child – Zayan – who’s a relative of the prime minister
of Bangladesh). We are told that two of the suicide bombers in two hotels were
sons of a very wealthy businessman
known for his generosity. Why would these privileged and married men in
their 30s commit such a heinous act? More importantly, how
could an obscure group with no history of serious violence execute such highly coordinated,
well-organized attacks on an order that even the LTTE had not ventured in its heyday?
If one of the
bombers’ goals was to stir new religious hatred in Sri Lanka, they have
definitely succeeded, as the backlash against Muslims happening in some areas
does testify.
Until this fateful Easter
week, Sri Lanka didn’t have a history of Christian-Muslim violence. The two
faiths are small minorities: the country is about 7 percent Christian, 10
percent Muslim, 13 percent Hindu and 70 percent Buddhist.
Violence targeting the minorities came to the fore during the
British colonial rule. Christians and Muslims, for instance, were seen to have
benefited from colonial policies. In the early 20th century, Muslim domination
of the economy evoked deep resentment among Sinhalese-Buddhists. Buddhist
radical monks like Anagarika Dharmapala claimed that the Muslims were “alien invaders.” As duly noted by Dr. Sudha
Ramachandran (The Diplomat, March 13, 2018), the publications like Sinhala Bauddhaya and Sinhala Jathiya carried
articles that were inflammatory in content and are said to have culminated in
the anti-Muslim violence
in 1915 that witnessed the killing of 25 and injury of some 200 Muslims, plus
massive destruction of Muslim properties and houses of worship.
After Sri Lanka became an independent state, Sinhalese political
parties vied with each other to project themselves as the guardians of the
Sinhalese-Buddhists. They inserted Buddhism
into the constitution. The Sinhalization of the
state and its institutions followed, which resulted in Tamil political,
economic and cultural marginalization. Importantly, Tamils (which included
Muslims) and their properties were targeted by Sinhalese mobs, often backed by
the state. Tamil alienation with the Sri Lankan state led to the emergence of a
powerful insurgency led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that
fought for a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka. In July 1983, also known as Black July, Tamil rebels killed a number of soldiers from the Sri Lankan army. During
subsequent riots, various Sinhala mobs killed many Tamil civilians. The civil
war was now a fact. Buddhism was invoked to justifying war.
Consider, e.g., a
Sinhala army song from 1999, said to be composed by a Buddhist monk, which
contained
the following verse:
“Linked by love of
the [Buddhist] religion and protected by the Motherland, brave soldiers you
should go hand in hand.”
But it wasn’t just
the army; everyday people and monks also used Buddhist texts and used military
metaphors. Some Buddhist monks extolled warrior virtues as stemming from Buddhism:
“That Buddhism is a
religion of ardent aspiration for the highest good of man is not surprising. It
springs out of the mind of the Buddha a man of martial spirit and high aims …
Buddhism … is made by a warrior spirit for warriors.” [Source: Tessa J.
Bartholomeusz, In Defense of
Dharma: Just-war Ideology in Buddhist
Sri Lanka (2002)]
During the long civil war, which pitted minority Tamils against the Sinhalese majority, Muslims were
sometimes caught in the middle. They were attacked by both the Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu
Tamils for their neutral stand on the conflict. Some Tamils, who are mostly Hindus or Christians, considered Muslims to be
government collaborators. Some Sinhalese, who tend to be Buddhist, distrusted
the fact that Muslims in Sri Lanka speak Tamil and populate some areas where
Tamils are clustered.
In 1990, at the
height of the terror between insurgents from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam and a Sri Lankan military accused of slaughtering civilians, when Muslim
worshipers had gathered in the evening for prayer at the Meera Grand Jumma
Mosque in Kattankudy, they were attacked by gunmen. That night, more than 100
Muslims, many of them children, were killed in attacks on two Kattankudy mosques. The perpetrators
were believed to have been Tamil Tigers.
After the civil war
ended in 2009, militant Buddhism began to surge. Some observers have said it
was as if powerful forces in Sri Lankan politics were looking for a new enemy
to fight. Hard-line Buddhist monks targeted churches and mosques, priests and
imams, often with the tacit support of the security services. While Muslims
bore the brunt of these attacks, Christians suffered, too, and the two
communities were essentially on the same side. Thus, it was not unsurprising
that many observers initially assumed the BBS to be the culprit behind the
Easter bombings.
After all, the BBS has been responsible for a series of
highly coordinated attacks,
led often by Buddhist monks, against Muslims since at least 2012. As has become
the norm in this Buddhist-majority state, sadly, those crimes were overlooked
by the Sri Lankan government.
Buddhist chauvinism
popularized by powerful politicians has poisoned relations further. Despite
being a majority, most Sinhalese Buddhists are brainwashed to see themselves as minority
victims. They
see the island’s Tamils, for instance, as part of the larger Tamil community in
the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the Sri Lankan Muslims as part of the
Muslim ummah. They must, therefore, protect and defend the island and
Sinhalese-Buddhist culture from being taken over by the Asinhala (un-Sinhala)
and Abaudha (un-Buddhist).
These groups are viewed as essentially “foreigners,” who are staying on
the island due to Sinhalese-Buddhist “sufferance”. For almost six decades, the
Sinhalese-Buddhist supremacist (or more correctly, fascist) project thrived by
depicting Tamils as “the enemy.” With the LTTE vanquished in 2009, Sinhalese Buddhist
extremists needed a new enemy to keep the project relevant. “Muslims have
emerged as that enemy,” writes Nirupama Subramanian in Indian Express. Just like the
Jews in Nazi Germany, Muslims were falsely claimed to have ‘taken over’ Sri
Lanka.
Since 2012, anti-Muslim rhetoric has surged in Sri Lanka. It
has drawn on global Islamophobia but also on long-standing stereotypes of the
Muslim community in Sri Lanka. Fascist outfits like the BBS have carried out a
sustained hate campaign against Muslims and unleashed violence on them. Like
the BBS, there are other extremist outfits, including the Sinhala Ravaya,
Sinhale, and Mahason Balaya, that stoke Sinhalese insecurities and encourage
violence by spreading baseless rumors. In 2014, one of their
anti-Muslim protest rallies in the southern town of Aluthgama ended with the death
of four Muslims and destruction of dozens of Muslim homes and businesses. In September
of 2017, BBS attacked a UN shelter for Rohingya refugees in Colombo.
To quote Dr. Ramachandran, “Among the accusations the BBS has
leveled against the Muslims is that they procreate at a faster rate than the Sinhalese,
forcibly convert Buddhists to Islam, and follow a culture that is at odds with
that of the Sinhalese-Buddhists. This has fueled fears among the masses that
Muslims will soon outnumber the Sinhalese and that Sinhala-Buddhist culture
will be wiped out of the island.”
One simply cannot overlook the highly remarkable similarities
in hate narratives above with those propagated inside Myanmar by her chauvinist
government and Buddhist majority, esp. the fascist 969 movement led by monk
Ashin Wirathu, which resulted into genocidal crimes against the Rohingya and
forced exodus of another million to Bangladesh. The common denominator in these
two countries is, sadly, Theravada Buddhism, which seems to be hijacked by
hateful fanatics.
As part of a very sinister plan, the Sinhalese-Buddhist
extremists have been developing links with radical monks abroad. In 2014, Wirathu
offered to support the BBS in its fight against
what he says is the “serious threat from jihadist groups” in Sri Lanka.
The overseas links of Sinhalese-Buddhist extremists pose a
clear danger and threat to peaceful coexistence with minorities. But Sri Lankan
political parties have been very reluctant
to either sever those nascent and yet dangerous links or criticize
Sinhalese-Buddhist extremism. They had preferred political expediency over what
is needed for a viable state that embraces diversity, and will not want to lose
the votes of the Sinhalese hardliners. That has been the sad reality in today’s
Sri Lanka!
Not surprisingly, in March of 2018, Muslim minorities in the
island nation witnessed a series of attacks against anything Muslim or Islamic.
As noted by security experts, such violence is rarely spontaneous and is said
to be organized and orchestrated by outfits close to politicians, including elected
parliamentarians. Rarely have the guilty been punished. This failure of
successive governments to bring to justice those orchestrating the
attacks on Muslims has been fueling more and deadlier cycles of violence
against the Muslims.
In the aftermath of 2018 anti-Muslim pogroms many experts
warned that the government’s failure to rein upon Buddhist fascists may
radicalize some Muslim youths while marginalizing other Muslims who are
peaceful and mostly mindful of trade and commerce. Recalling how Sinhala
racists repeatedly attacked the island’s Tamils “to put them in their place”
and the role this played in spawning Tamil militancy and a three-decade long
civil war, political commentator Dayan Jayatilleka pointed out in The Island that this “story is being
repeated [now] with the Muslims.” “We have come one step closer to the
emergence of Islamist terrorism in Sri Lanka,” he said.
Dr. Ramachandran similarly warned, “Indeed, with every incident of violence being unleashed on Muslims and
the state avoiding reining in the Sinhalese extremist outfits, Sri Lanka is
giving Muslims reason to pick up arms, if only to defend themselves.”
As the latest terrorist episode testifies, these experts were
right. The ringleader,
allegedly linked with Daesh, came from Kattankudy, the
very place that had witnessed violence some three decades ago. That may explain
how he was able to radicalize his followers. His alleged ties with the
terrorist outfit ISIS may also help us to understand why he and his team attacked
soft targets like churches and hotels, frequented mostly by foreigners, and not
Buddhist temples!
This latest tragedy once again shows that while the ISIS may
have lost its footprint in the Levant and its “prestige and power” bruised, it
refuses to accept its ‘death certificate’ from Trump and can still motivate
massacres from its ‘brain-dead’ nihilist followers in heretofore unlikely
places. Amaq, the Islamic State’s propaganda wing, framed the Sri Lanka attack
as an attack on a “Crusader” coalition. The latest attacks, contrary to the
false assertions of the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Sri Lankan state
minister for defense Ruwan Wijewardene, had nothing
to do with the mass murder of Muslims by a white-supremacist gunman in
Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019.
What still remains unanswered though is how could those
bombers carry out their highly coordinated evil without being noticed by anyone
within the government agencies? Is it plausible that the Sri Lankan security
forces used them as baits or pawns to create new tensions between two minority
groups, thereby preparing the ground for its new assault on minority Muslims?
Suffice it to say that
informal alliance between the two minority groups was seriously challenged by
the Easter Sunday’s attacks. As already hinted, the
bombings marked a sharp break from old forms of violence. While there have been
incidents of religious violence over the past several years, including against
Christians, the vast majority have been against Muslim communities.
The perpetrators
have typically been radical monk orders backed by the state. The ISIS and
similar organizations haven’t had nearly as large a presence, or as long a
history, in Sri Lanka.
In the aftermath of
the attacks, many Muslims have tried to help grieving Sri Lankan Christians,
offering food and friendship, but the outreach has been complicated because the
government has not created an environment that takes the onus away from the
Muslim community for the crimes of a handful. Feelings are so raw that one
priest told members of a mosque to stay away from the funerals. The government
has imposed a ban on wearing Niqab by Muslim woman, which has been supported by
All Ceylon
Jamiyyathul Ulama, Sri Lanka’s top organization of Islamic theologians, to
diffuse any tension.
The ban makes Sri Lanka the only country outside
Europe to take such a decision. In my opinion, instead of making a partnership with the
Muslim community who can be and has been the best source to delegitimizing the
toxic influence from the ISIS or similar terrorist groups, the Niqab-ban
imposed by the government is foolish, short-sighted and goes against that very
spirit of cooperation needed to stop a repeat act.
As noted by CAIR’s Nihad Awad, “Restricting religious liberties for a false feeling of safety is never a
good idea, and banning women from wearing religious clothing of their choice is
a particularly bad idea.” “Targeting the Sri Lankan Muslim community also makes
little sense. Since the attackers used bookbags to carry out their attacks,
will the Sri Lankan government also be banning backpacks? Of course not. But
that overreaction would at least make more sense than banning religious face
veils.” Awad called on the Sri Lankan government to counter extremism with the
help of all communities, noting that stripping one group of its religious
freedoms “is the worst possible way” to achieve that goal.
There is also the danger that the ban on the niqab will be
read up in its implementation to include the more commonly worn hijab and
burqa, especially as there have been demands earlier by Buddhist extremists
that these garments should be banned. It could also open up demands for banning
other visible identity markers, such as caps and beards worn by men. As duly
noted by another observer, “It cannot be stressed enough that the problem that
has erupted in Sri Lanka has not been caused by women’s apparel. Banning the
niqab may make the government look as if it is taking action.”
Our experiences post-9/11 have shown that people can be
totally fooled like the rats in Hamelin to rally behind the whims of a
government playing the role of the pied piper. It is that easy even in this age
of information technology!
As is well-known a great nation simply can neither hide
behind its past glory nor can it afford to behave irrationally and
irresponsibly. It must weigh in pros against cons before every major action it
takes. It also needs adhering to a higher moral compass to demand
respectability of its actions and positions. No nation, irrespective of how
great it feels about itself, can afford to claim higher moral ground when its
history is tainted with unlawful invasion, wanton murderous campaigns and
destruction, and despicable records on human rights and willful loathing of
international laws. It is not surprising that instead of eliminating terrorism,
many of these states’ offensives against so-called terrorist groups have been
germinating it multifold. Surely, there are more terrorists today than ever
before. The cost of the war to fight terror is sky-rocketing in many of these
countries. Their engagement to wipe out
terrorism can be summed up in the phrase "Pyrrhic victory".
Terrorism terrorizes people. Its aims are political and
social, even when its methods are violent. There is no denying that
terrorism has become an important phenomenon in our time and needs to be
eradicated. Nothing
can justify or excuse an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by hate groups,
religious or ideological fundamentalists, private militia - or whether it is
dressed up as a war of retaliation by a recognized government. It is high time
for the human race to dig into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and
modern, to find a way out of this spiraling morass of terror and brutality that
threatens us today.
[For a detailed discussion on terrorism, see the author’s book - Democracy,
Politics and Terrorism - America's Quest for Security in the Age of Insecurity
– available in the amazon.com]
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