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Today the talk is not about the Easter Sunday attacks but ‘the politics of distraction’. The word has been used by the US Ambassador, Alaina B Teplitz (‘The focus should be on the victims and their loved ones,’ she said and not conspiracies about her country striking while the iron is hot, so to speak). Shaahima Raashid, writing in the website Groundviewsalso uses the word (‘The niqab ban and the politics of distraction’). She points out correctly that none of the terrorist suspects were wearing ‘niqab/burqa/chador’ and claims that the focus on attire is a distraction. More on that later.
We’ve had not just distraction but outright idiocy from many quarters. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe virtually handed out an open invitation to international terror groups by saying Sri Lanka lacks the laws to deal with citizens who are members of such groups. He was demonstrating incompetence, ignorance and sloth. As usual. We had the BBC in the immediate aftermath of the attacks casting aspersions on the Sinhala Buddhists. The BBC, let us remember, made much noice when the Mannar mass graves were discovered but went silent when the results of the carbon dating tests came out.
Then we have ‘the focus’ of the New York Times: ‘Sri Lanka’s Muslims face an angry backlash after Easter Sunday Attacks.’ The article was interestingly co-written by Dharisha Bastian, an editor at Lake House, the government’s print organ. Political loyalties need not be elaborated. As one would expect, the extrapolation follows a single incident where a mob attacked a house where a family of Pakistani refugees were resident. Typically, again, following tokenist allusion to the attacks, we find broad brushstrokes vilifying Sinhala Buddhists.
Nothing of the in-your-face assertion of religious identity by significant sections of the Muslim community [in terms of attire, both men and women], a significant section of them inspired by Wahhabism causing existentialist anxieties among people who are well informed about how predominantly Buddhist nations were turned into Islamic States and/or those Buddhist communities destroyed [the Nalanda educational complex was torched along with the monks, in Bangladesh Buddhists were driven to the hills and are still being persecuted]. Forget all that; the NYT is yet to give us a comprehensive feature about the rise of extremism in Sri Lanka where followers borrowed extensively (and of course selectively) from the Quran. Patali Champika Ranawaka, a senior minister of this government, revealed that there were some 800 ‘Islamic’ clerics illegally teaching in schools run by fundamentalists. Apparently they are here on tourist visas!
Who is against the niqab and why, though? If you want a one-story example to extrapolate NYT style, there are tons to pick from in social media, even during the ban imposed on Facebook and WhatsApp (courtesy VPN). Dozens of Muslims decried both the terrorists and the outward trappings of fundamentalism, including the niqab. Yet their efforts were not reported in the NYT. The objection to the objection, in fact, is the distraction here. It’s a simple matter of identification. We are suspicious of unattended parcels, bags, vehicles and such. We are suspicious of those who cannot be identified, the faceless to be precise. And rightly so. It is an existentialist issue. Our alternative becomes: either allow the use of what can be turned into a disguise (evidence of such usage exists even in the US), or militarize our streets, our public and civic spaces, our schools, our very country. No thank you. Been there, done that.
Another distraction: religious freedom. Sure thing. Shihara Farook’s Facebook post on April 24, 2019 talks about it not in the preferred black-white terms used by ‘liberals’ but in ways that address the complexities. She speaks of the kind of tolerance and celebration of other faiths evident in Sri Lanka that the terrorists just do not profess or practice. She does not deny inter-religious tensions nor intolerance, but does not indulge in the kind of extremist vilification as do the BBC, NYT, many ‘liberals’ and supposedly dispassionate commentators.
The truth is that privileges accorded to religious minorities in this country far exceed those extended to counterparts in ‘Islamic States,’ and indeed in most other countries, including the United States. Racial profiling, mass incarcerations of innocents, these are activities preferred and practiced there. Indeed freedoms denied their own in countries run by fundamentalist Islamists are enjoyed in full by Muslims in Sri Lanka. That’s another article and this is not the moment for it. Needs to be flagged though.
We hear more, however, of the rise of Wahhabism as being a response to ‘Sinhala Buddhist extremism’. Ven Gangodawila Soma Thero’s expositions in the early days of this century and of course the antics of Rev Galabodaaththe Gnanasara Thero of the Bodu Bala Sena are mentioned frequently. It’s as though the ‘Sinhala Buddhists’ have been making inroads in Europe and even in Syria. It’s as if they had such a reach that they spurred Muslims in the UK and Australia to study the Quran (as per Wahhabist dictates). No. That’s simplistic and a distraction. Ranga Jayasuriya’s piece last Wednesday (How Wahhabism was fostered until it’s too late) paints a more realistic, sober and therefore frightening picture. Speaking of religious freedom in this context, it would not be out of place to mention that perpetrators were exercising precisely that. That ‘affirmation of faith’ apparently also lead to stockpiling swords and other weapons, bombs and ammunition. Apparently, these terrorists were praying and preying on those who were praying to a different god, as per their faith.
The time for pussyfooting around it is long past. The time to be dismissive or ostrich-like is long gone. A lot of veils have come off. The liberal and even leftist veil has come off the anti-Sinhala, anti-Buddhist veil hordes. Some of them are showing that their Islamophobia is more pronounced than their so-far-privileged religious and ethnic antipathies. Similarly, Sinhala Buddhist extremists have removed their ‘moderate’ niqab in ways that cannot be justified by the real and obvious existentialist threat.
Several Muslim political parties and even ‘mainstream’ Muslim organizations have been exposed, including those with parliamentary representation and the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama . They’ve said that they had informed authorities about the rise of extremist groups. The question is, why did they then, at the same time, go out of the way to pooh-pooh concerns raised by other religious communities and indeed vilify them as religious intolerants? The question is, how come close associates of RIshard Bathiudeen (Minister of Industry and Commerce and leader of the All Ceylon Makkal Congress) and so many second-rung politicians in Muslim parties as well as Muslim representatives in other parties were arrested following discovery of weapons and/or revelation of close relationships/friendships with the terrorists? The question is, why didn’t they come out and make public statements? That would have clearly pushed those who see the Muslim community as a monolith to question those unfair assumptions. It may even have lead to the saving of hundreds of lives. Were those lives unimportant because they weren’t the lives of Muslims?
I was in Kandy on Easter Sunday and travelled back and forth twice in the same week. I saw white flags in mosques and predominantly Muslim areas in Kandy, Mawanella and Kegalle. I saw banners decrying the violence. The white flags, I understand. Mourning. Solidarity with the victims and their families. As for the banners, I did not see one banner or poster naming the perpetrators. Genuine grief, insurance or just more tokenism? I suspect that the anxiety over the rise of Wahhabism as far as these groups are concerned was itself an existentialist issue: loss of flock and money. I will give the benefit of the doubt, but I would not drop by guard.
The liberals. The peace-lovers. The Yahapalanists. The advocates of co-existence and tolerance. Let’s talk about them again. Why aren’t they (for example Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council) not urging the government to ‘redress grievances,’ enter into negotiations with the terrorists to obtain a dignified ‘solution’? Why aren’t they, in light of these developments, revisiting the much-trumpeted ‘worth’ of devolution and the abolition of the executive presidency? As for the nondescript good dudes and dudettes (candlelight ladies, born-again democrats and such), when Hafeel Farisz first broke the story in the Daily Mirror hours after the attacks they ranted and raved, demanding proof. Looks like they’ve been soundly asleep for years and have crawled into their shells again! Some veils have been lifted here too, one feels.
There is a call from all quarters (including people with dubious agendas and suspect political practices) for the affirmation of humanity. It must be heeded. There’s a call for the exercise of compassion. We have to be compassionate. We have been asked not to be emotional. We should dial down emotion, most certainly. In some cases, however, these recommendations have the following subtext: suspend reason. This we cannot afford to do.
There’s a terrorist at large. Sorry, there’s a terrorist organization at large. It is abusing the noble notion of religious freedom. It is preying on tolerance. It has caused a serious existentialist threat to the entire nation and people of all communities in Sri Lanka as well as the world. Quite apart from a serious re-haul of the security apparatus, we need to know more about the dimensions of the problem. The veil must come off the (mis)educational institutions which are clearly being used as breeding grounds for the terrorists. Who set them up? Who teaches in them? Who funds them? Are ‘customary laws’ being abused? Is religious freedom being abused? Is the penal code adequate? Answers and action are required. Swiftly. We could also take a cue from Pakistan, a predominantly Muslim country, where over 30,000 Madrasas are to be taken over by the Government and modern education introduced while banning hate-speech.
Distraction never helps. Denial does not either. The niqab, metaphorically speaking, is coming off the political face of our nation. It is a good thing.
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