Lesson Sri Lanka should learn from

Paris attacks
2015-11-23
ast week, terrorists of the Islamic State
butchered 130 men and women in Paris
while they were - as one newspaper put it indulging in lifes innocent pleasures:
watching a concert, a football friendly and drinking
beer by the roadside. Those terrorists - at least
five of them - were identified as French Muslims. A week before that
incident, Sri Lankan Muslim organizations, led by Jamiathul Ulama came
together to demand that the government in Colombo denied visa to one
rabid Islamist preacher, Jainul Abideen, the founder of Tamil Nadu
Thawheed Jamaat. Abideen was invited by Sri Lanka Thawheed Jamaat, a
fringe group of Wahhabis awash with Gulf money. The government
conceded. Abideen was refused a visa for a second time. In 2005, the
government denied him an entry visa on the same grounds.
Obviously there is no direct link between the two incidents in Paris and
Colombo. But, the threat of growing Islamic fundamentalism is global.
The nihilistic cult of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now boasts the
allegiance of 36 terrorist groups around the world. In other parts, Al Qaeda,
its affiliates and franchise groups are vying for the gory mantle of being the
Salafi Jihads torch-bearers. Muslim communities worldwide are the swamp
that Jihadist fish swim and proliferate. In this vast global lake, resistance
that emanates from some small corners like ours to this virulent
radicalization matters. If nothing else, the response from mainstream Sri
Lankan Muslim organizations, which stood up against Abideen tells us, that
they are more enlightened than many of their counterparts in the world.
(The Muslim Association of Britain, once hosted Anwar-al-Awlaki, a YemeniAmerican terrorist preacher and a recruiter for Al-Qaeda on a lecture tour).

Sri Lankan Muslim community has not yet fully exposed to Salafi- Jihadi
fundamentalism that has extended its tentacles from the Middle East to
South East Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. (Though more and more local

Muslim women, especially in the East wear Burqa, the all-encompassing

Islamic garment).
However, given the global reach of fundamentalist Islam, no community is
safe from exposure -- including our own.
Now, that sounds like fear-mongering. But, if you look a bit deeper; we
already have at least two Sri Lankans in the ranks of the ISIS. Mohamed
Muhsin Sharhaz Nilam alias Abu Shuraih Sailania, a Karate instructor from
Galewela, was killed fighting for the terrorist group in Syria in July. His
brother-in-law continues to fight.

"Radicalization does not happen overnight. It is a long-haul

process. However, once it takes root, it is difficult to reverse."
If our intelligence agencies followed up their tracks -- they should by now
have known further intriguing information. However, another influential
school of thought is that aggressive probing into the Islamic fanatics, would
divert their wrath to us, so better let them crucify Syrians and enslave their
women, and let us alone .
That is called buck-passing. In the history of international relations, buck
passers, who did that for a variety of reasons, tend to be pounced upon,
sometime later, by a far more formidable aggressor, whose aggression it
sought to evade earlier. In the recent fight against Islamic State, buck
passing States, such as Turkey which turned a blind eye to the ISIS inflicted
carnage in Syria, later found itself at the receiving end of fierce attacks of
the same terrorists.
However, for the moment, Sri Lankan Muslim community is largely pacific.
How is that possible? Especially, our neighbour, the tiny Maldives send
hordes of its nationals to the ranks of Islamic terrorists. (The Maldives has
now passed special anti-terror laws to combat rising fundamentalism,
though many fear that the new laws would be misused to target political
dissidents)
The answer lies in the moderate variety of our own mainstream Islam. That
is our most formidable defence against the encroachment by Islamic
fundamentalism. Our mainstream Islam and its traditions have co-existed
with other religions for centuries and become an indispensible part of Sri
Lankan life. It is tolerant and benign and has so far withstood and largely
repulsed attempted intrusions by imported varieties of Salafism,
Wahhabism and other less salubrious versions. It is our greatest defence

against Islamic radicalization. We should not let that defence down.

"The nihilistic cult of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now
boasts the allegiance of 36 terrorist groups around the world "
Weakening that defence happens when we let bigots from the Middle-East
and Pakistan to come here to preach their austere brand of Islam. The hold
of mainstream Islam is weakened when you let Wahhabis to open
Madrassas island wide to train our kids in that austere brand of religious
teaching, which is alien to us. Our defence is weakened when Arab sheiks
build houses and Wahhabi mosques in the East and then cloak local women
in Burqa.
Take for instance, Jainul Abideen, the Tamil Nadu preacher, he decries
shrine worshiping; a tradition of moderate Sufi infused Sri Lankan Islam, as
un-Islamic. It was the same ideological leaning that led to Taliban to blow up
Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, and ISIS to bulldoze world heritage site of
Palmyra in Syria. He spews hatred towards Shias and Ahamadias. We
receive a sizeable number of Ahamadia refugees fleeing persecution in
Pakistan.
We already have a problem, though a latent one, with fundamentalist Islam.
Thawheed Jamaat in Sri Lanka is a fringe group. However, the grip of
imported Islam is tightening in Sri Lankas Muslim majority areas -especially in the Muslim enclaves in the East. Thawheed Jamaat itself
operates over 200 mosques, though only a few dozens of them are
registered as places of worship. Most of its mosques contain Madrasas
which train kids in theWahhabist variety of Islam. It borrows directly from
Saudi religious books, which preach hatred and bigotry.
Wahhabis consolidated their presence after the Indian Ocean tsunami,
building houses and extending welfare to distressed Muslim communities.
Youth who have been taught in this austere variety of Islam challenge the
teachings of the moderate Sri Lankan variety. There had been sectarian
clashes in Aluthgama and Kattankudy between Wahhabis and followers of
the mainstream Islam.
Abdur Raziq, the General Secretary of Sri Lanka Thawheed Jamaat was
earlier ordered by Court to issue an apology to Buddhist organizations for
defaming Buddhists. He did apologize (for saying that Buddhists were
worshipping stones and that the Buddha had promoted cannibalism). The
matter ended there. But in Saudi Arabia, the fountain head of the ultraorthodox brand of Islam, which Thawheed Jamaat promotes here; a court,
last week, sentenced a Palestinian artist to death for renouncing Islam. If it

is the kind of Islam, that the Wahhabis want to promote here, we all should
be very concerned.
Symptoms are already there. We should address them, before radicalization
takes its hold. The question is how?
First, address the sources of radicalization. It began with foreign preachers
and the locals who returned from Islamic Madrassas in the Middle East and
Pakistan. Now that knowledge and fellowship are multiplied by local Islamic
schools that teach the Arab religious syllabus. The government should bring
all Madrasas under the Ministry of Education (or Islamic Affairs) and make
them teach a uniformed curriculum, that is vetted by the Sri Lankan Islamic
theologians. That shields our children and youth from being manipulated by
an invasive variety of bigotry, during their formative years.
To justify the State intervention and to supplement the loss of funding from
Arab donors, the government should provide adequate financial support to
those institutions and bursaries to students and wages to teachers. Second,
the government should beef up the State patronage for the mainstream Sri
Lankan Islam in order to help it maintain its status quo and face new
challenges.
Third, the degree of assimilation of Muslims to the wider Sri Lankan society
is varying depending on geographical areas (though social alienation has
never been a problem). The government should make a special effort at
assimilation of communities, especially in the Muslim areas in the East. If
the government fails to tread in, extremists will do. Fourth, the government
can help promote inter-religious dialogue. It should not be confined to the
upper echelons of the religious leadership, but reach out to the kids in
those Madrasas, Pirivenas and Seminaries. Finally, all good things can be
brought to a naught by a few hardened extremists. Therefore, the
government should consider recruiting to intelligence services, reliable
youth from those local communities in order to keep a watchful eye on their
surroundings.
Radicalization does not happen overnight. It is a long-haul process.
However, once it takes root, it is difficult to reverse. At the beginning of the
Tamil insurgency, we did not see (nor did the old guard Tamil political
leadership who supported nascent rebels, covertly and overtly) that it
would develop into a blood-drenched mayhem. Nor did the French, who let
in hordes of migrants and let them live their semi-segregated lives in their
ethnic ghettos, imagine that children of those migrants would pounce upon
the very nations that welcomed their parents. Now, France has a long list of
10,000 radicalized Muslims who ought to be monitored (if the rest of the

citizenry are to be safe). All what terrorists and extremists need is, an
opening in their target at communities. Once they get it, they will
proliferate and take the rest of the community hostage. It happened in the
Tamil North, it happened in the Paris ghettoes.
Finally, there are two counter arguments about Wahhabism and other
austere varieties of imported Islam. One argues that Wahhabism is
misconstrued and demeaned by its critics, and stresses that, it is just
another peace loving, tolerant religious doctrine. But, a religious teaching
that condones death to apostates, flogging and murder of dissent religious
voices, and simply ban women from driving cars, does not fit into
conventional definitions of any of those words. Then there is a more
persuasive liberal argument: It admits that those particular varieties of
religious teaching are in fact intolerant, medieval and could well be
murderous. It goes on to add, that, still, their followers have a legitimate
right to follow their beliefs and proselytize as long as they do not give
practical expression to their nihilistic religious impulses. That is a very
strong argument, which could well be backed by constitutional guarantees
of civil liberties.
So Europe thought the same way and turned the blind eye, when rabid
preachers spew hatred inside and outside their mosques. But, the events in
the past decade and half show, that such preaching, when it reaches a
receptive audience -- more often than not -- is put into practice. From
Brussels to Bali, there are ample examples. We should learn from their
mistakes, if we are not to become the next line of victims.
Follow @RangaJayasuriya on Twitter
Posted by Thavam