Are Sri Lankan Muslims being DUPED into WAHHABI Extremism ?
Posted on March 17th, 2018
Sri Lanka News
A news report by India’s World Is One News (WION) claims that while Sinhalese intolerance is on the rise in Sri Lanka, as apparent in the recent communal violence, the root cause for the distrust of Muslims in Sri Lanka lies in the alarming spread of Wahhabism among one of the most tolerant and peaceful Muslim communities of the world.
It states that most of the international media especially Middle Eastern concerns are painting exaggerated pictures of bloodthirsty Sinhalese and victimized Muslims, but WION has been talking to Sri Lankan analysts of all religions and that what they are discovering paints a slightly different picture.
It is true that Sinhalese intolerance is on the rise and this time it is not Sri Lanka’s Tamils who are the targets but the country’s nearly 2 million Muslims. There can be no justification for violence of course, but one must examine the root cause of the distrust of Muslims in Sri Lanka since 2009.”
And that root cause lies in the alarming spread of Wahhabism among one of the most tolerant and peaceful Muslim communities of the world, that of Sri Lanka,” WION’s Padma Rao says.
She says that it is no secret anymore that close neighbor the Maldives is already in the throes of Saudi Arabia’s wealth and radical indoctrination, reportedly with the blessings of the Maldives’ dictatorial President, and that Saudi Arabia has reportedly trained and been dispatching English-speaking Wahhabi speakers around the world.
And which region could be more attractive than South Asia, where there are already huge Muslim communities?”
She claims that some of the controversial speakers trained and dispatched by Saudi Arabia reportedly include Ismail Menk, Zakir Naik and Tariq Jameel. Menk has been banned in the United Kingdom and Singapore while Zakir Naik is in India’s most wanted list.
The report says that there are 749 Madrasas in Sri Lanka and one Islamic University. There are at least 10 major Muslim mosques in the island nation and dozens of smaller ones. It claims that 90% Sri Lanka’s mosques are in the clutches of Wahhabi preachers” and that 33 Sri Lankan Muslims are reported to have joined Islamic State.
Analysts say Sinhalese intolerance is on the rise because of the changes noticed in traditionally tolerant Muslim neighbors,” the news report added.
It said that former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has added another startling element to the possible cause of the riots. In an article he contributed to in a Lankan daily, he points to foreign elements” hell-bent on tearing Sri Lanka apart.
Speaking further, WION’s Padma Rao says:
I wouldn’t go as far as to put it on the same scale as the LTTE-led form of terrorism among the Tamils. So let’s not make that comparison. But certainly, yes there is a rise and this is what analysts in Sri Lanka have been telling us, since 2009 when the war ended. And most people are concerned about the borders and that immigration control is not doing enough to prevent such known radicles from entering the country and slowly indoctrinating and poisoning the minds of what is essentially one of the most peaceful and tolerant Muslim communities in the world, Sri Lanka’s second largest minority.”
Maldives is not that far away, we’ve seen that kind of penetration and infiltration in both directions before. That seems to be happening not only from the Maldives, but also from preachers who are landing at Colombo airport and who have been meeting and indoctrinating people. At the very simple village level people are seeing two pictures and putting together a story. They have also heard reports of the 33 Sri Lankan Muslims who joined the Islamic State.”
And these are simple people in small villages who are afraid when they see visible signs of shriller preachers in mosques or more and more women covering themselves in hijab which is not typical to this region of the world. These are alien influences and whenever there is an alien influence people tend to get paranoid.”
However, having said that I would like to emphasize that in absolutely no way does WION support any violence by any community against any community, be they minority or majority, but unfortunately we have to look at the root cause also and not just tarnish all Sinhalese or all Muslims with the same brush as certain sections of the international media have been doing over the last one week.”
March 17th, 2018 at 6:39 pm
Wion’s Padma Rao is totally right about the growing threat of Wahabism in Sri Lanka being behind the recent incidents of communal violence. However, though she repeatedly and unreservedly describes the Sri Lankan Muslim community as one of the most peaceful Muslim communities (in the world), which may be true, she forgets to pay the same compliment to the more genuinely peaceful majority Buddhist community who are nevertheless being roundly condemned around the world for the recent violence. The obvious truth is that these incidents were the result of successful manipulative attempts by those who want to destabilize the state; these elements exploited the longstanding tensions between the Buddhists and the Wahabists among the Muslim community, which are entirely due to the latter’s aggressive acts such as publicly demanding the introduction of Islamic Sharia in the predominantly Buddhist country, encroachment of ancient Buddhist holy sites, creating Islamic enclaves in forest reserves, and many other unacceptable behaviours. Nationalist organizations like the BBS, and Mahasohon Balakaya have been pointing these out and demanding that impartial investigations be carried out and remedial actions taken where necessary. The failure of the responsible politicians to act and the silence of the Mahanayakes over many years, decades probably, is at the root of the trouble. People take the law into their own hands when the authorities (in this case, the government and the Mahanayakes and the Muslim clergy) don’t fulfill their responsibilities.
To call it a ‘Wahabi backlash’ wrongly implies that the Buddhists initiated the trouble. A ‘Buddhist backlash’ would have been a more appropriate description.
March 18th, 2018 at 4:26 am
Padma Rao and Indian Imperialists know how to get their subjects to kill each other so they can run the place. Padma Rao and WION.
The recent Muslim-Buddhist clashes is a good example.
Both Buddhists ad Muslims are oppressed by the Hindu Parasites.
1915 Kandy violence and 2018 are similar occurrences.
Indian Parasites started to colonize the Hill country from mid 19th Century.
By early 20th century the hill country Sinhalese and Muslims lost their and their lively hood to the non violent invaders who arrived in hundreds of thousands.
The Buddhists and Muslims did not have the power to kick the Indian parasites out because the parasites were protected by the British guns. So the Buddhists and Muslims turned on each other like any other oppressed groups of people.
The same is repeating today. The only difference id India has replaced Britain.