Dr Silva’s Plea To The Muslims (Only) To Look In The Mirror: Missing The Woods For The Trees!
Lukman Harees
An interesting article appeared in Colombo Telegraph written by Dr Sarath Gamini De Silva with a plea to the Muslims of Sri Lanka to look into the mirror, and ends it thus: My dear Muslim Brethren, Recent changes visible in your appearance, attitudes and behaviour are contributing to the current racial disharmony to a significant extent. As such, a long lasting solution to ensure peaceful coexistence depends to a great extent on your ability to look inwards and make amends.(underlining mine). The learned medical doctor, despite his claim of maintaining ‘a cordial relationship with mutual respect with hundreds .. in the Muslim community for over 50 years’, however fails to read the whole picture, and started pointing blaming fingers without exploring the whole gamut of reasons for Peaceful Co-existence’ to be still elusive in this Dharma Dweepa, thereby missing the woods for the trees.
This does not mean that there are no plausible reasons for the Muslims to look inwards in building an inclusive nation; in fact there are and already an impassionate discourse has started off within the community in recent times, to address and rectify fault-lines if any which have been obstacles in promoting national reconciliation and integration. However, looking inwards and into the mirror is not a task to be undertaken by the Muslims alone as the writer suggests; rather one which should be undertaken by all communities; more so the initiative should be led by the Sinhalese community being the majority community (as the elder brother in the Lakmavage Pavula). The theme of Dr De Silva’s article thus looks unidirectional overlooking the key hurdles, having got into the same ‘Islamophobia’ bandwagon, where the racist lobbies are in.
To start with, before exploring the local scenario, the writer seems to set the background tone by painting a tainted picture of the present day global Muslims as an ‘evil force’ which tries to dominate by subduing others, through oft quoted so-called ISIS’ style Islamic terrorism’ and by refusing to integrate with the mainstream like others. He thereafter by extension attempts to point a blaming finger towards the local Muslims too, for trying to look different and also failing to integrate with the other communities in this country. This is exactly the main crux of the global Islamophobia campaign too, which has become a cottage industry in the Western capitals of the world- which Dr De Silva himself fallen victim to. Nathan Lean,, in his well-researched book ‘Islamophobia Industry’, clearly lifts the veil on the multi-million dollar Islamophobia industry which consists of a nefarious network, of business, political, religious and media organizations and individuals who employ rank bigotry to promote their interests and purposely nurture it and use it as a socio-political strategy. Lean shows how deep the rabbit hole goes and exposes the dirty secrets of those who manipulate public opinion against the Muslims, through an influential Western Media network. John Esposito, another expert researcher on Islamphabia too points out ‘Islam is often portrayed as the cause rather than the context for radicalization, extremism and terrorism’. Besides, it is now well-known that the Iraqi war created the conditions for terror groups like ISIS to emerge. Thus , ISIS to be highlighted as Islamic groups consisting of Islamic soldiers trained in Islamic madrasas is palpably false and misleading and ignores many geo-political realities of the MENA region. In fact, many ME Muslim refugees seeking asylum in the West are victims of Western military adventures in the region and fleeing away from ISIS terrorism. (Dr De Silva should well know that most victims of ISIS Terrorism are Muslims).
The learned doctor also refers to the Bahmian Buddha statues being destroyed by Taliban in recent times, but ignores the historical fact that those same statues were preserved by the Muslims for centuries, until this unfortunate destruction happened, which was condemned by Muslims all over. In fact, Buddhist heritage is still being preserved in many Muslim countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, Moreover for these extremist fringe elements like Taliban or ISIS, nothing is sacred. The suspected ISIS also placed bombs in mosques and places of Muslim religious importance; not even the precincts of Prophet’s mosque in Medina was spared.
Then, he enters into exploration of the local situation and laments,’ Unfortunately none of the so called moderate Muslims amongst us have publicly condemned such violence and other forms of intimidating behaviour in the name of Islam. Their silence is naturally interpreted as collusion by others as well as by the extremists. Compliance with their intention of creating an Islamic state in the entire world is thus accepted by default’. He is merely parroting the rhetoric of the Islamophobic Industry and Media – asking Muslims to assume collective guilt for the crimes committed by the terror elements under the banner of Islam. Although this charge is unjustified to say the least, as Muslims need not apologize every-time a person or a group commits a crime in the name of their religion, as much as Buddhists need not apologize as a group for the widely documented war crimes committed by their co-religionists against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, mainstream Muslim civic organizations and religious bodies have issued many statements of condemnations both at the global and national level in Sri Lanka against any types of ‘religious’ terror used against innocents ( if Dr De Silva cares to dig into the archives). In fact, Muslim voices have been subdued and silenced in mainstream Western and Eastern discourses tainted by Islamophobia and instead, highlighting only extremist points of view by design have been routine. Besides, the absurdity of this charge of asking Muslims to ‘jump up’ whenever some fringe groups sporting Muslim names commit terror acts and assume collective guilt, was laid bare in the aftermath of the recent racist anti-Muslim attacks too, carried out by extremist Sinhala groups supported by political strategists to gain power.
