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Anver Manatunga
I am, Anver Manatunga, a religious preacher by profession. I am involved in preaching Islam in Sri Lanka and many other countries in the world. In addition to this, I am managing a web site www.anvermanatunga.com in Sinhala to present my views to the people.
When the extremists started spreading religious discord against the Muslims and Islam whole situation changed to a new direction.
When I saw that the extremists have fabricated a lot of lies and propagating against the Muslims and Islam, I started to write articles refuting their lies. My counter arguments and logical presentations made the extremists to abandon their crafty schemes. My website though had to face many criticisms and mudslinging it became very popular day by day. During this period many fabricated stories about my private life also have been publicised.
The net outcome of this abusive propaganda made my blog and me very popular. Meantime another extremist organization, Bodu Bala Sena, came into the scene and it pushed the religious strife to another extreme. We could observe that there were many latent forces also have been active in spreading religious hatred.
Anver Manatunga Blog (AMB) could expose the true nature of these extremist organizations through the internet and some of the logical documents presented by us have been published in normal media also. During this period I was made to understand that the extremist organizations were busy in looking for my whereabouts, I was compelled to leave the country.
We could continue to operate this website and we made every effort to avoid any political bias in our approach. By our documents, we have criticised the Government, Opposition and the Muslim political parties. We attacked, when we came to about any latent force being behind any happening. We believe though the Government is fully capable of controlling the extremism prevalent in the country at present, they are intentionally avoiding this situation. Communal forces have rallied round the Defence Secretary, Mr. Gotabhaya Rajapakse and the minority ethnic and religious groups are around Mr. Basil Rajapakse. Though this situation may appear to be conducive for Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse to govern the country, it may eventually push the country into a very serious turmoil.
Muslim civil organizations, Muslim religious leaders and Muslim politicians have been subjected to a very serious pressure at present. All of them have been pushed to a situation where they are unable to present the truth openly. They are not doing anything being concerned of their personal safety.
We carried out a very successful public awareness campaign through Anver Manatunga Blog (AMB). According to wordpress records, our website has exceeded 950,000 visitors during the last 15 months. Last month alone the number of visitors was approximately 200,000. None of the private websites has achieved this popularity and according to the Alexa data it has been listed in the most popular 500 websites in Sri Lanka. This has caused lots of hatred and jealousy in the minds of the extremists. A website managed and administered by a Muslim, achieving this much of success and popularity, was not for the happiness of the Sinhala community of this country. A few days ago some of the internet service providing telecommunication companies has denied access to this website and at present all telecommunication companies have denied access to anvermanatunga website. Following is the error message you will get when you attempt to access Anver Manatunga Blog (AMB) within Sri Lanka.
Error: Requested url content cannot be accessed. This website is blocked until further notice either pursuant to court order or directions of Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka..’
We very categorically state that Anver Manatunga Blog (AMB) has never insulted any religions. We have been criticising only the extremists groups operating within Sri Lanka. Irrespective of this there are many websites directly insult and abuse Muslims and Islam in Sri Lanka and we have listed a few of these below.