Muslims in Sri Lanka

Image: Ali Sabry and Gotabaya. A video clip doing the rounds on social media, purportedly of President’s Counsel Mohamad Ali Sabry making a controversial remark regarding the Muslim vote in the upcoming presidential election, has drawn the ire of the United National Party (UNP). UNP parliamentarian S. M. Marikkar accused the senior lawyer today of […]

Cartoon by @tmdsbekanayaka “Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance” – Oscar Wilde. Elections are here, time for pacts, pledges and promises – the time-tested Sri Lankan way of savouring democracy. The sooner you get them negotiated and sealed the better. Formation of alliances before a Presidential Election is normal in Sri Lanka. […]

  People who have been relocated to a school building due to an overnight gun battle between troops and suspected Islamist militants (Reuters). An eminent Sri Lankan researcher on radicalization and terrorism, Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, urges the Sri Lankan government, the island’s political and religious leaders, and civil society, to ponder over the ill-effects of […]

Image: Ash Sheik Muneer Malaffer (Naleemi). I have written two articles heavily criticising the parties supposedly spearheaded the attacks against Muslims at Kandy recently to Daily FT (http://www.ft.lk/columns/The-world-moves-forward-and-we-move-backwards/4-651588) and another Sinhala publication. I was eager to write about the other side of this issue. In the meantime Ash Sheikh S.H.M. Faleel (Naleemi) has written a […]

by Watch Dog. MAR 7, 2018 — On March 6th, 2018, despite a State of Emergency and curfew being declared, there were several reports of attacks[1] against the Muslim community and damages to mosques by Sinhala mobs in the Kandy district. On 22nd February, an altercation allegedly took place between a group of drunken men, […]

Image:  Digana after mob attacks. Associated Press/Pradeep Pathiran . Even as I write these words, Kandy is burning. Muslims, their homes and their properties are being targeted in the name of Buddhism, within shouting distance of the Temple of the Tooth. If the custodians of the Tooth Relic, the chief prelates of Malwatte and Asgiriya, look […]

Image: BBS head Galabodaatthe Gnanasara threatening a Muslim clergy (file photo). By Jehan Perera. The passage of the second reading of the budget by a 2/3 majority in parliament indicates that the Government of National Unity continues to hold. The differences in opinion between the government partners that sometimes manifest themselves openly have not as […]