A common belief, bordering on paranoia, among many Sinhala Buddhists is that some time in the foreseeable future the Sri Lankan Muslims, driven by unfettered population growth, will emerge as the Majority Community in this Island Nation, thereby reducing the Sinhala Buddhists to a minority in what they often describe very emotionally as “the only Country in the World that ...
Over the past 1000 years, as the members of the Muslim Community of this Island began to take root and become an intrinsic part of it’s political, social and economic fabric, there were certain specific attributes that came to be associated strongly with this Community by the Majority Community. Some attributes were seen as the ‘strengths’ of the Community, while ...
There is a significant difference between the ‘stipulated code’ and the ‘implemented code’ for a specific purpose. In many instances, a serious mistake is often made by referring to the ‘implemented code’ as being the ‘stipulated code’. Take for instance the highway code. There was a time before the advent of the wheeled vehicle, when the need for such a ...
“The mind is everything. The way one thinks, one becomes” : The Buddha The Dimensions of Speech Should the proposed Hate Speech Laws (in it’s present or amended form) be incorporated into our Penal Code or should it not be so ? Opponents and proponents of these new laws have raised various arguments in support of their respective points of ...
Many articles and papers have been written over the past few years by various Commentators attempting to analyze the sudden emergence of stridently anti-Muslim Groups in Sri Lanka. The conceptual framework which underlies most of these analyses is based on the postulate that the cause of the ‘Muslim Problems’ is the emergence of these Groups. This amounts to a convenient ...
“What’s in a name ? That which we call a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet” goes the oft-quoted line from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. So, is ‘name’ merely an ‘identification label’ as the good Bard of Avon would like to tell us ? Is it something that can easily be superseded by another without any significant ...
Background It is a fact that the important and controversial subject of ‘Polygamy’ is not mentioned in any of the Hadith Books and is only referred to in just two verses (4:3 and 4:129) in the Holy Quran. Quran 4:3 states : If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of ...
[The first Open Letter was sent to the NSC in June 2015] [See : https://bisthanbatcha.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/an-open-letter-to-the-national-shoora-council-of-sri-lanka/ ] The National Shoora Council of Sri Lanka has made available in it’s website a Questionnaire which they claim is being shared with ‘selected people like you’ by way of being password-protected and these lucky selected people are urged not to forward or share ...
On the 31st of October 2017, an article titled “Child Marriage in the Muslim Sri Lankan Community” was posted in my Blog. The objective of that article was to estimate the extent to which female child marriages existed at that time in the Muslim Community. The analysis was based on data from the 2012 Census of Population conducted by the ...
“Electoral reforms are not meant to satisfy political parties. They are meant to strengthen people’s representation” – Kusal Perera in ‘20A must have a Referendum’ (https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/20a-must-have-a-referendum/) The process of alienation between the two largest Communities in Sri Lanka, driven by the hegemonistic aspirations of the Upper-caste Tamils, was set in motion in the 1940’s with the establishment of the All ...
On the 31st of October 2017, a research article based on secondary data, titled “Child Marriage in the Muslim Sri Lankan Community”, was posted in my Blog. (Please see: https://bisthanbatcha.wordpress.com/2017/10/31/child-marriage-in-the-muslim-sri-lankan-community/). The objective of that article was to estimate the extent to which female child marriages existed at that time in the Muslim Community. The analysis was based on data from ...
Sometime towards the end of March 2016, a study commissioned by the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) reportedly claimed that there are no ‘Islamic Jihadist groups in Sri Lanka’. The reliability of this inference unfortunately is highly debatable in view of the fact that the methodology adopted for the study was qualitative in nature and the analysis of data ...
The National Shoora Council (NSC) describes itself as “… a consultative body comprising several Muslim Organisations and individuals which was formed to address the challenges currently faced by the Muslims in Sri Lanka in a proactive manner.” The NSC identified the “… sudden surge in anti-Muslim activity through hate websites, public meetings, press conferences, demonstrations, media publications, attacks on places of religious worship, business ...
At a Presidential Election, the Candidate who obtains at least 50% +1 of the Total Number of Valid Votes wins the race. By the time the dust settled on the process that began on the 8th of January 2015, the post of Executive President of Sri Lanka had eluded Mahinda Rajapakse by a mere 293, 637 votes – a little ...
“Mr. Speaker We have removed the word minorities from our vocabulary three years ago. No longer are the Tamils, Muslims, Burghers, Malays and any others minorities. There are only two peoples in this country. One is the people that love this country. The other comprises the small groups that have no love for the land of their birth. Those who ...
The rule that all Covid-19 infected patients who succumb to the virus must be cremated was introduced by the GOSL on the 11th of April 2020. The Path Taken The response of the Muslim community which was traumatized by this new rule had the following timeline : Initially, pressure was brought to bear on the Authorities by way of protests, ...
A striking feature of the First-Pass-The-Post (FPTP) system of electing Members of Parliament, that existed until the introduction of the new Constitution in 1978, was the election of Muslim MP’s from predominantly Non-Muslim Electorates and the ready support extended to Non-Muslim Candidates by Muslim Voters in all electorates. Muslims voted for Candidates, irrespective of race or religion, who won their ...
Rosa Luxemburg – Marxist Theorist, Philosopher, Economist & Revolutionary Socialist – famously observed that ‘Those who do not move, do not notice their chains’. I have decided to ‘move’ mentally, to stretch my mental powers in new directions, to challenge patterns of thinking and behavior based on blind obedience to established and widely-accepted ‘norms’ and ‘beliefs’ and to offer new ...
[ This unpublished short post was written in May 2014 and reflects the unsettled social conditions of the day which reached it’s peak two months later in the town of Aluthgama. However the establishment of the new political environment in early January this year has been extremely conducive to the gradual reinstatement of the violated basic need of SL Muslims ...
A point made in passing in the previous Post deserves elaboration if only to emphasize it’s critical importance at the present moment in time. After the advent of the new Government on the 8th of January 2015, the SL Muslims have begun to once again feel safe from the threats of verbal assaults and risks to life and limb posed ...
