How have successive Sri Lankan Governments deliberated on the issue of treatment of Sri Lankans of the Islamic faith? Why is it an important question anyway?
It is significant because Islamophobia is rife. It is rife in Europe and in the rest of the world. Why Islamophobia? The reasons have more to do with demonisation of Muslims for economic reasons, and plain old-fashioned bigotry than anything else.
But Islamophobia seems to be a global problem now. It is on the lines of how the Jews were demonised, set upon and attacked before the events that led to the Holocaust during Adolf Hitler’s reign of terror. This sort of bigotry is not good for world peace, and certainly it is not good for Muslims all over the world. No community needs to feel needlessly persecuted or demonised.
In this context, the marked absence of Islamophobic sentiment in Sri Lanka in the past few years, continuing after the current regime came to power, is a good augur. When the recent history of this country is written, it would be recorded that we, as citizens, dodged a massive bullet when we tamped down on unhealthy levels of Islamophobia that was present when the persecution of Dr. Shafi and the events related to so-called wandakotthu, were hogging our national political discourse.
Why Islamophobia? It was partly because communities misunderstood each other, but mostly because there was politically motivated race-baiting that sought to scapegoat Muslims for the problems of the country.
To this toxic atmosphere was added the fallout from the outrageous Easter Sunday attacks, which created unprecedented distrust between Muslims, and certain minority communities in particular.
But a non-race baiting atmosphere has now been created in the country, and that follows the period of economic anxiety in the country that resulted from the meltdown of 2022, when the majority and minority communities together realised that politicians are the problem, and not each other.
The current Government came to power on a specific mandate to eschew race-baiting and to usher in a post-racist age. However, eschewing racism is not tokenism, and that’s an important aspect of race relations.
Previous regimes that wanted to eschew race-baiting — if there were any —however, probably resorted to excessive tokenism to foster amity. It meant they made sure there were Muslims appointed to top positions in the Cabinet and elsewhere.
Tokenism
But tokenism is just that — an attempt to appease, by making an openly insincere gesture. Tokenism in some ways exacerbates racial divisions, as it leads to resentment among those who feel meritocracy has been ignored.
Tokenism should not be part of the repertoire of those who want to foster racial amity and combat Islamophobia in particular. Islamophobia is couched as legitimate anti-immigrant sentiment in various parts of Europe, for instance, and there is an elaborate masquerade going on to show that certain Governments and authority figures in that continent are not fundamentally Islamophobic.
In Sri Lanka, the Muslims were welcome, and as traders when they first came into the country, were provided with shelter and refuge by the Sinhalese kings. Muslim men took local wives, and these tentative steps were the origins of the local Muslim community. These beginnings show that the Sinhalese showed a natural affinity towards Muslim traders, and thought of them as a useful community.
There is no Muslim immigrant ‘problem’ or any other immigrant problem in this country, which means that it is difficult for mischievous elements to scapegoat Mulims for various societal ills, allegedly stemming from immigration.
Muslims are, of course, sometimes getting a general bad rap in Europe and North America because there are several global conflicts in which Islamists play a major role. This has accounted for a spillover of refugees to Western countries and once in a country, Muslims are often faulted for refusing to integrate because they insist on holding onto various customs and rituals that are depicted as being anti-social and ‘uncivilised’, as per the Western yardstick.
The fact that the Muslims are generally more fiercely protective of their cultural and religious traditions is apparent in most parts of the world. Their dress codes and often intensely community-based lifestyles cause all types of deviants and bigots to treat them with suspicion.
But yet in Sri Lanka, as stated before, there was no tradition of Islamophobia, and it can be safely said that the anti-Islamic sentiments that drove a wedge between the communities were all a result of politicians resorting to hate speech and divisive tactics for petty gains i.e. the rascally strategy of divide and conquer.
Then, the economic meltdown followed in 2022, and Muslims being traders for the most part had their lives massively disrupted because people didn’t go out and spend money due to the economic crisis and galloping inflation that followed.
The Muslims — even if they sometimes stoically faced the wrath of sundry bigots — had considerable difficulty facing the economic dysfunction that followed the meltdown of 2022.
Their businesses were forced to shut down, and their trading lifestyles were under dire threat for the first time perhaps since the first Muslim settlers put down roots here in the reign of the Sinhala kings.
This explains the avalanche of Muslim support that the National People’s Power (NPP) — the driving force of the current regime — was able to attract. Muslims in droves, both rich and not so rich, began throwing in their lot with the NPP as it was felt that the economy and general stability and faith in public-institutions had to be restored, and that only the NPP could do it.
Will the Government be able to retain this support? The purpose of this article is not to make any predictions on that score. Suffice to say, as with any other Government, approval among voters would depend on delivery.
However, it is a fact that marginalised and disempowered folk both within the Tamil and Muslim communities gravitated towards the NPP for the simple reason that the events of 2022 confirmed that traditional political parties that styled themselves as Muslim and Tamil — ‘ethnically-based’ —had played dice with their lives.
Ordinary folk were disgusted with the type of flagrant race-baiting, and patronage politics that these minority parties practised. They concluded that they are pawns in a game that merely advanced the political careers of their leaders, who were race-baiters as consummate as the then leaders of the Sinhala political parties in the main were.
VIEWED
Those Muslims who want transformative change, do not want politicians to play the old patronage game and promise to dole out goodies by way of contracts. Instead, they want sincere politicians who would create job opportunities, get the economy going, and give them and their children half a chance at securing their own place under the sun.
To this end, a first step is that Islamophobia has by and large been eradicated. This probably goes against the global trend, as it is probably correct to say that in most other parts of the world, Islamophobia is sadly on the rise, not on the wane.
Even when the world backs the Palestinian cause, as it at least seems apparent from the voting at the UN, Islamophobia is still on the rise.
The Palestinian cause and the demonisation of Muslims, it seems, ergo, are two separate issues. The Palestinian cause is viewed as an issue that concerns land rights and geography. But Islamic lifestyles are often viewed through the prism of immigration, integration, preservation of traditional values so-called, and the lot.
This smacks of hypocrisy, this celebration of the Palestinian cause that runs parallel to the widespread Islamophobia that is seen around the world.
It is a happy augur that Sri Lankans currently are not part of this skewed scheme of things. Historically, it shows, Muslims were always welcome in Sri Lanka, and viewed as useful members of the community. We are back at a place where that seems to be happily the current reality as well.
