{"id":21756,"date":"2013-05-31T15:11:43","date_gmt":"2013-05-31T19:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=21756"},"modified":"2013-05-31T15:11:43","modified_gmt":"2013-05-31T19:11:43","slug":"the-core-problem-is-not-the-muslim-nor-the-sinhalese-racist-but-the-power-hungry-sinhalese-politician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=21756","title":{"rendered":"The Core Problem is not the Muslim nor the Sinhalese Racist but the Power Hungry Sinhalese Politician"},"content":{"rendered":"

by <\/p>\n

Izeth Hussain<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is of course a Sri Lankan Muslim problem in the sense that there has been a prolonged hate campaign against our Muslims and anti-Muslim action in various forms. My argument is that that problem cannot be given a rationale in terms of the acts of commission and omission on the part of the Muslims. It can only be given a rationale in terms of an anterior racism among some Sinhalese who want to kick the Muslims down. My further argument is that the anti-Muslim Sinhalese racists are in a minority among the Sinhalese but they have power far beyond their numbers because the Sinhalese politicians, both in the Government and in the Opposition, are supportive of or are complicit with them. The core problem therefore is not the Muslim, not the Sinhalese racist, but the Sinhalese politician.<\/p>\n

I will now set out some details to show that the “Muslim problem” is something that should be written within inverted commas to signify that it is not really a problem. The SL Muslims have always supported the Sinhalese against the Tamils \u2013 on “Fifty-fifty”, on Sinhala Only, on standardization for University admissions, and so on. Their disagreements with the Sinhalese have been of a minor order, not on anything that adversely affects the vital interests of the Sinhalese. Furthermore, although their grievances are many they have refused to speak out on them, their political and other representatives preferring for the most part to behave like clams rather than say anything that might displease the Sinhalese. I have dubbed them “an invisible minority” in the past, and I have also written about their fear psychosis towards the Sinhalese. It is difficult to imagine a more submissive minority, indeed a more abjectly submissive minority, than the SL Muslims.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The external Islamic world is also a factor promoting good Sinhalese-Muslim relations. There are certainly some minuses, such as the barbarity of the Saudis, but by and large the pluses count for more. The Middle East labour market is crucial for the Sri Lankan economy. Politically also the Islamic world has been crucially important for Sri Lanka. If not for Pakistan\u2019s military assistance in 2000 our armed forces would have suffered a major debacle at Elephant Pass. Reportedly Iran\u2019s military assistance was also crucial on another occasion. At Geneva this year the Islamic countries rallied to Sri Lanka\u2019s support \u2013 even though the Muslims here were being treated like pariah dogs \u2013 if not for which support the US Resolution would have won overwhelmingly, establishing Sri Lanka firmly as a pariah state.<\/p>\n

As for the Sinhalese gripes against the Muslims, they are distinctly of a minor order, involving nothing that threatens the legitimate interests of the Sinhalese, and certainly nothing that justifies a protracted hate campaign. The ridiculous proliferation of Wahabi mosques, the call to prayer, cattle slaughter, the female dress code signifying a refusal to integrate, and so on, could certainly constitute minor or even major irritants to the Sinhalese. The point I want to emphasize is that they certainly don\u2019t justify the destructive rage shown in the hate campaign.<\/p>\n

The focus of the anti-Muslim campaign of the BBS and the JHU was not on any of those long-standing irritants but on halal, which had earlier hardly featured in Sri Lankan public consciousness as a problem. Perhaps it was seen as a way of targeting the ACJU \u2013 the Muslim Council of Theologians \u2013 seen as the spearhead of Wahabism in Sri Lanka. I have seen highly exaggerated accounts of the spread of Wahabism in Sri Lanka \u2013 clearly the work of propagandists \u2013 and it may be that unreasonable fears about it have been stoked up among some Sinhalese Buddhists by interested foreigners. Anyway, I hold on commonsensical grounds that the halal problem should be seen as a non-problem. Muslims have wanted halal certification because synthetic food that is widely consumed today could contain pork or other forbidden ingredients. The ACJU obliged by providing such certification. Was that a crime? Non-Muslim producers wanted halal certification because they wanted to tap the Muslim market here and abroad, and again the ACJU obliged, first for a fee and later without a fee. Is there anything criminal or objectionable about any of that? A continuing problem appears to be the notion that the halal logo on a packet of food transforms by a mysterious alchemy the food inside into Muslim food, and the Muslims are therefore cunningly compelling the Buddhists to eat Muslim food. There we come to the crux of the problem: an irrationality bordering on lunacy that I hold to be one of the hallmarks of racism.<\/p>\n

So, as I have stated above, the anti-Muslim hate campaign cannot be given a convincing rationale in the acts of commission and omission of the Muslims, and the rationale has to be in terms of an anterior racism among the Sinhalese. The racist sees the Other as inferior or threatening, someone who should be confined to lower positions in a society, or be excluded, or be exterminated. The outlook of the racist is profoundly hierarchical. The Tamils who were seen as threatening have been conquered, and now it is the turn of the Muslims to be taught their place. After 1983 the Tamils used to tell Muslims, “Your turn next”, and I believe most Muslims agreed. The Muslims are seen not only as threatening like the Tamils but also as inferior, and furthermore they are culturally far more alien to the Sinhalese than the Tamils. That may be why \u2013 as many Sri Lankans believe \u2013 the Sinhalese hate the Muslims even more than they hate the Tamils. I myself believe \u2013 basing myself partly on my experiences as an official \u2013 that if the Sinhalese racists have their way the Muslims will be assigned the lowest place in a hierarchically ordered Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

At this point many Sinhalese readers who are enlightened liberals and hate racism just as much as I do will balk at what I am saying. They will protest that the BBS, the JHU, and other extremists constitute a minority of the Sinhalese, not the mainstream, as shown For instance by the fact that electoral support for the JHU is negligible, and that their antics will be shown in the course of time to have been a passing phenomenon. I agree that they constitute a minority of the Sinhalese. But we must not underestimate the appeal and potential power of racism. Many of us have been surprised by the obvious mass appeal of the BBS as shown by the crowds drawn to its meetings. And we have been surprised also by the willingness of the masses to believe that Muslim businessmen have distributed sterility-inducing confectionary free of charge.<\/p>\n

It happens that I am reading a book on Montaigne by Saul Frampton, which has material relevant to my argument. The material is not about racism but about the Western delusions regarding witches, which had two characteristics in common with racism: irrationality and the drive to demonize the Other. I quote, “And perhaps the clearest example of Montaigne\u2019s particular brand of skepticism is his attitude towards witchcraft, one of the most pressing intellectual problems of his age. In the two hundred years from 1450 to 1650 up to 100,000 people, mostly women, were tried as witches, and up to half of them were executed as a result. One theory for the rise in prosecutions is that learned and legal opinion, traditionally skeptical, momentarily suspended its disbelief through its infatuation with demonology, thus releasing the floodgates of prejudice, misogyny, and cruelty.” Later, alleged witchcraft came to be seen as the outrageous nonsense that it was. But in its heyday it was “one of the most pressing intellectual problems of his age”, which today seems unbelievable, and about 50,000 innocents were burned at the stake. The explanation for the rise in prosecutions, that learned opinion momentarily suspended its disbelief through its infatuation with demonology, seems superficial to me. Why did that infatuation with demonology arise in the first place? Decades ago I read the American anthropologist Marvin Harris\u2019 socio-economic explanation for the problem, which was far more convincing. That essay should be very enlightening about the Sinhalese racists\u2019 drive to demonize our Muslims: they are multiplying like rabbits and will soon dominate Sri Lanka; they are using sex for conversion; they are inducing sterility through confectionary; the Koran says spit three times into food before serving it to non-Muslims, and other such hilarious idiocies.<\/p>\n

My argument so far is that what appears to be a Muslim problem is in reality a Sinhalese racists\u2019 problem. But as I have acknowledged only a minority of the Sinhalese are racists. Ethnocentric prejudice may be widespread among the Sinhalese as among the other SL ethnic groups. But such prejudice does not necessarily translate into racism which is manifested by the drive to confine the Other to lower positions, or to exclude him, or to exterminate him. The Sinhalese racist defined in those terms is in a minority, not in the mainstream, and is the kind of person who in other countries is seen as constituting the lunatic fringe. Elsewhere the lunatic fringe racist is kept at bay by the Centre and is never allowed to determine Government policy. The case is very different in Sri Lanka where the lunatic fringe has always been close to the Centre. In fact it might be said that in Sri Lanka the Centre is the lunatic fringe. Why should this be so?<\/p>\n

Consider the following facts. Both SWRD and Dudley Senanayake were true-blue democrats who would never have wanted to take action against the will of the people. Therefore we can reasonably presume that in mooting their Pacts with Chelvanayagam they really believed that the people would back them. But there was opposition from the racists, and both caved in promptly. JRJ took to State terrorism in a big way and under him there was never any realistic prospect of a political solution. Chandrika K \u2013 to her great credit \u2013 genuinely wanted a political solution through devolution, but the LTTE was not interested. However, Karu Jayasuriya\u2019s dramatic gesture in tearing up the draft Constitution showed that if she had proceeded further the racists would have moved against her with the strong backing of the UNP. The travails of 13A under the present Government is too well known to need reiteration here.<\/p>\n

The big question that arises from the historical record is this: Why have the Sinhalese politicians consistently failed to solve the ethnic problem by siding with the Sinhalese racists, even though the latter constitute a minority? The obvious answer that springs to mind is that of electoral compulsion. The Sinhalese Buddhists are the biggest single group in this country. The majority of them may not be racists in the sense that I have defined above, but they can be expected to share widespread ethnocentric prejudice. That prejudice can be exploited by the racists to determine electoral outcomes. The Sinhalese politicians, just like politicians everywhere else, want two things above all else: firstly to come to power, and secondly to stay in power, and therefore they cannot ignore the wishes of the Buddhist majority.<\/p>\n

Consequently the Government is seen as being complicit with the BBS or as backing it very positively, and the Opposition response has been very muted. Only a few, very few, Sinhalese politicians have been outspokenly critical of the BBS, notably Mangala Samaraweera and Vasudeva Nanayakkara. There is more to be said on this subject, but I will close this article by observing that it does seem that behind our endlessly agonizing ethnic imbroglios the core problem is that of the power-hungry Sinhalese politicians.<\/em><\/p>\n

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by Izeth Hussain There is of course a Sri Lankan Muslim problem in the sense that there has been a prolonged hate campaign against our Muslims and anti-Muslim action in various forms. My argument is that that problem cannot be given a rationale in terms of the acts of commission and omission on the part …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘The Core Problem is not the Muslim nor the Sinhalese Racist but the Power Hungry Sinhalese Politician’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21756"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21757,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21756\/revisions\/21757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}