New Age Islam Edit Desk
03 May 2019
The ISIS-NTJ attacks on Churches and hotels
on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka have caused a severe backlash against the general
Muslim community and other sects of Muslims in the country. According to
reports, the general masses of the country have lost trust in Muslims belonging
to all sects. After the attacks, the Sri Lankan government has taken a number
of steps to curb Muslim extremism and to arrest culprits. Burqa has been banned
and the women are being harassed by general people on streets. People are
misbehaving and abusing Burqa clad women. The government has banned NTJ and
Jamat Millat-e-Ibrahimi and has cracked down on extremist organizations in the
country. The entire Muslim community has become untrustworthy in the eyes of
the majority Sinhalese community.
The backlash has also caused severe
problems to the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in the country. Many Ahmadiyyas are
migrants from Pakistan where they are discriminated and victimized both by the
government and by the Islamic extremist organization who have declared them
Kafir. To live in peace thousands of Ahmadiyyas had migrated to Sri Lanka where
they had been living for the last 7-8 years. Now they are being thrown out and
have nowhere to go. The Sinhalese majority do not differentiate between the
Ahmadiyyas and general Muslims and have become aggressive against them. Those
who had been living in rented houses have been vacated by the house owners. As
a result they have become refugees and do not know where to go with their
families.
The Muslim community who had already been
target of hate propaganda by the Buddhist nationalist organizations has become
easy target of these organization post attacks. Now they have got justification
of their hate propaganda in the attacks conducted by the ISIS-NTJ combine. The
Buddhist extremist organization Bodu Bala Sena has been campaigning against
Hindu, Muslim and Christian minority communities as outsiders for the last ten
years. They believe that Sri Lanka is the holy land of the Buddhists and so
Christians, Muslims and Hindus should leave the country. Prior to these attacks, there was no bad
blood between the Christian community and the Muslims. But these attacks have
harmed this harmony and the Sinhalese extremist organizations have succeeded to
sow the seeds of mistrust and suspicion against the Muslims.
According to latest reports, the head of
the ISIS has announced that the attacks were a revenge for their defeat in Iraq
and Syria. It becomes clear that by targeting Sri Lanka, it has only harmed the
Muslims of the country as the whole non-Muslim population has turned against
the Muslims. The damage ISIS has done to the Muslims of Sri Lanka is difficult
to be repaired. It will have serious repercussions on the Muslims of not only
Sri Lanka but on the Muslims of entire South Asia.
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