Israel, Islamophobia, and the question of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty

The truth, the horrible truth, is that it was the last Government that acquiesced in, connived at, and virtually supported a very serious erosion of our sovereignty. by Izeth Hussain

( May 23, 2017, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The question of Sri Lanka‘s sovereignty looms large in the political consciousness of many Sri Lankans today. There are two major reasons for this, the first of which is that in the novel geopolitical configuration in South Asia there is a heavy Chinese presence which could prompt India to want to get a control over Sri Lanka. The other is that Sri Lanka ‘s further economic development obviously dictates some sort of opening out to India which would inevitably spell close linkages with the Dravidian states of South India which are proving to be among the most dynamic in India today. Those linkages might be seen as leading to dependence and satellisation. Those two factors should be situated in the context of Sri Lanka’s peculiar, indeed disgusting, politics of today. It is a politics in which a rank hedonism is the hallmark of the power elite, a politics in which self-interest and group interests reign supreme with little or no regard for moral scruple, a politics in which the Opposition can be expected to sabotage every Government initiative regardless of the national interest if there is the slightest room for controversy, a politics in which the Government plays far more of a divisive than the unificatory role expected of it, a politics in which many Sri Lankans believe that a substantial proportion of our politicians can be bought and sold like potatoes. Given these factors the prospects for the continuance of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty look dim, quite dim. A major purpose of this article is to point out that there was a serious erosion of sovereignty under the last Government. We have to be emphatic on this because the Opposition holds that the last Government was authentically nationalist whereas the present one is expected to sell the country to the West. The truth, the horrible truth, is that it was the last Government that acquiesced in, connived at, and virtually supported a very serious erosion of our sovereignty. We refer to the Islamophobic hate campaign of the BBS. It was quite evidently well funded, supposedly by Norwegian Christian fundamentalist groups. It is well known of course that Christian fundamentalist groups have engaged in an internationally widespread Islamophobic campaign through the internet and are splendidly countered by Islamic groups. But there does not seem to have been any other Islamophobic hate campaign conducted within a country comparable to the one in Sri Lanka. Furthermore the BBS campaign obviously had an international dimension, shown in the connection with the Wirathu gang in Myanmar. We must recall also that according to former President Rajapakse the BBS campaign was part of an international conspiracy to overthrow his Government. There is no record of Christian fundamentalist groups having been engaged in programs of that sort anywhere else in the world: their purpose is to spread their versions of Christianity, and not to engage in programs to overthrow Governments. Obviously in the case of the BBS they were acting as proxies for Israel. It is well established that the last Government allowed wide latitude for the BBS’ hate campaign, even going to the extent of placing its leaders above the law. We can conclude therefore that Israel was guilty of outrageously blatant interference in our internal affairs, and it would not be excessive to say that the last Government was guilty of acquiescing in, conniving at, and virtually supporting a very serious erosion of our sovereignty. Recently one of the two main propagandists who have been attacking this writer in the columns of the Colombo Telegraph, Backlash, declared his dog-like devotion to apartheid Israel and in the same breath declared that it was Israel that had backed the BBS campaign. That declaration can be interpreted in many ways. It does seem to bespeak some degree of arrogance on the part of Israel, shown in the expectation that a Zionist agent could openly declare Israel’s blatant interference in our internal affairs without Israel having to face adverse consequences. It was, in effect, a declaration of Israel’s sinister power in Sri Lanka. It certainly had that kind of power under the last Government: otherwise the wide latitude allowed to the BBS hate campaign cannot be explained. Does it have that kind of sinister power under the present Government as well? Whatever the answer might be the facts point to one conclusion, an inescapable conclusion. If the Government really values Sri Lanka’s sovereignty even to a slight degree, it should brook no interference whatever in our internal affairs, certainly not the kind of blatant Israeli interference that there was under the last Government. The inescapable conclusion is that the Government should institute a full-scale inquiry into Israeli interference in our internal affairs. As the writer has been pointing out in recent articles the Islamophobic hate campaign has been continuing though on a lesser scale. Can the Government safely ignore that fact? The last Government evidently believed that it could contain the BBS hate campaign without allowing it to ignite into a full-scale genocidal 1983 holocaust against the Muslims. The present Government probably holds the same belief. It will do well to bear certain facts in mind. One is that Islamophobic hatred is now fairly widespread in Sri Lanka, as shown by the recent vandalization of mosques about which the Government doesn’t seem to care two hoots. The Government should also bear in mind the fact that one of the motivations behind the 1915 anti-Muslim riots was the desire of Sinhalese businessmen to take Muslim business into their own hands, and a similar motivation was a potent factor behind the 1983 holocaust. Above all the Government must bear in mind the following two facts: the British Government of 1915 never wanted those riots to take place but they did all the same, and secondly there could be sinister forces who would want another 1915 or even another 1983 as that could help destroy the unity of this country. The Islamophobic hate campaign has certainly continued in the columns of the Colombo Telegraph. One of the regular propagandists, Backlash, seems to have dropped out but others have made their appearance, equally bizarre and equally stupid in their disregard for fact and reason and the high valuation they place on flung filth. One of the established regulars, Kettikaran, poor fellow, seems now to be in a totally hysterical state. But he seems to have broken new ground in the propaganda campaign. He used to keep on alleging that I advocated famine as a way of defeating the LTTE, and after some time I took to asking the readers to get to Google and click on “Izeth Hussain’s reply to K.Arvind 2006”. I found to my surprise recently that the connected correspondence that used to appear no longer appears. Has that been excised by Kettikaran and his neo-Nazi Zionista buddies? Anyone interested in their antics should now turn to something like “K.Arvind – Girls and Decency 2006” which will take him to a letter by me in the Island strongly advising against the use of famine to subdue the LTTE. The Zionistas really are bizarre and stupid.

-Izeth Hussain

Israel and Sri Lankan Islamophobia

This article leads to the question whether the Israeli propaganda organization Hasbara, which has plenty of funds at its disposal, is using Backlash and Kettikaran as its agents for the promotion of Islamophobia in Sri Lanka. There are interesting common factors between them. by Izeth Hussain

( April 22, 2017, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian ) The attacks against this writer practically every week, which have gone on relentlessly over a very long period, have evidently been meant to stop this writer’s articles from being published. But the articles continue to be published in the Island, the Colombo Telegraph, and the Sri Lanka Guardian and there are no signs that the attacks will have their desired impact on any of the Editors. Consequently this writer can safely ignore the attacks. Unfortunately there has been another dimension to the attacks that cannot be ignored: Islamophobia shown in varying degrees of contempt and hatred towards Islam and the Muslims as a whole. The writer’s analysis led to the conclusion that Tamil Islamophobic racism was much worse than that of the Sinhalese. It afflicts only a minority of the Tamils but it can be terribly lethal if the LTTE rides again. Fortunately, however, after 2009 moderate and pragmatic Tamils have had the political ascendancy and can be trusted – the writer is convinced – to defuse Tamil Islamophobic racism and keep it in check. Alas, there is yet another dimension to the attacks that requires analysis: Israeli promotion of Islamophobia in Sri Lanka. There is good reason to believe that the present Israeli Government would want to promote Islamophobia on a world scale. Its settlement policy in the West Bank is blatantly expansionist and is making a two-state solution virtually impossible. Israel will therefore have to work out a strategy to prevent the colored Arabs from gaining a demographic ascendancy over the white Israelis, a strategy that entails the apartheid system that is being installed, and is already worse than that of South Africa according to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who should know. The apartheid Israeli state cannot endure unless it is backed or at least tolerated by the West. Ideally Israel would want the West also to institute the apartheid system in which the colored immigrant hordes are subjugated and kept safely in their place. It would result in a world order as envisioned by Hitler and also by one of the founding fathers of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, who projected Israel as a white fortress withstanding the threatening colored Asiatic hordes. It is a neo-Nazi vision in which the colored peoples, particularly the Muslims, are to be regarded as lesser breeds. That is the deep meaning of the Islamophobic movement that is sweeping the world today. It has its devotees, passionate devotees, in Sri Lanka also. There could be a reason why this writer in particular could be targeted by the Israelis. Shortly a after he left the Foreign Ministry around 1990, notoriously a victim of the UNP’s ferocious Islamophobic racism, he was invited by one of the two leading Muslim institutions of the time to give a talk on the Palestine problem. It was very well attended by leading Muslim politicians of the time. The talk lasted for over an hour, it was videotaped, and a version was serialized in the Sri Lanka Guardian. After the talk several Muslims asked Dr. Kaleel whether he could do something with the material provided towards effecting the closure of the Israeli Interests Section at the American Embassy – which question was known to be under consideration at that time. His reply was that he would definitely do something about it. He had given an edited copy to President Premadasa who had watched it in full and decided to close down the ISS. (At this point the Tamil Islamophobes will raise one of their sky-splitting earth-sundering yells “LIAR”). It is relevant also to mention that one of the questions raised at the conclusion of the talk was whether the Israelis had been behind the last-minute abortion of his appointment as Ambassador to Paris.

The above certainly establishes that Israel could have a motive for spreading Islamophobia on a global scale but what evidence is there to show that the writer has been targeted? The evidence has to be of a hypothetical and circumstantial order but it seems pretty convincing. After the concerted attacks by the LTTE stopped, further attacks by two, three or more Tamils have continued practically every week. For the most part those Tamils were venting their Islamophobic hatred, but the attacks by two Tamils have been of a different order and require explanation. Backlash has been attacking articles by this writer over a very long period, declaring every one of them as no better than excrement – his favorite metaphor has been “verbal diarrhea”. He suddenly revealed that something unusual was afoot: he corrected this writer’s erroneous memory over an article he had written twenty five years ago. How was it that someone who regarded the articles as excrement should have so vivid a memory of them over a quarter century? Some sort of institutional backing for Backlash was clearly suggested. The other fact suggesting institutional backing is what might be called the tactic of the bucket attack. The logic behind the attack is not of the slightest consequence since what matters is the attack itself, which consists of scooping up the contents of the bucket and letting them fly at the target. The following are some examples. Backlash was asked why he has been reading this writer for years and decades when the articles are no better than excrement. He has also been asked how come editors continue to publish the writer’s excrement. He has given nothing but facetious replies. The reason is that fact and argument don’t matter since what matters is only the successful flinging of the bucket contents at the chosen target. That is also clear from the latest example of his bucket attack. He spent some weeks abroad and now finds that the editors still continue to publish this writer, leaving him and others no alternative but “to grin and bear”. He cannot expect to be taken seriously. But he can tell his foreign backers that he is earning his keep by again flinging bucket contents at the writer. The other brilliant bucketeer is Kettikaran, who has been attacking this writer with hatred and rage over a very long period. Some time ago he inadvertently blurted out that he wished that he didn’t have to read me at all. What could that mean except that he was reading me under compulsion? Who was compelling him and why? Was it some institution? Recently in exchanges with this writer and a Sinhalese in the Colombo Telegraph he suddenly became placatory in language that seemed typical of Christian fundamentalists, who in general are notoriously pro-Israeli and Islamophobic. It was such Norwegian groups that are alleged to have funded the BBS. In addition, just like Backlash, he specializes in the bucket attack in which fact and reason don’t matter at all. He continues to allege that this writer advocated famine as a method of subduing the Tamil rebels when in fact he advocated the precise opposite – as will be shown beyond dispute by getting to Google and clicking on “Izeth Hussain’s reply to K.Arvind – 2006”. He now alleges that the incriminating article by this writer was reproduced in the CT, which is a bare-faced lie. He has been asked to provide the details, which have not been forthcoming, but he can be confidently expected to go on repeating the lie ad nauseam. Some time ago a Tamil reader wrote approvingly of Goebbels’ theory of the big lie, according to which a lie that goes on being repeated comes to be believed. That might have been true in Nazi Germany where there was no freedom of expression. Do these Tamil idiots think that the big lie can prevail against this writer in Sri Lanka where he can easily refute the lie? This article leads to the question whether the Israeli propaganda organization Hasbara, which has plenty of funds at its disposal, is using Backlash and Kettikaran as its agents for the promotion of Islamophobia in Sri Lanka. There are interesting common factors between them. Both have been attacking this writer over a long period, both have given indications that they have some sort institutional backing, and both use the identical tactic of the bucket attack in which fact and reason have no place at all. How do the bucket attacks serve the interests of those two nondescript Tamils? In no apparent way at all because this writer continues to be published and continues to be read. But we can expect the bucket attacks to continue. Why? They don’t serve the interests of those two Tamils but they could serve the interests of Islamophobes who believe that the best that can be done against this writer is to keep throwing dirt at him in the hope that some of it will stick. That will serve their fundamental purpose which is to project one message: All Muslims are dirt.

Wahhabism Is Power-Worship

By Izeth Hussain 

Izeth Hussain

I want to argue in this article that Wahhabism is not as generally thought an atavistic movement designed to take Islam back to the middle ages in reaction to modernity but a movement meant to cope with modernity, and that its strategy for that purpose is to transform Islam into an ideology of power-worship. My thinking on this subject has in its background the fact that I read some decades ago in a great novel by Montherlant, something to the effect that the typical modern man, bereft of the dimension of the transcendental, has two legs one of which is a drive for money and the other a drive for power, the two legs on which the terrible fellow stomps along wreaking the unparalleled destruction that the world has witnessed since the beginning of the First World War in 1914.

But first of all I must clear up some confusions. I concluded my last article on a case for extirpating Wahabism by stating that the crucial question that has to be addressed is whether or not it is the IS, not Saudi Arabia, that practices Wahhabism in its full authentic form. I wrote further that that question can be resolved only by establishing whether or not characteristic IS practices, such as sex slavery, have their warrant in what Wahhab actually preached. If not, there would be a case for extirpating just the IS but not Wahabism itself. If, on the contrary, the IS is the full-blown authentic manifestation of Wahhabism the case for the international community persuading Saudi Arabia to abandon Wahhabism becomes, I think, unanswerable. It is pertinent to recall that in 2013 the EU officially declared that Wahhabism was the greatest source of international terrorism. We can safely assume that that declaration was backed by studies made by scholars and specialists. Therefore there was a case for the EU to persuade Saudi Arabia to abandon Wahhabism.

However, Muslims who have been influenced by Wahhabism in Sri Lanka and elsewhere will give no weight at all to what the EU says. For that matter they give no weight at all to what the scholars of orthodox Islam have to say. What the latter have to say is more or less along the following lines. The Wahabis and their clones are utterly unscrupulous in finding substantiation for their tenets in the Koran and the hadiths and the Sunna. When it suits their purposes they read Koranic texts literally, ignoring the contexts that give full meaning to those texts. They are capable of perverse misreading of texts. They are given to using hadiths of very doubtful authenticity that are not included in the six canonical books of the hadiths. And so on. Consequently it can hardly be expected that finding warrant for IS tenets and practices in what Wahhab preached will lead to any useful conclusion. The Wahabis and their clones believe what they want to believe and they use texts towards that end.

The best strategy to move towards an extirpation of Wahhabism could be a three-pronged one: firstly, show that at the very core of Wahhabism there is nonsense and everything that flows from that core is nonsensical; secondly, that extreme violence and terrorism are of the essence of Wahabism; thirdly, that Wahabism is an unIslamic ideology of power under which the mass of the Muslims will become robotic power worshipers. In addition it will help if it can be shown that some Western forces have been behind the spread of Wahhabism right from the inception and right down to the IS.

I have already shown in earlier articles that at the very core of Wahhabism – the charge of saint worship and polytheism – there is nonsense. What flows from it, such as the sacking of Kerbela in 1801 including the massacre of 5,000 innocent men, women, and children, is also nonsense, moronic, brutal, subhuman nonsense, – and that’s at the core of Wahhabism and all its clones. I will now substantiate the point that extreme violence and terrorism are of the very essence of Wahhabism. Wahhab agreed to the stoning to death of an adulteress. According to Natana de Longbas, presently one of the foremost apologist s for Wahhabism, he did so very reluctantly because the woman was obviously mentally deranged: she repeatedly committed adultery and spoke about it openly. In her lengthy defense of Wahhab’s crime that I have read de Longbas fails to mention that Wahhab did not use the unanswerable argument that the Koran itself prescribes no more than 80 lashes as punishment for adultery and that he could not allow a Koranic provision to be overridden by a hadith of very doubtful authenticity. Nor does she mention that Wahhab failed to use the argument that stoning to death for adultery was very rarely put into practice in the long centuries since the death of the Prophet. I believe that during the many centuries of the Ottoman Empire, which prided itself on the strict observance of the sharia, stoning to death for adultery took place only once. The episode suggests that sadistic brutality was part of Wahhab’s personality. I have also brought out the disingenuousness that is at the core of Wahhabi apologetics, on which I remarked earlier in this article.

As for terrorism, it was there at the very inception of Wahhabism. Terrorism in its essence includes the indiscriminate killing of non-combatant innocents. It is said that Wahhab himself led the first Wahhabi terroristic attack, which was on the tomb of the brother of Caliph Omar who died a martyr’s death. That was followed by terrorist attacks on Najd villages in which Wahhab participated, it is said with the axe as his favorite weapon. The tradition of terrorism inaugurated by him had its first full flowering in the Kerbela massacre of 1801 and it continues to this day. The Saudis have been projecting a sanitized image of Wahhabism according to which its terrorism is an aberration, whereas the trut is that Wahhabism can always be expected to morph into terrorism. That is an important part of the case for the international community to persuade Saudi Arabia to abandon its championship of Wahhabism.

I come now to the question of Wahhabism as an ideology of power worship. In recent days more than one of my readers has sent me the text of a June 2015 article by Catherine Shakdam in which she argues that Wahhabism is not an atavastic throwback but a modernizing movement and compares it to movements in which mass massacres have occurred: the French Revolution in which well over a thousand were guillotined, and the mass massacres under Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. Others too, such as John Gray the philosopher, have argued a similar case after the Paris bombings. In support of that view I will point out that Wahhabism is not comparable to movements of religious reform and renewal through a return to the roots. Lutheranism led to nationalism, Calvinism led to capitalism, both led to a reinvigoration of Catholicism through the counter-Reformation, and Methodism and the chapel cults of Britain led to socialism. The Buddhist and Hindu reform movements of the late nineteenth century can be seen in a positive light, and so can the Islamic reform movement inspired by Jamaldin al-Afghani. But I can’t see anything positive in Wahhabism. In its latest manifestation, the IS, it is just a grisly, gory, savage horror. There is much more to be said on Wahhabism as power worship. I will conclude this article by recalling Yeats’ great prophetic poem which concluded, “What rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”. The IS rough beast wants to slouch towards Mecca to be born.

A Case for extirpating Wahabism

By Izeth Hussain

Verily God will not change the condition of men, till they change what is in themselves. – Koran – Sura 13 verse 14.

The main purpose of this article is to point out that there might be a case for action by Muslims, as well as non-Muslims constituting the international community as a whole, towards extirpating Wahabism and all its clones from off the face of the earth. I choose the word "extirpating" advisedly to mean a process of rooting out so that Wahabism will never ever again manifest itself on this earth. I have been provoked into arguing this case by the anti-Shia hate campaign for which our mosques have been misused over several weeks. I cannot see the slightest justification for this hate campaign. We have a small community of Shias in the form of the Borahs who have always had excellent relations with our Sunni Muslims consisting of the Moors, the Malays, and the Memons, and also with non-Muslim Sri Lankans. In addition there are a few hundred non-Borah Shias here, who took to Shi-ism mainly because they were enthused by Iran’s 1979 Revolution. They could be the target of the Wahabi hate campaign. But, as far as my enquiries reveal, they have not been aggressively pushing a Shia agenda nor have they been using unethical methods to increase their ranks.

What, then, is the explanation for the entirely gratuitous and utterly irrational anti-Shia hate campaign that has been sustained for several weeks, desecrating our mosques in the process? The question is an important one, because the answers to it could constitute some of the reasons why Wahabism should be extirpated. Part of the explanation is the intolerant and totalitarian mind-set of the Wahabis. They hold that not only non-Muslims but professing Muslims such as the Sunnis and the Shias – in short all those who don’t abide by Wahabi tenets – are in reality non-Muslims and should therefore be put to the sword. But according to the well-entrenched belief system of all non-Wahabi Muslims the shahada – the confession of faith that there is only one God and Mohammed is his Prophet – suffices to make a person a Muslim, and that is not something that should be questioned. The fierce fanatical intolerance of the Wahabis means that they cannot live in peaceful accommodation with other Muslims. They have been busy dismantling Sunni Islam in Sri Lanka, now they want to eliminate Shi’ism, and next they will want to destroy the Sufi orders that have traditionally structured orthodox Islam in Sri Lanka. Only the Kharijites of early Islam showed a like intolerance. They were quickly banned by other Muslims. It is time to ban the Wahabis.

Another part of the explanation is that the Islamic religious establishment here is under foreign influence, more precisely foreign control. Everyone knows that the spread of Wahabism in recent times is a manifestation of the might of the petro-dollar. Therefore the creation of a Shia problem in Sri Lanka, where there are no rational grounds for it at all, can be seen as something that is being done in promotion of a foreign agenda. So-called Shia-Sunni conflicts are raging in the Middle East, about which I must make a clarification. They are in reality majority-minority conflicts in which secular interests are involved and not sectarian conflicts between two different versions of Islam. The projection of those conflicts as sectarian might be seen as part of a program to demonize Shi’ism and Iran – which could lead according to some to the nuclear bombing of Iran, something devoutly wished for by the Zionists, Neocons, and Islamophobic groups. All that may be speculative. What is definite is that the Islamic religious establishment here has to put itself in the clear about the possible charge that it is serving a foreign agenda. That has to be done by showing that there are clear rational grounds for the anti-Shia hate campaign.

I come now to the question of action by Muslims as well as non-Muslims towards the extirpation of Wahabism and its clones. Why is this necessary? I have already given above one reason: the totalitarian intolerant outlook of Wahabis which means that as soon as they have the upper hand they will want to extirpate every other form of Islam, a process that we can see taking place right now under our noses in Sri Lanka. The other reason is that Wahabism is evil. I take seriously the hadith in which the Prophet foretold with stunning prescience the manifestation of the Horn of the Devil in the Najd – from where Mohammed Abdul Wahab hailed. In Islamic theological terms Wahabism is the work of Iblis. In secular terms, I mean by evil the drive to get joy by harming and destroying. I can substantiate that definition by many examples from art-works – notably cinema and fiction – but that is not necessary here.

I will substantiate that definition by showing what Wahabism has meant in actual practice. In an earlier article I have argued that at the very core of Wahabism there is nonsense, shown in confusion over the distinction between acts of veneration that are reserved for humans, including saints, and acts of worship that are reserved for the deity. It should be beyond dispute that out of well over a billion Muslims who engaged in acts of veneration towards saints not even one was guilty of polytheism. That is why Mohammed Abdul Wahab himself held that none of them would be consigned to eternal hell-fire, which would be the fate only of those who continued after him to engage in what he regarded as saint worship. But how can a practice that was sanctioned in orthodox Islam for 1,200 years become something that merits eternal hell-fire after Mohammed Abdul Wahab? That surely establishes, beyond dispute, that at the very core of Wahabism there is nonsense. It is arguable, however, that while the Wahabis believe sincerely that saint-worship is going on they are entitled to destroy certain tombs and other monuments. But what about the destruction of cultural artefacts that have been proudly preserved over many centuries, which have not even the remotest connection with polytheism? I think that attests to the destructive evil that is at the core of Wahabism.

The evil drive for taking joy in harming and destroying that is at the core of Wahabism is seen at its most striking in the horrors perpetrated by the IS: enforced marriage, the selling of females as sex slaves, concubinage, mass executions and indiscriminate massacres, the wholesale destruction of cultural artefacts and cultural sites, and so on. On this subject the world of Islam must face up to some inconvenient ugly facts. The whole of that world, including Saudi Arbia, have unequivocally condemned the IS as unIslamic. How, then, can we explain the ugly fact that the recruitment drive of the IS has been spectacularly successful in many parts of the Islamic world, and that those recruits are Wahabi devotees? Furthermore the IS declares that it is strictly practising the tenets of Wahabism unlike Saudi Arabia. Its educational system, it claims, is wholly Wahabi, in proof of which it shows that the text-books used in IS-run shools are the same as in Saudi Arabia.

The question that has to be faced by the islamic world is not whether there is a nexus between Wahabism and the IS. The question rather is whether or not it is the IS, not Saudi Arabia, that practices Wahabism in its full-blown authentic form. That question can be resolved only by showing whether or not characteristic IS practices, such as sex-slavery, have their sanction in the actual writings of Mohammed Abdul Wahab. If that is the case, the Islamic world has no alternative to moving towards the total extirpation of Wahabism from off the face of the earth, now and for evermore. Saudi Arabia has to be persuaded to abandon Wahabism. In this matter there is a convergence of interest between the West and the Islamic world: the former in ending the threat of IS terrorism, the latter in saving Islam from Wahabism. I must emphasize in conclusion that my anti-Wahabist advocacy has behind it the might and majesty of orthodox Islam, which was established in its full form around 1200 AD and has held sway over the greater part of the Islamic world since then. The apologists of Wahabism have behind them mainly the might of the petro-dollar. The eventual outcome is certain.

izethhussain@gmail.com

Tamil lunatic fringe anti-Muslim racism

Observations on Muslim-Tamil relations -3

by Izeth Hussain

I am going to write this concluding part of my article partly in notation form, for brevity because many newspaper readers are impatient with articles that extend into several parts. My focus in this part is on the reasons why the Tamil attacks on me should be regarded as racist. I will begin by setting out facts, most of which point unambiguously to racism. 1) They were concerted attacks, not random. They did not begin with my first article but after some weeks. After several weeks they subsided, to revive again with the old fury. In the present phase they have subsided again, but attacks are continued with the old fury by a lone straggler and a couple of newcomers. The lone straggler recently wrote, "Reading you, Sir, against our wishes so boringly often …..", which gives the impression that he has been acting under instructions. These Tamils have given the impression that they are expatriates who are devotees of the LTTE, which of course has been utterly racist.

2) Since people are nowadays deeply concerned about foreign meddling in our internal affairs, the question has arisen whether RAW has been behind the concerted attacks. I doubt it. But I must say that for some reason that is still beyond my comprehension the Tamil racists have always been grimly determined to project me as anti-Indian. It seems to be an obsession with them. I certainly have been critical of India when that has been necessary, but my stance on India has been far removed from that of the so-called Sinhala Buddhist chauvinists. 3) One point has emerged in the exchanges over my articles that points to an implicit racism. The point has been frequently made – not only by Tamils – that as a Muslim I should write on the IS, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, and the horrifying spread of fundamentalism in parts of the Eastern Province: therefore It is not for me to pontificate to the Tamils on how their problems should be solved. I claim the right to deal with national problems just like any other Sri Lankan national. I am horrified, and disgusted, by the assumption that I should not deal with the Sinhalese-Tamil ethnic problem even though it led to the genocidal eviction of Muslims from the North and grim butchery in the EP.

4) One fact that in my view points very clearly to racism is the intensity of the Tamil hatred directed against me, not matched by anything from the Sinhalese. Soon after the attacks began I asked the question "Why such hatred?" because there was nothing in what I had said or written to justify it. I found myself using the phrase "a total annihilating hatred" but did not revise it because there did seem to be a genocidal rage behind the Tamil attacks. I am not being thin-skinned because there is nothing comparable in the attacks on other articles in the CT. For instance frequent articles by a well-known political analyst almost invariably attract flak, even when they are of the highest quality. But for the most part the flak consists of sneers, jeers, and imputations of ulterior motives with little or nothing of the hysterical hatred and mad dog rage inspired by my articles. It is legitimate to conclude that there is racism behind a hatred that cannot be explained on any other rational ground.

5) The most frequent allegation against me by the Tamil racists is that I am and have been for decades anti-Tamil. The only evidence cited by them to substantiate that allegation is that I had advocated the use of famine as a weapon to subdue the Tamil rebels. I protested that I had in fact advocated the opposite and they kept on repeating the charge. Recently I made it clear that I had the documentary evidence to support my position, and they have not repeated that charge. But one of the worst of the Tamil racists a few days ago referred to my "inhumane recommendations to GOSL during the war" without daring to specify what they were. It’s all nonsense. In an earlier article I have mentioned that sometime before the air-drop two lorry loads of rice were sent to Jaffna, the result of my persuading Foreign Minister Hameed to take such action. The Tamil racists have been reduced to blatantly concocting evidence to show that I am anti-Tamil.

6) They could try to distort the import of my article Rationale for 13A minus plus in the Island of April 18, about which I must make some clarifications. Some improvements and extensions may be possible on 13A, but a wide extension up to federalism and more is not a realistic expectation in the foreseeable future. Let the Tamils by all means continue to struggle for that extension. But let us at the same time try to implement 13A minus as thoroughly as possible, mounting a crash program like Dudley’s Green Revolution or the Mahaveli Accelerated Program. In addition let us establish a fully functioning democracy with special safeguards for the minorities such as Race Relations Boards etc. I can’t see anything anti-Tamil in any of that.

7)So far from being anti-Tami; I have in fact been regarded as pro-Tamil, even to the extent of endangering myself. A) I have consistently berated Sinhalese racism against the Tamils, and Muslim support for that racism. B) I have refused to regard the LTTE as a terrorist movement. I have written two articles arguing that it should be regarded as a nationalist movement. I have written many articles on the ethnic problem over the decades, but I don’t think I have used the term "terrorist" about the LTTE even once. C) I am probably the only non-Tamil who has acknowledged in writing that the genocidal eviction of the Muslims from the north was preceded by Muslim Homeguards getting together with the STF to drive out Tamils from allegedly sixteen villages in the EP. D) I have been in favour of a common commemoration of our dead soldiers and the dead LTTE fighters. In that connection I had the temerity to cite the inscription on the tombs built by the ancient Chinese to honor the bravery of their fallen enemies: "May you be born among us in your next birth".

8) It seems bizarre in the extreme that I of all people have come to be perceived as anti-Tamil, even though it is only by lunatic fringe Tamils. A clue to an explanation is provided by an episode in the world of cricket. Umpire Darrell Hair of Australia could see evidence of ball tampering where none else could. Cricketing legend Geoff Boycott provided the explanation: racism. Tamil racists perceive me as having been an anti-Tamil racist – and notoriously so – over many decades. No one else shares that perception. The Boycott explanation applies: racism. 9) I cannot go into theories of racism to set out the grounds on which that explanation applies. I will here provide a few pointers only. The racist perceives the Other in terms of stereotypes, which are seen in essentialist terms as virtually unchanging. The Other is also seen as inferior and/or threatening.

10) The stereotype of the Muslim is that he shines at trade, the gem business, and illicit trafficking in narcotics. He is a very poor performer in practically every other field. He is educationally backward and is seriously under-represented in the upper echelons of the State and the professions. Intellectually and culturally he is null and void. In politics he produces politicians who have been utterly self-seeking and devoid of principle. He holds himself apart, and has not much of a national sense. He is conservative, particularly in religion except that he is taking to fundamentalism in a big way in the Eastern Province 11) I am talking only of the stereotype about the Muslims, not of the changing realities that now make the stereotype largely irrelevant except in a few particulars. This factor of change is crucial in understanding Tamil anti-Muslim racism. The point is that the Muslims are getting more educated and could become competitive in practically every field. This is a time of socio-economic decline for the Tamils, which could make them apprehensive that the Muslims might gain ascendency over them, particularly in the Eastern Province. 12) Why have I in particular become the focus of so much Tamil hatred and rage? I am in most ways the diametrical opposite of the stereotypical Muslim drawn out above. I could be the forerunner of a new type of Muslim whom it would be impossible to hold in contempt as essentially inferior.

13) My purpose in this article is severely pragmatic. As I have stated earlier the Tamil lunatic fringe anti-Muslim racists are a tiny segment of the Tamil people, but we have to bear in mind that the lunatic fringe can easily slide into the center, and furthermore that it can serve as a catalyst to ignite a conflagration in the Eastern Province. On the other side, the Muslims there are increasingly falling prey to Wahabism and its clones, which means that they are among the most stupid and potentially violent of human beings on earth. In earlier articles I have several times referred to Islamic fundamentalism as Yanko Zionist Petro Islam. I rather doubt that a new Government will take effective action to prevent a conflagration in the EP. Since 1948 the basic policy of our Governments has been to allow ethnic problems to fester. Therefore action has to be taken by the TNA and the SLMC, and the civil society. I would like to end this article on a bright note by pointing out that it would not be over-sanguine to expect the civil society to play a significant role in the EP: it did play such a role in bringing about the revolutionary transformation of January 8. – Concluded.

Izethhussain@gmail.com

Tamil Lunatic Fringe Anti-Muslim racism – Observation On Muslim-Tamil Relations – II

By Izeth Hussain 

Izeth Hussain

A clarification is required about the title of this article. I refer only to a narrow segment, a very narrow segment, of the Tamils, not the totality of them, or the generality or the majority of them. Does that very narrow segment of Tamils merit a two or three part article? I believe they do for several reasons. By and large the relations between Muslims and Tamils are quite satisfactory. In fact, I am told, that there is better rapport between the Muslims and the Tamils – the Tamil-speaking peoples – than there is between either of them and the Sinhalese. It is only in the Eastern Province that Muslim-Tamil relations are troubled, already I suspect to a fairly serious extent. There the Tamil lunatic fringe anti-Muslim racists could come to play a catalytic role in creating yet another monstrous ethnic problem in Sri Lanka.

We must also bear in mind that what today seems to be the lunatic fringe can tomorrow become the center. The French Prime Minister forecast some weeks ago that the National Front – which for decades was regarded as belonging to the lunatic fringe – could come to power in a couple of years. In India the RSS was for decades regarded as belonging to the lunatic fringe but today its idiotic Hindutva ideology reigns in the state, mosques and churches are being destroyed, and moves are afoot to build temples in honor of Godse the assassin of Gandhi. The most distressing example of the commutation between the lunatic fringe and the center has been that of Sri Lanka. For here the lunatic fringe has always been at the center, on both sides of the ethnic divide. The result has been a quarter century of war with 100,000 dead. It would be very foolish of us to ignore the incendiary potential in the Tamil ant-Muslim lunatic fringe on the ground that they are numerically not very significant.

I come now to a relevant autobiographical detail. Sometime in the first half of the ‘nineties, I was one of the three speakers at a meeting organized by the Church of Sri Lanka, the other two being Sarachchandra and Dr.Devanesan Nesiah. The latter stated that as an official I had had a blameless record but thereafter I was somehow at the center of controversy. He added that he was in agreement with ninety percent of what I wrote. He clearly meant that my writings proving to be so controversial was difficult to understand and required explanation. I will not venture on an explanation at the moment. The point that I want to make is that my peculiar capacity for being at the center of controversy, spotted by Dr. Nesiah, has continued over the decades, so that I have plenty of experience enabling me to assess the peculiar character of Tamil attacks on me.

My weekly articles in the Island are published simultaneously in the Colombo Telegraph where, unlike in the print media, there is ample space for responses. I have received many encomiums directly through email, disproportionately from Tamils which I thought was easily understandable because for decades I have been outspokenly critical on Sinhalese racism against the Tamils. Quite suddenly my articles in the Colombo Telegraph started receiving extremely negative responses. I noticed after some time that all those extremely negative responses came from writers using nom de plumes, and invariably those nom de plumes declared a Tamil identity. When I pointed this out the reply was that I had been attacked also by several others whose non de plumes did not suggest a Tamil identity. Quite true, but those responses registered sober dissent and nothing of the rage and hatred that characterized the Tamil responses. For instance a writer with a Burgher name was very critical of me but he declared nonetheless that I had “much to contribute”. That would have been unthinkable from a Tamil racist. A Sinhalese, who I know hates my guts, declared that I am “well read and readable”. That too would have been unthinkable from a Tamil racist.

Some features struck me as rather curious about the Tamil attacks. They were invariably written in fluent English and obviously came from educated professionals. The emails I get – very infrequently -from Sinhalese racists are usually written in poor English. I had the impression that the Tamil attacks came from expatriates – I made the point and it was not denied. The most interesting feature to which I want to draw attention is that the Tamil attacks seemed to be organized, not just a random phenomenon. They did not start with my first article in the Colombo Telegraph, it took a little while for them to get going, after which for several weeks every article of mine provoked attacks by around seven to ten Tamils. Suddenly they subsided for some weeks, after which they erupted again with the old fury. In the present phase they have subsided again, but a couple of newcomers have entered the fray with the same fury as the old-timers. Recently one of the old-timers blurted out a detail that clearly indicated that he was attacking me under instructions. I leave it to others who may be better informed to make sense of all this.

I am afraid that this article will be excessively long if I go into details to substantiate my charge – made on the basis of the attacks on me in the Colombo Telegraph – of Tamil lunatic fringe anti-Muslim racism. The interested reader will have to access the relevant material through the internet. I can do no more here than provide just a few pointers. A consistent feature of my exchanges with the Tamil racists has been a total imperviousness to fact and reason and a total absence of moral scruple on their part. I will provide an instance. I wrote more than once that if not for India the Tamils would be treated like a conquered people – that is to say like dirt. A Tamil reader claimed that I showed disrespect for the Tamils in using the term “like dirt”. Another, one of the worst of the Tamil racists, declared that in using such language I showed up my very low upbringing, unlike that of my former colleague Bandu Silva. The racist hated was so strong that he failed to understand – although he is fluent in English – that I was deploring the ways of the conqueror, not of the conquered. In reply I cited the case of Somerset Maugham, a life-long Francophile, who fled France when the Nazis invaded that country. When asked what would be the fate of the French under Nazi occupation, he replied tersely “Eat shit”. I pointed out that Maugham was deploring the ways of the Nazi conqueror, not of the conquered French. In fact he was showing contempt for the Nazis. Instead of accepting that clarification, the Tamil racist burst out that my choice of an example using the word “shit” only showed what a low degraded fellow I am. He clearly displayed a total imperviousness to fact and reason, a total absence of moral scruple, and also a savage racist compulsion to view the Muslims as low degraded people.

I will provide one more example to illustrate the depth of the Tamil racist hatred. The ostensible reason for the attacks on me is supposed to be that I am anti-Tamil and that I am widely notorious for being anti-Tamil. I will show in the next part of this article that the truth is the very opposite. I have in fact been dangerously outspoken on Sinhalese racism against the Tamils and on Muslim support for that racism. It is a mystery why the Tamil racists feel under some sort of compulsion to project me as anti-Tamil. Anyway they are unable to provide any evidence to substantiate their charge. Therefore they picked on a charge made against me by a Tamil that I had advocated famine as a weapon to subdue the Tamil rebels. I showed in an article in the Island that in fact I had advocated the very opposite – that the Government should not use famine as a weapon. In recent months the Tamil racists have repeatedly made that charge. I challenged them to produce the documentary evidence but they were unable to do so. Actually the document can be easily accessed by clicking on my reply to Arvind in 2006. I believe that the Tamil racists were deliberately lying all along. It must take a terrible hatred to try to incriminate someone by imputing to him the very opposite of what he had advocated.

Tamil Lunatic Fringe Anti-Muslim Racism – Observations On Muslim-Tamil Relations – I

By Izeth Hussain 

Izeth Hussain

I must make some preliminary clarifications before getting to the proper subject of this article. Some of the contents of this article are autobiographical, which might give some readers the impression that I am egotistically trying to draw attention to myself. Actually I have no alternative to drawing material from my own experience of Tamil lunatic fringe anti-Muslim racism because comparable material is not available elsewhere. My articles are published simultaneously in the Island and in the Colombo Telegraph where there is plenty of space for responses. I have been responding to my Tamil racist critics for several months in order to gather adequate material for an article on Muslim-Tamil relations, and this is it.

I have hesitated much before embarking on this article. Everyone knows about the Sinhalese-Tamil ethnic problem and the Sinhalese-Muslim ethnic problem, but what is this new-fangled nonsense about a Muslim-Tamil problem? We all know, of course, about the mosque massacres in the Eastern Province and the genocidal eviction of Muslims from Jaffna, but all that was in the past. Surely, it might be thought, in the post-war phase after 2009 there can’t be much more than minor matters to be resolved between the Muslims and the Tamils. So, for writing an article on Muslim-Tamil relations as a problem I might be projected as a person mischievously stirring up trouble, as a disturber of the peace.

It should be recognized, however, that there is a problem to the extent that there is a need for Muslim-Tamil ethnic reconciliation for the horrors committed in the past. This is a problem that has been ignored up to now even though K.M. de Silva wrote as follows in his 2012 book Sri Lanka and the defeat of the LTTE with reference to the genocidal eviction of Muslims from Jaffna: “Thus, reconciliation is not a matter solely of reconciliation between the Government and the Tamils or the Sinhalese majority and the Tamils. It needs to include reconciliation between the Tamils and the Muslims, as recompense to the Muslims for the only act of ethnic cleansing during the long struggle between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan state”.

I must at this point divagate briefly from my main narrative to make a clarification. Around 2000 a Tamil journalist named Eelaventhan declared at a meeting at the ICES that the eviction of Muslims from Jaffna had been preceded by Muslim Home Guards getting together with the STF and driving out Tamils from around sixteen villages in the Eastern Province. I asked him for the details so that I could write an article about it, but they were not forthcoming. On two more recent occasions also I made the same request of Tamils who made the same charge, but I have received nothing so far. According to my Muslim contacts the charge is a highly exaggerated one. Nothing was done by Muslims in the Eastern Province that could even remotely justify – on the principle of proportionality – the eviction of 80,000 Muslims from Jaffna. All that can be said in the absence of hard facts is that the process of reconciliation cannot even begin unless both sides acknowledge their wrong-doings.

However, what is required at the moment is not action towards Muslim-Tamil ethnic reconciliation but action to prevent the coming about of a full-fledged Muslim-Tamil ethnic problem. At present the problem is at an incipient inchoate stage. Would writing about it make it worse? Could ignoring it or playing it down make it fade away? My belief is quite to the contrary: we should shout about it and do everything possible to scotch it at the incipient stage as otherwise the Muslim-Tamil ethnic problem will almost certainly acquire monstrous proportions. Let me provide an illustration of what happens when an ethnic problem is ignored and continues to be ignored for decades. In 1993 the Western Australia University published a paper by me – along with others by Sri Lankans – on The Sri Lankan Muslims – The Problem of a Submerged Minority. The Preface to the collection of papers contained the following about mine: “The paper draws attention to the relative deprivation of the Muslim community in various spheres of life which, if unattended, has the potentiality of becoming another fissiparous issue in troubled Sri Lankan politics. Hussain’s paper is illustrative of the importance of perceptions of discrimination in complicating ethnic issues, and he correctly signals the necessity for effective State apparatuses to guarantee fair and equal treatment for all Sri Lankans”.

From 1975 to 2002 there were practically every year anti-Muslim ructions, some of which were of a very serious order. I wrote about them, but nobody else did as far as I can recall, and as for the Governments of that period they failed, or rather refused, to take any effective measures to curb anti-Muslim action. Probably they secretly enjoyed it all because all our Governments have included in their ranks pukkah racists. However the fact that the ructions stopped after 2002 might be taken as substantiating the thesis that the most effective way of dealing with ethnic problems would be to ignore them. But some years later there was the Grease Yaka harassment of Muslim females and the abduction for ransom of Muslim businessmen. Then, suddenly, there was the State-backed anti-Muslim campaign of the BBS and other extremist groups. Sri Lanka found itself with yet another ethnic problem, which attracted serious international concern. My view, expressed as far back as 1993, that the Muslim ethnic problem “if unattended” could become serious was proved to be right.

There are structural reasons why Muslim-Tamil tensions can aggravate into a major ethnic problem. All over the world ethnic minorities are becoming more restive. I believe that the underlying reason is that with the spread of mass education and economic development, the aspirations to upward mobility and political consciousness have also been increasing, so that minorities that were hitherto content with the subaltern positions assigned to them by dominant majorities now want equality. It is a process that can bring minorities into rivalry and conflict with majorities. It is also a process that can bring minorities into rivalry and conflict with each other. That is why I believe that Muslim -Tamil tensions can aggravate into a full-fledged ethnic problem unless preemptive action is taken.

I will now conclude this first part of my article by mentioning some of the most important factors that have led to unsatisfactory Muslim-Tamil relations, unsatisfactory in some ways up to now but not in every way. It all goes way back to Ponnambalam Ramanathan’s thesis in the late nineteenth century that the Sri Lankan Muslims are really Tamils. It caused deep offense at that time and has continued to rankle right down the decades. The Tamil affirmation of a linguistic commonality in the form of the “Tamil-speaking peoples” also tends to be rejected because it is seen as implying a denial of separate Muslim ethnic identity. The next factor was Ramanathan’s book on the 1915 anti- Muslim riots which was deeply sympathetic to the Sinhalese side. He indicted only the segment of the Muslims known as the Coast Moors but he was misinterpreted as indicting the whole of the Muslims because of deep prejudice. After Independence the Muslims backed the Sinhalese in every feat of racist idiocy against the Tamils, and were seen as profiting by that. There were the mosque massacres and the eviction of Muslims from the North which can continue to prejudice Muslim-Tamil relations as long as the problems of those refugees are not solved.

After the War Muslim-Tamil relations have clearly entered a new phase. The Tamils have lost their numerical preponderance in the Eastern Province. This has been due to heavy loss of Tamil humanity during the war and emigration, but the Tamils seem to prefer to believe that it is due to the Muslim population going on leaping upwards. The Tamils have been facing a continuing socio-economic decline over the decades, and they could fear that the Muslims will gain an ascendancy over them. A struggle for Muslim ascendancy – or rather for what Muslims see as their rightful place – is going on in the Eastern Province, in which Muslim fundamentalists can come to play a fateful role.

As I cannot go into details about what is going on in the Eastern Province I will conclude with an anecdote that could speak volumes. Around the year 2000, I attended a meeting at the ICES at which several EP Muslims were present. After the meeting was over they recounted an incident in which several Muslims had been killed by the LTTE, which however refused to deliver the corpses for Muslim burial. When the corpses were eventually returned it was found that every one of them had its penis stuck in the mouth. At that point one of the Muslims recounting that horror shouted, “We will not put up with their nonsense forever. We will fight”. That is my case for vigilance in the Eastern Province, and if necessary pre-emptive action now.

*To be continued