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

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

Clarifications on Genocide

by Izeth Hussain

( April 24, 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I began my article “Genocidal anti-Muslim racism” in the Island of April 1 by remarking that the term “racism” had in recent times suddenly come into vogue, and that there is now recognition among the Sinhalese that there could be racists within their own ranks. The obvious example is the BBS which is widely recognized as racist. I saw that recognition as a step or even a great leap forward holding out promise for the future. It might have seemed to many readers that I was being absurdly euphoric. I believe on the contrary that I am proceeding on a very sound principle. It is that to solve a problem you must first of all be able to recognize the problem. Formerly, it seemed to me, that very few Sinhalese were willing to recognize that at the root of our ethnic problems there was Sinhalese racism, or at least that that was part of the problem. Now, in connection with the BBS’s anti-Muslim campaign, there seems to be a widespread recognition that Sinhalese racism is in this case the real problem. That recognition could lead to more realistic thinking about our inter-ethnic relations. In any case the racism paradigm, as I have been arguing for some time, affords a much better grasp of what is involved in so-called ethnic problems than the ethnic paradigm. Racism is seen as coming from the drive to treat the Other as inferior. There are three recognized ways of doing that, one of which is to confine a targeted ethnic minority to inferior positions in a hierarchically ordered system. That was being done to our Tamils, in a systematic way, for decades. That was also being done to our Muslims in the State sector, as I can attest from personal first-hand experience as a Foreign Service officer. I have details to show beyond contest that the 1977 UNP Government practiced racist discrimination against Muslims in the foreign relations sector to an extent that was probably the worst in the world – all under a bizarre Muslim Foreign Minister who was used to legitimate that discrimination – a record that did not really surprise me as I have long regarded the UNP as a quintessentially anti-Muslim racist party, much more so than the SLFP. The two other recognized ways of treating the Other as inferior is to exclude them or to subject them to genocide. Exclusion could take a mild form or be quite intolerable. For instance the Chinese in the Philippines are not welcome in the State sector nor do they want any significant place there, thriving as they do in the private sector where in fact they have more status than the Bhumiputra Filipinos who strut about in the State sector. I have long believed that that could be a model for inter-ethnic accommodation in Sri Lanka, but for the time being the Sinhalese racists seem to be adamantly averse to allowing their legitimate place to the minorities both in the State sector and the private sector. In a way, what has proved successful with the Chinese in the Philippines is a limited form of apartheid, quite successful and acceptable because it is founded on the ancient principle of an ethnic division of labour that is to be found all over the world. Systematic apartheid on an extended scale is of course the most intolerable form of exclusion. It came a cropper in South Africa and is bound to do so in Zionist Israel as well, no less than Kissinger forecasting that in ten years’ time there will be no more Israel. Exclusion can sometimes slide into genocide. Sri Lanka provided a splendid example when the LTTE drove out a hundred thousand Muslims from the North, an act which has come to be regarded internationally as a horrendous act of genocide. We SL Muslims, however, have never committed genocide during the entirety of our existence in this island of over 1,400 years, for which I can give a convincing explanation: we lacked the means to do it. But we too have done our mite to show that we are solidary with our Sinhalese and Tamil brothers when it comes to the matter of genocide: at the height of the war Muslim Homeguards got together with the STF to drive out Tamils from around seventeen villages. It was certainly an act of exclusion with a genocidal touch to it. The most notorious act of genocide through exclusion in the last century was committed during the First World War by the Turks when they drove out their Armenian minority. It inspired what in my view is one of the great novels of the world, Franz Werfel’s The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. I must add that the Sinhalese are internationally recognized as having committed genocide of the conventional order in 1983. I must now define what is meant by genocide. But before doing that I must provide a clarification. The drive to treat the Other as inferior is so widespread that it can be regarded as practically universal. It is a drive that can erupt anywhere under certain conditions, and it can take a genocidal form anywhere, including in the most civilized countries – such as in Nazi Germany. In fact genocide is a commonplace phenomenon in history. The Kuveni legend points clearly to an act of genocide against the original inhabitants of a country, and so does the fact that a great many dominant majorities in the world are not indigenous to the territories where they are today bossing the show over the minorities. A realistic appraisal of the present situation in Sri Lanka requires our taking into account the possibility that the Sinhalese racists may want to commit genocide against the Muslims. Anyone who regards that idea as being insulting to the Sinhalese can be fairly regarded in one of three possible ways: he is a fool, he is an ignoramus, or he is both. For the definition of genocide I turn to Pierre-Andre Taguieff’s book Racism. The term “genocide” was created by the jurist Raphael Lemkin in 1944, and it has come to be used in two ways. In a narrow technical sense, it is used to mean the systematic extermination, in accordance with an ideological conception, of a human group regarded as deserving it. In the second and wider sense, it is used to mean actions taken with the objective of destroying, wholly or in part, a racial, national, ethnic, religious or other group. The 1983 “riots” against the Tamils were clearly genocidal in the second sense. The big question preoccupying many Sri Lankans is whether there will be another 1983, this time against the Muslims as had been anticipated by many Tamils and Muslims after the 1983 pogrom. It is assumed that in that event we will have another ethnic conflict on our hands. It is arguable that it was not anti-Tamil discrimination but the State terrorism after 1977, mounting to a genocidal crescendo in 1983, that ignited the Tamil armed rebellion. Likewise, in the case of the Muslims, mass violence against them could become the catalyst for armed rebellion. It is difficult to imagine a more submissive – indeed abjectly submissive – minority than our Muslims. But changes are taking place, as suggested by the spectacular success of the Eastern Province hartal organized by Azath Sally and Mujibur Rahman. Reportedly that provoked the anger of the Sinhalese extremists, and some believe that the attack on Fashion Bug was their riposte meant to demonstrate Muslim vulnerability to the Sinhalese majority. There are hard facts that seem to favor an anti-Muslim pogrom. Hardly anyone today doubts that the Government has been complicit with the BBS. The police blatantly play the role of spectators while anti-Muslim action is going on, and the Government takes no action against them. On the other hand, when Buddhist moderates engage in a peaceful candle-light vigil, the police immediately arrest them. Some conclusions might be drawn, rightly or wrongly: the Government wants no opposition to the Buddhist extremists, and as for the Muslims they are beneath and outside the Law, a people who should not expect the protection of the State when Buddhists target the Muslims. The reason for this position is of course that the Government’s power rests mainly on Buddhist support. It is a consideration that applies to all the other political parties as well, except for the minority ethnic parties. The Muslims can expect no meaningful support from the Opposition. Nor can they expect such support from the civil society, which is simply not dynamic enough for that purpose. As for the people, they need a scapegoat and the Muslim is the ideal candidate for that role as I argued in my last article. In brief, everything points to a genocidal anti-Muslim pogrom which can be carried out with total impunity. Fortunately President Rajapakse is obviously against that, and very probably there is an understanding with the BBS that the anti-Muslim program can proceed merrily but without violence. I believe that his reason for taking up that position is concern about possible foreign reactions. I must also say that I have come to suspect more and more strongly that behind the nonsense about halal and the anti-Muslim program sinister foreign forces have been at work.

-Izeth Hussain

Genocidal anti-Muslim racism

By Izeth Hussain

Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, the term "racism" has come into vogue. I myself have been using it for years, in preference to the term "ethnic" in connection with our famous ethnic problem. But otherwise it has been normally used in Sri Lanka only to allege "Tamil racism", the assumption behind which is that the Sinhalese of course have never been racist towards the Tamils, or towards anyone else for that matter. But now, in connection with the anti-Muslim hate campaign and the halal problem, - which involve Buddhist monks and a political party that is part of the Government - many including no less than the President have used the term "racism". There is therefore recognition among the Sinhalese power elite that there could be racists within their own ranks. I see this as a step or even a great leap forward, the beginnings of a possible sea-change, holding out promise for the future. In ethnic discourse there is a very striking lacuna – or rather what ought to be regarded as a very striking lacuna but is not. Most ethnic problems arise from perceptions of discrimination among ethnic minorities. They don’t generally believe that all the members of a majority ethnic group want to discriminate against them: only some do, and that becomes a serious problem when they belong to a power elite. What is the term to designate those who want to discriminate? In ethnic discourse there is no such term as "ethnicist", nor is there any other term to designate such persons. In the discourse of racism, on the other hand, there is the term "racist". Therefore, it becomes arguable that ethnic discourse neatly elides away what is at the very core of ethnic problems: the racist. Racism discourse is more illuminating than the ethnic one about the problems faced by ethnic minorities in other ways as well. For instance there is the problem that many members of the ethnic majorities are not even aware of their own racism. Some Western countries find that so significant a problem that they have programmes for RAT (Racism Awareness Training). We badly need such programmes in Sri Lanka. In connection with the anti-Muslim racism prevalent in Sri Lanka today, I am particularly interested in the distinctions made in Western racism discourse between different kinds of racism. But before getting to that I must make some preliminary clarifications. We in Sri Lanka badly need a proper understanding of what racism means in the contemporary world.During the several centuries when the West dominated the world, racism was seen as something that the whites do to the coloured, never as something that the coloured could do to the coloured. It was believed that humanity consisted of different races, and that they could be genetically graded as superior and inferior, with the whites being regarded as superior to all the rest. Under Western imperialism, racism became a way of legitimating the domination and economic exploitation of the coloured by the whites. It was all supposed to be for the benefit of the coloured, the white man having assumed the burden – in Kipling’s phraseology – of uplifting the coloured natives. That notion of racism was no longer in vogue after the Second World War and the demise of Western colonialism. Hitler’s holocaust against the Jews made racism thoroughly unfashionable. Besides it was shown scientifically that there are no distinct races, and that it is impossible to establish that people are genetically superior or inferior. But racism, or what amounts to racism, persists finding its new ground in culture. People are said to be superior or inferior in terms of their culture, and culture is seen – by today’s racists I mean – as something comparable to genes, as something that is unchanging or changing only very slowly over a long period of time. In the meanwhile racists classify people as superior and inferior. In the contemporary world therefore we have, paradoxically, racism without race as Colette Guillaumin put it. I come now to the distinctions made in Western racism discourse to different kinds of racism, in which I have a particular interest as I stated above. The reason is their possible application to the problems facing the SL Muslims today. The present-day racist is someone who regards the Other – that is, members of another ethnic group – as inferior and wants to treat them as such. There are three recognized ways of treating ethnic groups as inferior. One is to confine them to inferior positions in a hierarchically ordered society. That was the position of the Shudras in the traditional caste order of India. The second way is to exclude them, treating them as virtual out-castes – the fate of the Dalits in India. The third way – which comes into operation particularly when the Other is seen as threatening – is to exterminate them, committing what is familiarly known as genocide. It is pertinent to recall that during July ’83 the worst mass killings took place on Black Friday, in response to the threat perception caused by the story that the Tigers had come into the South. The first kind of racism – confining ethnic minorities to inferior positions – is probably widespread, though to varying degrees ranging from the slight to the extreme and intolerable. Wherever there are dominant ethnic majorities, it has to be expected that their members will show a propensity to grab the goodies to an inordinate extent. However, for the most part, ethnic minorities can live with discrimination provided that it is not taken to extremes. The case is very different with the kinds of racism that require that ethnic minorities be excluded or exterminated. Unfortunately it is these kinds of racism that today predominate in Sinhalese racism towards the Muslims. I will now cite examples of insights provided in studies of racism that illuminate the anti-Muslim campaign going on in Sri Lanka. The drive to exclude them is shown by the clamour that has been going on for quite some time that the Muslims are not indigenous to Sri Lanka and that therefore they should go back to Saudi Arabia or wherever it was that they came from. It is alleged among other things that they are multiplying so fast that within a few years they will become the dominant majority in Sri Lanka. All that suggests that the anti-Muslim racists want to make the SL Muslims the scapegoat for what has been going wrong in Sri Lanka. According to the Bible story the sins and shortcomings of the society were heaped on a goat regarded as blamable for them, which was thereafter driven into the wilderness and on to a cliff from which it fell to its death. In contemporary studies of racism the scapegoat theory has come to have a different meaning – or rather the meaning implicit in it has been brought out with insights provided by psychology. The following is the explanation of scapegoat theory given in the book Racism by Pierre-Andre Taguieff, a leading and very impressive theorist on racism. The theory is founded on the hypothesis that frustration is a necessary and sufficient condition for aggressiveness. It is supposed that situations of social and economic crises favour the augmentation of frustration, and therefore of aggressiveness, which is displaced and fixed on the most rejected outsider-group, seen as the most different and the most weak, which is falsely identified as the cause of the frustrations. The victimization of such minority groups makes possible a reduction of the tendency to commit aggression. The scapegoat theory in its modernized version provides in my view a very plausible explanation of the anti-Muslim campaign, for which there seems to be no rational motivation. This is certainly a time of social and economic crisis in Sri Lanka. We have lost the peace, the process of ethnic reconciliation has not even begun, and a political solution is not visible on the horizon. We seem to be getting isolated internationally to a dangerous extent. Combining neo-liberal economic growth with equity is proving to be too difficult. And so on. This certainly is a time of frustration for the Sinhalese, which according to the theory will increase their aggressiveness. The JVP could be raring to have another go at saving Sri Lanka by massacring their fellow-Sinhalese. This surely is the time to find a scapegoat, and the obvious candidate is the Muslim. The SL Muslims are certainly "the most rejected outsider-group", and they are certainly seen as "the most different" as there is no commonality between Buddhism and Islam as there is between Buddhism and Hinduism. There are Sinhalese – the late Regi Siriwardene for instance – who hold that the Sinhalese hate the Muslims even more than they hate the Tamils. The SL Muslims are also "the most weak" because they have no India to come to their help. The SL Muslim is the ideal scapegoat. Exclusion can take mild forms, such as in the exclusion of minority members from certain prestigious posts. Exclusion in the form of the driving out of a people from a territory can border on or actually become genocide. On the other hand, fears that the Muslims will become the majority within a few years have behind them, implicitly but clearly enough, a genocidal drive. The relevant Department has recently issued statistics showing beyond dispute that such fears are totally unfounded. My guess however is that after some time the same fears will again be articulated vociferously. The supposed fears are the excuse. The underlying reality is the genocidal drive. I suspect that some aspects of the halal problem have an implicit and unrecognized genocidal drive behind them. A Sinhalese schoolboy tells another not to drink water from a bottle brought by a Muslim schoolboy because that is "halal water". It seems a silly schoolboy notion that the water brought by a Muslim becomes Muslim halal water. But Sinhalese adults also seem to believe that the halal logo on packaged food somehow makes that food Muslim halal food. Obscure notions about purity and pollution seem to be lurking in the subconscious there. It makes me think of the distinction between the pure and the impure in the Indian caste system and the notion of untouchability. I am trying to get hold of Mary Douglas’ classic Purity and Danger which might throw some light on some aspects of the halal problem. Izethhussain@gmail.com