Michael Roberts
In presenting a Zoom Lecture relating to the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka in April 2021 for Dr. Geethika Dharmasinghe’s class at Colgate University in USA a month or so back, I deplyed the work that went into one of books: that entitled FIRE & STORM.
I now atempt to schock people around the world with pictorial illustrations of some — note “Some” (with all its partialities) — photographs of the political and Eelam War scenarios in Sri Lanka displayed in Fire & Storm.
Filed under accountability, atrocities, centre-periphery relations, chauvinism, communal relations, cultural transmission, demography, discrimination, disparagement, economic processes, Eelam, electoral structures, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, insurrections, island economy, jihadists, landscape wondrous, language policies, life stories, LTTE, martyrdom, meditations, military strategy, modernity & modernization, nationalism, performance, photography, politIcal discourse, power politics, religiosity, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, suicide bombing, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, trauma, truth as casualty of war, vengeance, violence of language, world events & processes
Michael Roberts
Within the contemporary (2020) context of a few killings in European cities by Islamic jihadists on a journey to martyrdom at the feet of Allah, I happened to see Stephen Sackur’s grilling of a French politician in one of his “Hard Talk” presentations on Channel Four. I was critical of his narrow focus and my reflections led me on a comparative journey where I indicated that the cry of “Allahu Akbar” indicated a sense of self-fulfilment in this their final journey on earth for the perpetrators of such attacks.[1]
Filed under accountability, atrocities, communal relations, counter-insurgency, cultural transmission, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, jihadists, landscape wondrous, life stories, LTTE, martyrdom, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, psychological urges, racist thinking, self-reflexivity, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, vengeance, war crimes, world events & processes, zealotry
Michael Roberts
Early in the month of February 2023, I was invited by a young friend, Dr Geethika Dharmasinghe, to deliver a Zoom Video Lecture to a small class of her students at Colgate University in New York. These students were following her course on “Religion and Violence in Asia.”
Gandhi speaking and Zahran Hashim in pact with fellow Lankan jihadists 
…. Zahran was one of the two suicide bombers at the Shangri La Hotel in Colombo on Easter Sunday 2019 where where 36 people died
Filed under accountability, Al Qaeda, atrocities, cultural transmission, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, Islamic fundamentalism, jihad, jihadists, landscape wondrous, life stories, LTTE, meditations, Muslims in Lanka, nationalism, politIcal discourse, racism, religiosity, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, suicide bombing, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, trauma, unusual people, vengeance, world events & processes
thuppahi
