May 8, 2019 · 6:02 am

Shihara Farook assails Extremism. A Biography and Counter-Current of Significance

Shihara Farook

After three days of crying and being angry I am going to start speaking my heart to all of you. You are free to share this as much as you want and with whom you want. I was born a Sri Lankan Muslim in a town called Gampola very near Kandy Sri Lanka. I was born into a multilingual household and have been trilingual from birth. In that town we had a Muslim majority. There were several mosques and my very large extended family lived sprawled all over the town.

Irfadha Muzammil ….. from https://www.yamu.lk/blog/contemporary-powerhouse-women-in-sri-lanka

At pre school age I was sent to a preschool in a local church . I observed the nuns quietly (Leon Chan and I were friends there as tiny tots) the nuns preferred to call me Fathima as it was a name of a Christian saint as well. They were peaceful kind and so calm! I had the most wonderful time of my life there! They ran an orphanage had some rabbits and made us all smile .

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May 7, 2019 · 2:39 pm

Satha and De Saram: Batsmen Par Excellence who went to Jail

Nicholas Brookes, in CRICKET MONTHLY, 6 May 2019, where the title is “The story of De Saram and Satha: batting geniuses who went to jail”

Two of Sri Lanka’s greatest batsmen had memorable lives, but they have been nearly forgotten today  Ask any sports fan what it takes for a player to reach the pinnacle of their game and you’ll get the same tired answers. Talent. Temperament. Determination. But sporting greatness also relies on factors more arcane. Like luck. Or opportunity. Being in the right place at the right time. Just imagine if Pelé had been born in Bombay or if Gavaskar had grown up in Brazil. Where would they be now?
Satha found not guilty –and here seen with his lawyer Colvin R de Silva
FC de Saram and Mahadevan Sathasivam are the greatest Sri Lankan cricketers of the pre-Test era. They were born three years apart, and in their heyday either would have walked into any international side. Yet, de Saram played only 40 first-class games and Sathasivam a measly 11. Both captained their nation and their club rivalry captivated Colombo. They are quite possibly the best batsmen you’ve never heard of.

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May 6, 2019 · 4:43 pm

How Extremisms have fed off Each Other in Sri Lanka, 1950s-to-2019 …. and still proceeding

Ameer  Ali, in Colombo Telegraph, 6 May 2019 where the title runs “Anatomy Of An Islamist Infamy – II”

It takes two hands to clap and make a noise, and what a deadly noise did Sri Lankans hear during that fatal Easter Sunday? In the first part of this analysis the Muslim leadership hand was identified and discussed. This second part looks at the hand of governments that governed this country since independence and how they laid the remainder of the bricks that paved the bloody road. 

Politicisation of Buddhism  

Long before Ashraf and his SLMC allowed Islamism creep into Muslim politics, Bandaranaike (SWRD) politicised Buddhism to win his electoral battle against the UNP.  His landslide victory at the 1956 General Elections to which he harnessed the support of Buddhist monks, Ayurvedic physicians and village school teachers demonstrated the political potential of Buddhism in changing governments in Sri Lanka, which even made American CIA to politicise Buddhism in South East Asia to fight against the rise of communism (Eugene Ford, Cold War Monks, 2017). While SWRD won the elections and lost his life at the hands of a Buddhist monk the Americans harnessed Buddhism and lost the fight against communism in Vietnam and Cambodia.      Sri Lankans, Let Us Arise as ONE

Sri Lanka Muslim Civil Society was organized a “Rise up for Solidarity – Humanity Beyond Religion one Nation one Country at Colombo 7 Independence Squire-04th May | Picture by Ashraff. A. Samad

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May 6, 2019 · 3:53 pm

How the Jihadi Terror could aid USA’s Power Plays in the Indian Ocean

Lasanda Kurukulasuriya, in Island, 6 May 2019, where the title is “IS terror in Sri Lanka: Govt dissimulates, as West consolidates”

“Even as the US fights Islamic terrorism, it is accused at other times of using IS as an asset. Analyst Saeed Naqvi in a comment on the Easter Sunday attacks published in The Economic Times, refers to a New York Times interview with Barack Obama, where the then US president admitted to having delayed bombing IS when it reared its head in Iraq, so as to put pressure on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki to sign a SOFA agreement. “In other words, ISIS was an American asset at that juncture,” Naqvi noted. Continue reading →

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May 6, 2019 · 3:40 am

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith’s Balanced Hand = A Lesson for Lanka’s God-Awful Politicians

Algi Wijewickrema, in Island, May 2019, with this title

Many are the press articles and posts on social media heaping praise on His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith’s actions in the aftermath of the horrific Easter Sunday blasts of three churches and three major tourist hotels. My intention is not to add to the chorus of praise, deserved though they are, but to identify [those actions that the good Cardinal] which resulted in such plaudits. I hope this will enable politicians, et al to learn how to serve those whom they are supposed to give leadership to.

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May 6, 2019 · 2:43 am

Muslim Suicide Killers had visited Kashmir, Kerala and Bengalaru

News Item in The Hindu, 5 May 2019, with this title “Suicide bombers visited Kashmir, Kerala, Bengaluru: Sri Lankan Army chief”

Sri Lanka Army’s chief has said some of the suicide bombers who carried out the country’s worst terror attack on Easter Sunday last month had visited Kashmir and Kerala for “some sorts of training” or to “make some more links” with other foreign outfits. It is the first time a top security official has confirmed the militants’ visit to India, which had shared intelligence inputs with Sri Lanka ahead of the attacks.

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May 5, 2019 · 11:53 am

The Transformation of Muslim Politics in Sri Lanka and the Growth of Wahhabism from the 1980s

Ameer Ali,** courtesy of Colombo Telegraph, where the title is “Anatomy of An Islamist Infamy”

The Easter carnage that consumed the lives of nearly two hundred and fifty innocent worshippers and bystanders including children, opens another chapter in Sri Lanka’s post-colonial bloody history of communalism and majoritarian rule. Unless one is prepared to accept this fundamental flaw in the nation’s political development and remedy it sooner rather than later the future may become even bloodier. Sri Lankan masses, Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims or Burghers, are not to be blamed for this tragic history and they should be kept out of the equation. Instead, the political and religious leadership must bear full responsibility for laying the path of democracy with bloody bricks. 

  a madrassa

The Easter mayhem, is now becoming increasingly clear, as the result of a combined failure of a Muslim leadership which was in a state of denial for decades and a government in a state of paralysis. The first part of this analysis will deal with the Muslim variable. Continue reading →

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May 5, 2019 · 10:56 am

The Demons within Sri Lanka: Long-Term Methods of Abatement?

Michael Roberts

Here I reproduce the second half of a longer article presented in October 2018 where I pinpointed the hidden dangers to Sri Lanka resting within the implications of Mark Field’s visit to the island then — conveying a message that was one part of the continuing Western nation-cum-UNHRC project to punish Sri Lanka and foist a devolutionary political system on the island. Obviously, this essay was coined before the explosive manifestation of another divisive time-bomb within the Sri Lankan body politic: that of Islamic extremists motivated by the Wahhabi ideology hostile to specific ‘pinnacles’ in any Westernized body politic – such as (a) the Papacy and (b) high-rise hotels marking wealth and ‘debauchery’.**

This traumatic moment on Easter Sunday 21st April 2019 reminds us of two earth shattering moments: the LTTE attack on the Central Bank in Colombo on 31st January 1996 and the Al-Qaida attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on 9th September 2001 (9/11 in shorthand).***

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May 4, 2019 · 10:08 am

The Death Toll in Sri Lanka: Ethnicity

An Email Note from Muttukrishna Sarvananthan to Professor Chandra Dharmawardena, 4 May 2019

Dear Prof. Dharmawardena,

I remember you asked this question on May 01, 2019, via email to my institutional email  address. I apologise profusely for not replying to you earlier.

Please remember that the Kochikade church where the suicide bomb blast took place is in  Colombo-13 (Kotahena – opposite Jampettah Street) and NOT in the Kochikade area of  Negombo. The blast at Kochikade took place during the time of the Easter Services in Tamil.  Therefore, overwhelming majority of the casualties were Tamils. In most churches within  the Colombo City and the suburbs church services (e.g. Sunday services) take place in both  Sinhala and Tamil languages separately. In a few churches (especially within the city of  Colombo), the services are done in all three languages separately.


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May 3, 2019 · 5:00 pm

Ranil’s Interviews. Faux Pas Galore. Total Failures

Major General (Retd.) Lalin Fernando, in Asian Tribune, .with this title “When does a Prime Minister Resign?…. http://www.asiantribune.com/node/92706

When PM Wickramasinghe was asked by BBC’s Channel 4 why he had not taken action against ISIS terrorists who had returned to the Island in 2017, his fatuous reply was that it was not illegal in SL to take part in terrorist actions abroad.

The PM has a basic degree in law. He likes to continuously impress his ill educated but fawning parliamentary minions and Colombo’s socialites. But with the Channel 4 man the PM was clearly out of his depth and clearly in fear of personal repercussions for the Easter Sunday massacre. There were 250 dead, almost all Christians, and 450 wounded. A colossal intelligence failure was blamed for it. The PM thought it and anything else was not enough to damn him. Continue reading →

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