Murder in the Cathedral - EDITORIAL

A man armed with a knife killed three persons in a terrorist attack on a church in Nice - France. The killings occurred at around 9.00 am inside the Notre Dame Bascilica in city centre. 
One of the victims, a 70-year-old woman was according to reports, decapitated. A man believed to be the Church Sacristan or Warden was the second victim. A woman in her 40s was critically injured. She managed to run from the Church but died of her injuries.  According to the ‘Guardian’ police described the scene as a “vision of horror”. 

According to the Mayor of Nice, the attacker was a 21-year-old Tunisian national who arrived in France at the beginning of October. The attacker who was subsequently shot in the shoulder by police and taken to hospital kept shouting “Allahu Akbar” while being arrested. The heinous crime came days after another equally heinous killing where another young man of Islamic faith beheaded a school teacher who had used a cartoon of Prophet Mohamed which had earlier appeared in the satarical magazine ‘Charlie Hebdo’ in a discussion on the freedom of expression. 

Speaking in the immediate aftermath of the crime French President Emmanuel Macron said the “Cheikh Yassine Collective” which had connections to the murderer was to be dissolved due to its “direct” implication in the terror attack against teacher Samuel Paty and that, further measures against radical Islam would be taken, over the next few days. 

The reaction of particular leaders of Islamic countries was to put it lightly ‘disturbing’. Turkey’s President Erdogan was quick to condemn Macron. He even went so far as to call for a boycott of French goods. Nearer, home cricketer turned politician Imran Khan joined the bandwagon. Soon the leaders of a number of countries in the Middle East were also up in arms. It was later, after France raised issue that while condemnation of Macron came fast and furious, the said leaders had failed to condemn the terrorist attack, did these leaders finally condemn the act. 

After the second string of gruesome beheadings, this time in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, ex-Malaysian PM Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, justified the brutality, tweeting that “Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past...’ 

To many Sri Lankan Christians, the senseless killings bring back memories of the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks at three Christian churches. The image of one of the suicide bombers patting the head of an innocent little girl he was about to kill remains fresh and draws similarities to the cold blooded brutal killings in France.

In the aftermath of numerous Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks in France, the French authorities imposed a ban on the wearing of the niqab - a face covering veil worn by Muslim females. Many civil rights advocates bemoaned the rule, pointing out it infringed the Islamic dress codes and sensitivities. An unfortunate aspect in the whole debate is that, many Islamic countries do impose dress codes on those not belonging to their faith as well as on foreign nationals. No exceptions to the rule are permitted. 

Even worse is the ‘blasphemy law’ which operates in many Islamic states. This law is used to justify killings of non-Islamic persons or throwing them into prison on fabricated charges such as speaking disparagingly of the Islamic faith. A case in point is that of ‘Asia Bibi’ a Christian woman in Pakistan. 
All colonized people in different parts of the world, from Africa to Asia, to Australia and the US suffered immensely under the European colonial powers and their appointed minions to further colonial policies.The Africans used as slaves in the Americas probably suffered most. Asians suffered many ignominies and massacres bordering on genocide. The populations were persecuted for their religious beliefs. Persecution on ethnic and religious grounds continues to this day. 

But we, all of us ex-colonials, do not attack every European national for crimes committed a generation ago. Our people unlike the European hordes who colonized our lands were, and continue to be civilized beings. Heinous crimes committed by barbarous murderers against civilians, in the name of God are unacceptable. One religion is not superior to another. Recognizing past mistakes we must learn to accept one-another with our faults and differences. 

Sri Lankan Buddhists, despite all their shortcomings are a good example of this policy of live and let live. The example of the Anglican Cathedral - St. Paul’s Kandy - built on lands of the ‘Dalada Maligawa’ by the British stands a monument to the spirit of forgiveness and acceptance of the other. 
We cannot live in the past and build on festering sores.