Muslims love a peaceful existence - EDITORIAL

There is much hate against the Muslims the world over and even those practising the faith preached by Prophet Mohammad in Sri Lanka wouldn’t tend to think otherwise. 
The 9/11 Bombing of the Twin Towers in America, the Easter Sunday Church bombings in Sri Lanka and the beheading of a woman recently at a church in France are, according to radical thinkers, associated with the Islam faith. 

Here in Sri Lanka the ruling Sri Lanka People’s Freedom Alliance (SLPFA) decided not to seek the support of Muslim parties when it successfully contested the 2019 Presidential Elections. What must be then understood as the bitter truth is that not only radical thinkers even the country’s powerful lawmakers would not give Muslims much of a chance to establish themselves as a political force. 

It is in this backdrop that we must set the record straight that the majority of these Muslims shouldn’t be labelled as aggressive trouble makers. If one observes the peaceful lives led by Muslims in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Jordan this mindset would change. 

Amani AL-Khatahtbeh, an individual with roots in Jordan, is a Muslim lady who stood up to establish a Muslim identity for herself and other females of the Islam faith. The tool she used for this was MuslimGirl.com which is termed the number one Muslim women’s blog in the USA. Why USA? This is because she had most of her education there; in a country where its citizens look suspiciously at any Muslim woman who wears the hijab or the scarf. She also wrote a book Muslim Girl, ‘A coming of age’ which is loaded. 

Much of the book’s content highlights the fact that Muslims the world over, especially in Europe, are subject to threats and harassment. She writes, ‘Media networks implicated Muslims and the Islamic religion and sort to relate terrorist acts to the Quran, amplifying connections between the Muslim identity and violence’. 

She highlights two facts in the book. One is her attitude to meet aggression with aggression and use the teachings in the Quran to strengthen her resolve as a Muslim lady with a backbone. The second is her reservations about how the male Muslims in the community respond passively or too peacefully when those following Islam have been at the receiving end. She writes, ‘Our behaviour caters to non-Muslims victimising us inevitably at our own expense. We’ve tried to convince the public that we’re peaceful and harmless much to the expense of our detriment’. 

This second point is applicable when analysing the issue Muslims face in Sri Lanka; being sidelined and intimidated because they are termed extremists. 

Last year we witnessed a series of church bombings, carried out by Muslim terrorists, which erased all the hard work done by the Muslim community to establish businesses and build bridges with the Sinhala community. The worst response was Muslim business establishments being subject to a boycott by the majority Sinhalese. While the rubble was being cleared and the churches were being repaired we heard about qualities of humanity surfacing from towns like Naththandiya, Thunmodara and Mallekelle. At a time when these towns came under attack from 500 outsiders the Sinhalese villagers came to the rescue of the Muslim families. For the record the Rural Development Committee of Thunmodara even extended an apology to the Muslims in the village who were intimidated. It’s in this same village that just after the Easter Bombings that the Muslims said sorry to the Sinhalese majority of the country by putting up banners condemning the heartless blasts. 

 
All this roughing up of Muslims is happening and the reason for this as Amani AL-Khatahtbeh puts it in her book is because ‘Muslims have felt compelled to disempower themselves even further to showcase the peaceful nature of their religion in a situation that under any other circumstance would have required a strong-headed response for security’. 

The rest of the world needs to put that effort to realise that the Muslim and the terrorists, who state they practice Islam, are two different entities and we need to stop being prejudice. This Muslim community loves peace and it’s the responsibility of the majority of the people to create that environment for a peaceful existence.