Sins of commission and omission

The participants of this Find the Mastermind game seem to have their favourite candidate for the role, ranging from Maithripala Sirisena, Ranil Wickremesinghe, Rishad Bathiudeen, Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Basil Rajapaksa to the RAW, the CIA, and the Mossad. As political and religious leaders chase their favourite bogeymen, a rare opportunity to understand what drove a group of Lankan Muslims to commit a civilisational crime is lost – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

“…spreading hate is the terrorists’ job. Hating you is not enough; they also need you to hate them, so the struggle goes unchallenged” 

– Ahmed Benchemsi, Moroccan Editor (Newsweek, 20 November 2008)

By Tisaranee Gunasekara

The full report of the Presidential Commission on the Easter Sunday massacre is yet to be released to the public. Even so, what is available in the public domain should have led to the posing of hard questions. How did fundamentalist Islamic terrorism gain a foothold in Sri Lanka? How can Sri Lanka be turned from a breeding ground for majoritarian and minoritarian extremisms into a haven for moderation? 

Instead of unsparing introspection and informed debate, there is clamour. The Commission is being thrashed on all sides for failing to reveal the identity of the mysterious Mastermind behind the Easter Sunday massacre. 

The participants of this Find the Mastermind game seem to have their favourite candidate for the role, ranging from Maithripala Sirisena, Ranil Wickremesinghe, Rishad Bathiudeen, Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Basil Rajapaksa to the RAW, the CIA, and the Mossad. As political and religious leaders chase their favourite bogeymen, a rare opportunity to understand what drove a group of Lankan Muslims to commit a civilisational crime is lost.

“A shock, not a surprise,” was how the 9/11 Commission Report characterised the Al Qaida assault on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Commented the report, “...by September 2001 the executive branch of the US government, the Congress, the news media, and the American public has received clear warning that Islamic terrorists meant to kill Americans in high number... As late as September 4, 2001, Richard Clarke, the White House staffer long responsible for counterterrorism policy coordination, asserted that the government had not yet made up its mind how to answer the question: ‘Is Al Qaida a big deal?’” (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States - https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Exec.htm). 

The report mentioned a slew of policy and practical mistakes that enabled the attack; undergirding these was an attitudinal error – a failure of imagination. The warnings were not taken seriously, because an attack of such magnitude was considered impossible, an outlier.  

What happened in Sri Lanka seems remarkably similar. This in no way means that the authorities of the day could exculpate themselves. They bear a grave responsibility not because they masterminded the attack but because they did not use the many opportunities to stop it or at least to mitigate its severity. In that sense, the government from Maithripala Sirisena downwards, and security and intelligence heads have blood on their hands.

As a community, Lankan Muslims have always eschewed politically motivated violence. Since

Independence, there had been two anti-Muslim waves in the south, the first unleashed by Gangodawila Soma Thero in the late 1990s and the second by the BBS from 2012 onwards. The second wave led to two outbursts of anti-Muslim violence, the Aluthgama riots of 2014 and the Digana riots of 2018. The LTTE too targeted the Muslim community, expelling them from the north and attacking them in the east. Still, the community, as a whole, did not engage in retaliatory violence. 

The perpetrators of the Easter Sunday massacre came from this community with its strong and consistent tradition of political non-violence. The victims of that massacre were members of another community that had eschewed political violence, Lankan Catholics/Christians. 

No act of terrorism happens in a vacuum. In 2005, Fathali Moghaddam, Professor of Psychology in Georgetown University, used the metaphor of a narrowing staircase to understand political terrorism. His Staircase of Terrorism model can be applied to religious terrorism as well. Whatever atavistic beliefs they subscribe to, the absolute majority of Wahabi-Salafi Muslims live and die as peaceful, law-abiding citizens. Only a tiny minority of Islamic fundamentalists climb the Staircase of Terrorism all the way to top and turn themselves into human bombs. 

To prevent human bombs we need to understand why they happen. Instead of doing that, we have become bogged down in an infantile chase of mysterious Masterminds. Maybe this is a way of evading hard questions and even harder answers. Just as waiting forever for a political saviour releases us from our duties and responsibilities as citizens, chasing masterminds can help us evade the unpleasant task of examining past failures. To begin with why, after 76 years of independence, the island has 22 million Sinhala-Buddhists, Tamils, Muslims, and Catholics/Christians, but no Lankans?

Grappling with history to change the future 

Without Black July, the Tamil insurgency may not have grown into a full-scale war. Without Black July, the LTTE may not have gained predominance within Tamil polity and society.

Without the Aluthgama and Digana riots, would the Easter Sunday massacre have happened? This is a question that needs to be raised and discussed. Pending a detailed conversation, it is reasonable to assume that the two events might have played a role in radicalising a segment of the Muslim community, making some Muslims vulnerable to the nihilistic appeal of the IS. As the former head of the SIS Nilantha Jayawardane informed the Commission, “After the war, the society became divided as Sinhala and Muslim. Sahran Hashim turned this division to his advantage... He used this to turn people onto his side...” (Lankadeepa – 30 July 2020).

The Commission on the Easter Sunday Massacre reportedly recommended the banning of several extremist organisations, including the BBS. A far more effective counter would be to cease appeasing extremism and giving extremists (including the clergy) a free pass. For instance, the ICCPR is there not to silence poets and writers or to punish ordinary citizens for what they wear, but to impede hate speech. 

It is also important to uncover how the BBS and Sinha Le came into being, with a surfeit of funds and organisational muscle. From a recent interview given by Madille Pannaloka thera, we know of the role played by Gotabaya Rajapaksas in the formation of Sinha Le. Did he play a similar role in the birth of the BBS as well? He certainly conferred his imprimatur on the BBS by attending the opening of its Buddhist Leadership Academy and declaring, “These Buddhist clergy who are engaged in a nationally important task should not be feared or doubted by anyone” (Sri Lanka Mirror – 10 March 2013). 

This was said in March 2013; during that time, the BBS’s ‘nationally important task’ consisted of inciting anti-Muslim hysteria and attacking moderate Buddhist monks. At the BBS Maharagama rally in February 2013, Galagoda Atte Gnanasara having unleashed a venomous verbal assault on Muslim people and clergy, said, “There are some Buddhist monks who are like those evil forces. They have the robe round their shoulders. But these fellows just lack the cap of the Muslim man. They sit with those capped men and are creating unlimited impediments to our attempts to build this nation… Do not allow room in the temples for these unethical/immoral forces” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUPJ1tSrxgs). 

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration had a historic opportunity to correct the wrongs perpetrated by the Rajapaksas. They should and could have taken meaningful measures to defang extremism of every stripe. Instead, the government turned a blind eye. It did not feed majoritarian extremism as the Rajapaksas did. But it did nothing to combat it either. It allowed the Digana anti-Muslim riot to happen, and failed to bring the perpetrators of that outrage to justice. These multiple failures demoralised moderates, gave extremists new wings, and, arguably, removed the final roadblocks to the Easter Sunday massacre. 

There are questions we, as citizens, too must grapple with. 

Why do so many Sinhala-Buddhists who abhor the antics of the likes of Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara yet allow him to speak in their name? How have entities like the BBS succeeded in distorting the non-violent, non-racial teachings of the Buddha, turning Buddhism into an instrument of violence, injustice, and oppression? Where will this distortion of Buddhism end, and what will remain of the Buddha’s original teachings by then? Are we going to stay silent, while Buddhism is turned into its opposite? 

The IS beheaded its Christian prisoners. Its first Muslim captive was forced into a wire cage and fried to death. 26-year-old Jordanian pilot and fellow Sunni, Muath Safi Yousef al-Kasasbeh was denied the relatively less barbaric death-by-beheading precisely because he was a Muslim. The IS made every other terror outfit, including Al Qaida, look modern and rational by comparison. 

Its open practice of slavery alone should have placed it beyond the pale. Yet a group of educated and well-travelled Lankan Muslims pledged their allegiance to it and died to promote its dream of a global caliphate in which the wrong kind of Muslim would be burnt to death and entire communities reduced to slave status. If Lankan Muslims fail to grapple with and understand the reason for this attraction – which cannot be attributed to Sinhala extremism – they will fail to prevent the future from replicating the past. 

Can Sri Lanka survive without Sri Lankans?

When schoolgirl Shukra Munawwar won Sirasa’s Lakshapthi quiz programme, her knowledge of Sinhala-Buddhist literature thrilled Sinhala society. Understandably. The question is, where are the Sinhala students who possess even a marginal knowledge of Islam or of Muslim history globally and within Lanka? 

Demography is fate. Sri Lanka is a multi-racial, multi-religious country. Unless we accept this reality and find a way to coexist, with a degree of trust and civility, our future will be as bloody as our past. One of the key obstacles to a peaceful future is the racially and religiously segregated school system in this country. A Lankan child can live his or her entire life without having normal, friendly interactions with anyone outside one’s primordial identity group. This is as true of the minorities as it is of the majority.

Ignorance about each other’s religions and histories or even about one’s own religion and history does not exist as an empty space. It is filled with lies and disinformation, a fertile breeding ground for suspicion, hate, and eventually violence.

The Commission of the Easter Sunday Massacre has reportedly recommended remedies for the interrelated issues of segregation and ignorance. The Government has appointed a committee to study the Commission report and recommend action. One member of this committee is Minister Johnston Fernando, who is on record saying that the Government must protect its own people even if they commit a misdeed. Another member is Minister Udaya Gammanpila who is notorious for his anti-Muslim diatribes. Expecting justice and fair play from a committee consisting of such luminaries is like expecting rationality from the BBS or civility from the IS. Any recommendations for the desegregation of the school system or the broadening of the curricula will be ignored. Instead the report will be used to succour pro-Rajapaksa extremists while punishing everyone else. 

The Rajapaksas’ politically motivated effort to manufacture a Muslim enemy to take the place of the defeated Tamil/Tiger enemy, created a new polarisation in Lankan society and made the work of Zahran Hashim easier. The same effort continues today, as the needless burial issue demonstrates. The regime was forced to rescind the burial ban because of its need to gain the backing of Islamic countries in the UNHCR vote. It will find some other way of rekindling anti-Muslim hysteria once the vote is over, and especially if it succeeds in defeating the resolution seeking to hold the Rajapaksas accountable for past crimes. 

Given the worsening economic situation, the only part of the Sinhala-Buddhist utopia the Rajapaksas can deliver is action against the minorities. While Muslims will be made to bear the brunt of such measures, other minorities will not be spared either. The BBS already has a new enemy – Born Again Christians. Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara recently raved about a conspiracy to convert all government officials into Born Again Christians (lanka C news | https://lankacnews.com/53353-2/). Some weeks ago, the President’s Buddhist advisory council also expressed concern about conversions and Christian fundamentalism. Since most Buddhists think one Christian is like another Catholic, any anti-Christian fundamentalist campaign will target all followers of Jesus Christ. In the end, even the Cardinal will not be spared.

Toni Morrison began her Nobel Acceptance Speech with a folktale about a blind and wise woman. One day some young people visit her. One of them declares he is holding a bird in his hand and challenges her to say whether the bird is alive or dead. “I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive,” she replies, “but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.”

Since the Government is part of the problem, and the Opposition is likely to stay on the sidelines instead of becoming a part of the solution, the task of preventing the future from replicating the past belongs to ordinary Lankans. 

The ones who are willing to look beyond our primordial identities and inherited traditions.  

It is in our hands.