Role of Muslims in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday carnage

Deshabandu Jezima Ismail, prominent educator and social activist, speaks to Suryamithra Vishwa on the role of Muslims in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday terror. Following are excerpts of the interview:

Q: You can be described as the great matriarch of Muslim civil society and education in Sri Lanka?

A: Well I have been around (laughs). I am trying to retire but there is much to be done. The Muslim Women’s Research and Action Forum (MWRAF), and the Sri Lanka Muslim Women’s Conference (SLMWC) which I initiated in the 1980s remain committed to educating all citizens of Sri Lanka on the concept of pluralism. 

Q: After the 21 April terror attack in Sri Lanka, you became especially active, both as a writer, and as a social activist. In your writings you were trying to make sense of the senseless. But, you also had spelt out that signs of extremism in the name of Islam were building up in Sri Lanka for many decades. How would you reflect on this?

A: After 21 April the type of incident that we never imagined could happen in this country – the organisations I am involved in initiated several programs in Sri Lanka and are in the process of initiating – for Muslims as well as non-Muslims. 

As for the horrific Easter Sunday incident, I am still trying to understand. We have to begin with how Islam, one of the most peace-loving religions, has been interpreted with fundamentalist streaks. There are many drivers, beginning with the Middle East oil boom and the power of petro dollars that saw the import of Wahabi-oriented Islam to countries such as Sri Lanka. Then there are other global influences such as the Iranian revolution. All of these saw the interpretation of Islam which was such a progressive religion in 570 CE into a narrow, puritanical, joyless, judgmental religion. I myself witnessed these gradual changes in Sri Lanka, having grown up as a child in the east in a village called Sainamarathu in colonial Sri Lanka, then governed by the British. I could continue but it would be delving over eighty years ago.

Q: Please continue. You are one of the oldest living legends of Sri Lankan history, one could say.

A: Well, I was born 13 years before Sri Lanka got independence from the British and I was one of three girls in our family with a housewife mother and a father who was an irrigation officer and an employee of the Colonial regime. I learnt my Islam as it should be practiced from my father. 

I recall that when my mother was seen on election duty in an election booth, one of the British Government members had told my father to request my mother not to do so as it may not be fitting as the wife of a Government servant. My father had refused to interfere in his wife’s independent decision and had told the officer concerned that it was the prerogative of a Muslim woman to take her own decisions as prescribed in Islam. This is how he brought us up. 

Following the Quran to the letter, the life we had was such a wondrous life. We dressed beautifully, used nice beauty products and went out socialising, with chaperones when needed, and interacted widely with youth of other cultures, including the British. My two sisters and I learnt the Holy Quran from a young age.

It should be noted that I was growing up at the time of Buddhist revival in Sri Lanka, after years of being vanquished by colonial invasion and likewise there was an Islamic identity revival as well with Lankan Muslim leaders spearheading education rights of Muslims and schools such as Zahira college and Muslim ladies college being established. 

In my 35-year teaching career, having served on the staff of Devi Balika Vidyalaya, and as the Principal of Muslim Ladies College, I have seen the changes that have occurred in terms of ethno religious identity in this country. In the 1970s, one of the Muslim countries sent a representative to the Muslim Ladies College I was head of and urged me and some senior students to start wearing the headscarf and the Islamic school dress of the type we see today, promising to provide the material free of charge. They specified that if I and a few teachers and students wear it, that the others will follow suit. I categorically refused. Today this dress is the norm in Lankan Muslim schools and there are teachers who are covered up to the eyes.

Q: Would you agree that this type of differentiation that began about 30 years ago has made the Muslims “the other”?

A: Yes. Definitely. It has also led to the inculcation of a very ghetto type mentality that Muslims in Sri Lanka have very unfortunately adopted.

Q: After the Easter Sunday attack there were a lot of calls for education to be separated from ethnicity and religion. Your views?

A: I agree that education should be pluralistic. If there are schools called Muslim schools or Christian schools or Buddhist schools, the ideal is that while having the children of those religions in those schools that any other child of any other religion should be also able to attend them and thereby for the school not to be exclusive on religious-ethno lines. This is the ideal. I do not know if we will ever reach it. 

I went to a Catholic school with a majority Catholics in that school. My religion was a private matter within my family upon which I built my core values added with the humane Christian values imbibed at school. 

Sri Lanka is a pluralistic society set upon overarching Buddhistic values because the majority citizenship practice Buddhism. We have to respect these values and the education system should not lock us within narrow confines and prevent us from the cross cultural interaction which is so vital to the building up of humans with healthy minds. We should educate the child to see the human being before the ‘religion’ label. If we are educating children to see the ‘label’ first it is very dangerous.

Q: Do you see the ideal that you mentioned in terms of education happening in actuality in Sri Lanka?

A: Whatever changes that occur in a country happens as a result of the will and inclination of its citizens and leaders. Therefore we need young people to take upon wise leadership.

Q: You are a noted activist in the areas of Muslim empowerment as well as comparative religions. But you yourself have been criticised by some Islamic fundamentalists at some point or the other. Your views?

A: Yes. I believe in using religion, whether it is the one that a person is born into or a religion outside one’s family, for the betterment of the human being and society. That is what leaders such as Prophet Muhammad, Jesus Christ and the Lord Buddha did. They were social leaders who changed the society they were around for the better. Thereby a Muslim has a lot to learn from the Buddhist philosophy as from the Christian values or Hindu wisdom. 

It is the core commonality of the purpose of religion and its vital ‘spirit,’ hence the ‘spirituality’ that one should focus on. I have benefitted greatly by trying to learn deeply of these philosophies. In my life, at various junctures, I have used Buddhist meditation practices and Hindu associated exercise and mind body aligning systems such as Yoga. Some members of my community was a bit confused as to if these were ‘haram’ practices. But these assumptions are made because a particular society has become polarised with a very wrong understanding of a religion and separated from the cultural and historical aspects of it. 

Despite my energy levels not being as it was years ago, my commitment to pluralism and understanding and enriching myself and others with the rich multi religious heritage of Sri Lanka remains. In one of my most difficult moments when I lost my son, I have been so consoled by the kindness extended to me by persons and leaders of all religious traditions who prayed for the recovery of my son. 

Then too some extremist ideas did spring from some Lankan Muslims who went to the extent of saying I lost my son because of my ‘non-Islamic practices.’ But I strongly believe in the hope that the Muslim community of Sri Lanka and the Buddhist brothers and sisters will collectively realise their long historic and peaceful affiliation.

Q: Today some parts of the east of Sri Lanka, such as Kattankudy is associated with extremism. You grew up in Sainamarathu. How different is it now?

A: Totally different. In my time in Sainamarathu as elsewhere in the east, there were village festivals, songs and dance. There was vibrancy in social life just as there was in the time of the Prophet. There was no fetish about things being ‘haram.’ Of course we were all God-fearing Muslims and we knew right from wrong. Sainamarathu was my mother’s village. It was a quaint but vibrant fishing village which also had farming and trade happening. In those days there was no obsession to keep building mosques and ghettoise Muslims. 

The Muslims of those areas who had settled in the east following the generosity of the Lankan kings who gave them those lands during the invasion of the Portuguese who were seeing the Muslims as a trading threat, practiced their faith in the way it should be; keeping loyal to the country and the Sinhalese ancestors who gave them those lands. All Muslims strongly adhered to the law and practices of the land. 

All Muslims of Sri Lanka should remember that they have Sinhala ancestry as well – all the women the Muslim traders who settled in Sri Lanka married were Sinhalese. For example my mother is from a family of Sinhala physicians who used to treat the kings. Muslims of yore, continuing the Kandyan tradition were proud benefactors of Buddhist celebrations such as the Kandyan ‘perahera’. 

Q: Do you see the 21 April incident more of an internal problem than an external one?

A: I see it fundamentally as an internal one. There can be diverse global factors as push and drive factors, but to me this is an internal matter that should not be put under the carpet but attended to by the Muslims themselves so that their religion in not converted into a strange, cruel abomination.

Q: In the aftermath of the Easter Sunday attack there were some calls for the teaching of ‘comparative religion’ as a subject in schools. Your opinion?

A: It would be wonderful. Comparative religion should include the teaching of history; ancient civilisation as applicable to the history of that religion. For example the word ‘disbelievers’ in Islam is taken out of context today by both Muslims and non-Muslims. “Disbelievers,” then as the word was meant, did not mean Buddhists, Hindus or Christians. The word in its initial usage meant the people around Prophet Muhammad who did not believe in his message. 

There are now instances of non-Muslims who take verses from the Quran that are explicitly meant for a particular situation – such as war – and they take that out of context and portray Islam as a religion that authorises killing. I think books on Islam and the Prophet, written by non-Muslim authors such as Lesley Hazelton and Karen Armstrong should be read by youth and adults alike in Sri Lanka. 

We certainly need broad education on comparative religions. I humbly call upon my Buddhist brothers who are monks not to be quick to judge the surface value of the words you see in some verses. Let us please join hands and restore the glory of this nation, together. 

Q: Your summing up message to Muslims?

A: Please do not go about with a victimised attitude. You have all your rights to practice your religion freely in this country. It is a fact that Muslim countries in the Middle East do not give that same right to other religions. Therefore, turn the searchlights inwards. Appreciate all the rights and privileges you have in your motherland and have a strong loyalty for your country. Please always keep in mind that your country is Sri Lanka and not Saudi Arabia. 

Therefore I tell all Muslims: Please rise to learn deeply your religion the way it should be; a progressive religion that gave rights to Muslim women so many years ago that we are not even properly aware of today. After you truly know your religion, rise to fight extremism wherever you see it. You are not followers of Al Wahhab. You are followers of the Divine Message revealed by the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Please do not ghettoise yourself. Learn to live with Hindu, Buddhist or Christian neighbours.

(This interview was facilitated by ELW Knowledge Trails. The ELW contemplative knowledge centre and library specialising in comparative spirituality, Sri Lankan and South Asian Studies, is based in Polgolla, Kandy. 0812494285.)