[Buddha-l] Insight into Anti-Muslim Violence in Sri Lanka

[Jo]

http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=70,11578,0,0,1,0 

"Analysts say an anti-Muslim campaign by Buddhist nationalist groups in Sri
Lanka is being fueled by fears about the swelling Muslim population. Muslims
account for only 9% of the island nation's population of 20 million, the
2011 census found. But the community is the fastest growing. Between 1981
and 2011, Sri Lanka's Muslim population grew 78%, from 1.04 million to 1.86
million. In that period, Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese-Buddhist community
grew 38%, from 10.9 million to 15.8 million.
'There is fear that the Muslim population will engulf the Buddhist majority,
fear that they will dominate businesses and occupy larger share of the
native Sinhalese land,' said S. Chandrasekharan, director of South Asia
Analysis Group, a New Delhi-based think-tank.

Comment, JK: It is indeed true that most Muslim groups do not limit
fertility; they tend to produce as many children "as Allah gives them",
according to them. I encountered this view many times during my field
research in Muslim majority Bangladesh. Salafis and Wahhabis also proscribe
using birth control to limit fertility. These radically fundamentalist sects
also forbid vaccinations. Reminds me of some fundo Christian sects in the
US.

"Unlike Myanmar, where clashes between Buddhists and the minority Muslim
community have been running for decades, the tension in Sri Lanka has
surfaced only in recent years......."
[This assertion has to do with Burmese Buddhist attacks on Rohingyas,
located in Burma opposite Bangladesh. The other antagonisms in Burma are
more recent--having started after the inception of the same in Sri Lanka.]

"... Conflicting ideologies could also be a cause of tension. Earlier this
year, for example, the Bodu Bala Sena, a Sri Lankan Buddhist group,
spearheaded a nationwide campaign against the Islamic practice of
halal-slaughtered meat.
Buddhist monks, who preach non-violence, view the practice of halal or slow
death, as inhuman. Islamic law, on the other hand, says meat that isn't
prepared using the halal technique is unfit for consumption...." 

JK: I too consider halal food-animal slaughter, as well as the Sikh version,
as cruelty to the animal. I'll never forget my early mornings, while on
field research in Dhaka, hearing from my small room in a 2d floor NGO
office, the screams of chickens being halal slaughtered behind the building
opposite. They were for daily consumption of the former Police Chief of
Calcutta's household. Some ten or more birds would be killed every morning.
Anyone, not necessarily a Buddhist, forced to hear the animal suffering
daily, would develop extreme revulsion for the halal practice. For me the
same goes for the US commercial slaughter of turkeys--just abominable. I
have never been present when a chicken was slaughtered following the Judaic
kosher rules, but I suspect that I'd
be equally repelled.] 

Joanna K.