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

[Christopher Fynn]

On 20/08/2013, Jo <ugg-5 at spro.net> wrote:
> 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.

Reports like this one:
http://www.ceylontoday.lk/16-9052-news-detail-arrested-for-idol-worship.html
which appear from time to time in the Sri Lankan press probably don't
help matters either.

> 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.

Are there now many Salafi and Wahhabi Muslims in Sri Lanka?