Secularism or Barbarism
The blue, red, yellow, orange and white lights are on, as are the makeshift stalls selling lanterns. Yet few pause to see, haggle, buy. Vesak, so near chronologically, had never seemed so…
The blue, red, yellow, orange and white lights are on, as are the makeshift stalls selling lanterns. Yet few pause to see, haggle, buy. Vesak, so near chronologically, had never seemed so…
AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena What does ail thee Sri Lanka? Is it, as Bishop Heber once notoriously stated, that it is a land ‘? We could dismiss his views as those of a…
Photo by Gemunu Amarasinghe, via The nexus between Madrasah education and Islamic extremism have been in the global discussions ever since the emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. This phenomenon emerged in…
Photo courtesy The message The worship had just reached the the affirmation of God’s intervention in history, when the police arrived. The officer was courteous but firm. The service had to be…
Photo courtesy Getty via The Easter-Sunday attacks have changed a lot of things in Sri Lanka. It proved, if proof was indeed required, the sheer inefficiency of the present government. Some of…
Photo by Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for We hadn’t seen him in years, ever since he left to work abroad. So, on the day of his return, his mother invited the extended family…
Photo courtesy AP / Manish Swarup via For people of my generation, as Sharika Thiranagama wrote in her recent article, news like the Easter Sunday blasts does not initiate a new fear, it…
Photo courtesy Gemunu Amarasinghe/Associated Press via “Pakistanis a country where suicide bombings happen on a regular basis, mobs gather and kill minorities and people who think differently, houses and settlements are attacked,…
Image courtesy Quartz Many supposed Muslims are in custody for suspected links with terrorism. Many swords found, including in the suburban Slave Island mosque. Many explosives scattered everywhere. Women killing themselves, the…
As of last Monday, Sri Lanka is taking a seat at the table next to a list of 13 other countries from across the world who have passed legislation banning the niqab…
Photo by Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP via Al Jazeera Whilst the security operations continue, it is time for the committee set up by the president and indeed the rest of us, to consider the…
The Prime Minister has gone on record with the international media saying that, even though Sri Lankan authorities were aware of Sri Lankan jihadists who had returned from Syria who might be…
It now seems clear that the attacks on Easter Sunday were carried out by local radicals, under the aegis of foreign fundamentalists. The problem is contained in that there is little support…
After three successive days of numbness, fear, anxiety, trauma, devastating sadness and anger I pen these thoughts. I do not have any ‘rational’ explanation for the horror that we are experiencing. I…
Sri Lanka’s president issued a new set of Emergency Regulations on 22 April 2019. This note explains the contents of Emergency Regulation 15, which concerns the ‘control of publications’, and certain other…