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Anti-terrorism Bill will be changedThe highly controversial Antiterrorism Bill is subject to amendments and changes in Parliament and as such no one should have any fear or feeling of threat from the proposed Bill, Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe said. The government is aware of concerns raised by the global and local community on certain provisions contained in the draft of the Anti-terrorism Bill and the Government is ready to alleviate them by discussion, compromise and flexibility, he added. Addressing a news conference at the Information Department auditorium, Minister Rajapakshe said the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) passed in 1979 under President J.R. Jayewardene’s rule as a temporary measure to counter the emerging separatist insurgency. The PTA has been misused and exploited by successive Governments since then for their personal and political...Read More...
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WhatsApp adds option to use the same account on multiple phonesWhatsApp users are no longer restricted to using their account on just a single phone. Today, the Meta-owned messaging service is announcing that its multi-device feature — which previously allowed you to access and send messages from additional Android tablets, browsers, or computers alongside your primary phone — is expanding to support additional smartphones. “One WhatsApp account, now across multiple phones” is how the service describes the feature, which it says is rolling out to everyone in the coming weeks.Read More...
Setting up a secondary phone to use with your WhatsApp account happens after doing a fresh install of the app. Except, rather than entering your phone number during setup and logging in as usual, you instead tap a new “link to existing account” option. This will generate a QR... -
CBK commends Dr. Shafi’s noble gesture of donating past salary to buy essential medicineFalsely accused by racist elements for alleged illegal sterilisation, Kurunegala Teaching Hospital doctor says racism will not take country or organisation forward except make poor people suffer more; calls on all to make Sri Lanka racism-free Former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga has commended Dr. Mohamed Shafi Shihabdeen over his gesture of donating the past salaries amounting to Rs. 2.6 million during his suspension and imprisonment on false charges to buy essential medicines. Chandrika Bandaranaike KumaratungaRead More...
Dr. Mohamed Shafi Shihabdeen
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Dr. Shafi donates arrears of his salary to purchase medicines for hospitalsDr. Shihabdeen Mohamed Shafi, the doctor at the Kurunegala Teaching Hospital has decided to donate arrears of his salary amounting over Rs. 2.67 million for the purchase of essential medicines for hospitals.
Dr. Shafi who was on compulsory leave on charges of performing infertility surgery, has received a cheque of over Rs. 2.67 million salary arrears from the Health Ministry last week.
The salary arrears include the basic salary, interim allowance, cost of living, and allowance in lieu of pension for the period of compulsory leave imposed on Dr. Sihabdeen.
Dr. Shafi who was employed at the Kurunegala teaching hospital was arrested on May 25th, 2019, on charges of performing infertility surgery.
On July 25, 2019, the Kurunegala Magistrate’s Court ordered that the doctor be released on bail.Govt. used Sinhala-Buddhist shield to its maximum benefit Ven. Galkande Dhammananda TheraThis Govt. nurtured thug-like monks promoted them and deployed them in various places Certain monks have severe psychological wounds If society isn’t healed cases of domestic violence, harassment and child abuse will be on the rise Reconciliation was about having workshops, providing a report and earning dollars Accountability has not been included in the Constitution or the Judicial system Terrorism sprouts in a country that has no justice Ven. Galkande Dhammananda Thera who currently heads the Walpola Rahula Institute for Buddhist Studies has been addressing issues related to social justice and harmony while promoting an inclusive and plural society. Having gathered a wealth of experience during the height of war for instance and having encountered various incidents during his lifetime, Ven. Dhammananda Thera has...Read More...Health ministry to pay back-wages for Dr. Shafi before July 10The Ministry of Health today gave an undertaking before the Court of Appeal that the salary and allowances payable to Dr. Shafi Shihabdeen will be paid before July 10 this year. The Ministry of Health gave this undertaking pursuant to a writ petition filed by Dr. Shafi Shihabdeen, who was at the centre of the controversy surrounding the alleged sterilisation of female patients. The Director General of Establishment at the Ministry of Public Services had earlier informed the Court that the basic salary, interim allowance, cost of living and allowance in lieu of pension could be paid to Dr. Shafi Shihabdeen, for the compulsory leave period. Meanwhile, the petitioner expressed willingness to attend the preliminary inquiry before Director of Kurunegala Teaching Hospital Dr. Chandana Kendangamuwa. Taking into consideration the facts,...Read More...Sri Lanka court orders release of lawyer held for two yearsA Sri Lankan court has ordered the release on bail of a lawyer arrested over his alleged links to the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings and held for nearly two years on charges rights groups say lacked credible evidence. Hejaaz Hizbullah was arrested in April 2020 and accused of being linked to the attacks on churches and hotels that left 279 people dead. But after prosecutors failed to provide evidence of his involvement in the attacks, blamed on a local group, he was instead Read More...Hejaaz Hizbullah leaves from remand custodyAttorney-at-law Hejaaz Hizbullah today left from remand custody after fulfilling his bail conditions before Puttlalam High Court.Read More...
He was incarcerated for 22 months for allegedly committing offences come under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.Last Monday (07), the Court of Appeal ordered to release Hizbullah on bail pursuant to a revision application filed on behalf him.Hizbullah was ordered to be released on a cash bail of Rs.100,000 with two sureties of Rs.500,000 by Puttlalam High Court Judge Kumari Abeyratne. He was further ordered to report to the DIG office of Puttalam Police Division every second and fourth Sunday of every month.An indictment under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Act has now been served on Hejaaz Hizbullah. According to the indictment, Hizbullah...හිජාස් ගෙදර යයිRead More...
(නිමන්ති රණසිංහ සහ හිරාන් ප්රියංකර ජයසිංහ) ත්රස්තවාදය වැළැක්වීමේ පනත සහ සිවිල් හා දේශපාලන අයිතීන් පිළිබද ජාත්යන්තර සම්මුති පනත ප්රකාරව චෝදනා ලැබ වසර දෙකකට ආසන්න කාලයක් රක්ෂිත බන්ධනාගාර ගත කර සිටි නිතීඥ හිජාස් හිස්බුල්ලා මහතා අභියාචනාධිකරණ නියෝගය ප්රකාරව ඇප මත මුදාහැරීමට පුත්තලම මහාධිකරණය අද (09)...Court of Appeal grants bail on Hejaaz HizbullahThe Court of Appeal today ordered to release Attorney-at-law Hejaaz Hizbullah on bail after nearly two years in detention and remand custody. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal directed the Puttalam High Court to release Hejaaz Hizbullah on bail with suitable bail conditions. The Court of Appeal two-judge-bench comprising Justice Menaka Wijesundera and Justice Neil Iddawala made this order taking into consideration a revision application filed on behalf of Hejaaz Hizbullah. The Attorney General did not raise objections to release Hizbullah on bail. On January 28, an application made by the defence requesting to release Attorney-at-law Hejaaz Hizbullah on bail was rejected by Puttalam High Court. The High Court Judge Kumari Abeyrathne refused to grant bail citing that she has no jurisdiction to grant bail under the Prevention of Terrorism...Read More...- 1
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Friday, 15 March 2013 07:12
Fourth response to Shenali Waduge :
MUSLIM PHILOSOPHY : People convert to this religion of peace
Hameed Abdul Karim
Amidst her usual racist ranting and hypothetical hyperbole that somehow Islam will subtly subdue ‘Sinhala Buddhism’ in Sri Lanka, Shenali Waduge (Daily News February, 28, 2013) challenges me to show her if there is ‘any Christian or Muslim country in the world where the State has contributed to building a Buddhist place of worship’.
What I want to know is does Shenali Waduge think that a Christian or Muslim nations’, standard or place in civilisation is to be gauged as advanced or otherwise depending on whether they had built a Buddhist temple or not. This is absolutely silly. What kind of logic is this if logic is the word I want? I know what she’s getting at. She will now tell us that the Sri Lankan government is constructing mosques for the Mithya Drusthika variety called Muslims. Well, the fact of the matter is that the government is repairing mosques and in one instance rebuilding one which was completely destroyed during the war.
If, and I say this as a Muslim, the government abandons its funding for repairing mosques, then I am sure we Muslims can raise the funds needed for this purpose. We don’t need government funding.
Shenali Waduge says that the kovil in Dubai I referred to had been demolished in 2005. This is a blatant lie as any recent Hindu visitor to Dubai will tell you. If the good editor chooses to publish Waduge’s response to this piece of mine then I request that she apologises for misleading the public not only this time but on previous occasions as well. Since I have always felt that one of the agendas of ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ supremacists is to cause rifts between all minority communities, this blatant lie is one such effort in that direction.
Christians, Tamils and Muslims continue to be harassed and all of us in minority communities, which include non-racist Sinhala Buddhists like my bosom pals Rohith Dias, Ajith Bodinagoda, Nanda Kaluthanthri, Arunika Wickremasinghe, Tissa Jayasinghe and Mahinda Hattaka to name just a few, feel like tourists who have overstayed our visas in Sri Lanka. With all this hate speech we are on pins wondering whether we’ll be kicked out once the patience, charity and goodwill of the ‘magnanimous majority community’ reaches its end.
Iconoclasm
Let me tell your readers, if not Ms. Waduge, that the Taxila institute of Asian Civilisations, under the leadership of Dr. Muhammad Ashraf Khan, of the Quaid-i-Azam University has commenced archeological excavations on a newly discovered Buddhist monastery in Badalpur. Among the exciting finds so far are remains of an assembly hall, kitchen, stores and steward rooms. A good number of antiquities dating between 1st century and 4th century CE were also discovered. So there you are Muslims are not the iconoclasts that Shenali Waduge accuses them of.
There are hundreds of Buddhist temples spread all over Malaysia. There are at least two Sinhala Buddhist temples in the heart of Kuala Lumpur and they have been repaired over and over again by the state. These two temples are run by Sri Lankan Sinhala Buddhist monks. In Kelantan where the Buddhist population is barely 3 per cent there are nearly 200 Buddhist temples. One of the temples boasts of the largest reclining statue of the Buddha in South East Asia. A noteworthy feature is that the reclining Buddha was built in the 1980s while the state of Kelantan was and continues to be governed by PAS which is an Islamic political party.
So there you have another example about Muslims not being iconoclasts. Hope your readers will get a better perspective of Muslims with this bit of information. And for sure I will be the first to say that the Taleban were iconoclasts just as much as those ‘Sinhala Buddhists’ who destroyed the Muslim shrine in Anuradhapura or those who want to destroy Daftar Jailani in Balangoda are. On the one hand we have Shenali Waduge tell us she and her fellow travellers have no scruples with ‘Sufi’ Muslims and on the other they want to destroy a Sufi shrine! Or is this an attempt to split Muslims on the lines of Sufism and Wahabism or any other ism?
Quoting Mullah Omar, like does our friend Shenali, is like quoting the head of the Bodu Bala Sena to support anyone’s arguments against Buddhism! From what I gather the BBS does not have any support from among practicing Buddhists.
Confusion confounded
I am so happy that Shenali Waduge agrees with me that there were Arabs and Persians and Yona womenfolk here before the advent of Islam. This is what I have been telling her all along, and by extension, all your readers when she accused me of distorting history to gain an advantage when I grieved over the destruction of the Sufi shrine in Anuradhapura. In her rebuttal she said there were no Muslims during the Anuradhapura era.
Now she seems to agree with me that Persians and Arabs were here before the birth of the beloved Prophet Muhammad (pboh). She seems to hate Arabs so much that she is hesitant to accept history which clearly says that they married Sinhala as well as Tamil women and as Lorna Dewaraja says the King of that time helped the Arabs get Sinhala brides.
He had advised the Arabs to ‘abduct’ Sinhala girls and helped them hide the lasses in his palace. That’s how close the Sinhala Buddhist kings and Muslims were! When the parents of the girls came to a complaining the king persuaded them to let their daughters marry the Muslims. Have a change of heart, Ms Waduge. Start loving people. It will make your life happy.
Have a look at the 1,000 rupee note issued during the J.R. Jayewardene presidency. It depicts a man wearing a cap leading an elephant. The man is a Muslim and he gifted ‘Raja’ to the Dalada Maligawa where he ‘reigned’ supreme during every Esala Perehera till he died. The name of the Muslim was Umar Lebbe Panicker and he was from Eravur. That’s how close Muslims and Sinhalese are. Why the this need to bring Muslims to heel using ‘halaal’ as a pretext? Or does Ms. Waduge see in this gesture of goodwill yet another attempt to ‘subtly subdue’ ‘Sinhala Buddhism’?
I have noticed that Shenali Waduge always refers to Muslim countries like the Maldives, Malaysia and Indonesia as ‘former Buddhist countries’ and not include India in her tirade. After all virtually the whole of India was Buddhist at one point in history. And then the Brahmins came and gradually grabbed their lost power back from the Buddhists. Is it because she doesn’t want to upset Delhi - Tel Aviv –Washington axis? Or does she not want to upset the Brahmins? Or is because hitting out at Muslims is her only pursuit in life?
Sinhala Buddhist country
I would the happiest person alive if somebody took Shenali Waduge fairly seriously and converted Sri Lanka into a Buddhist state, if it’s not one already, provided all what Gautama Buddha had preached is implemented immediately. I could go to my club and tell my Buddhist friends to stop drinking and stand outside casinos and call for their closures. Demand the state shut down its own distillery corporation also.
I could go around telling people not to drink or gamble with being accused of being an Islamic fundamentalist, but rather as one perpetuating precepts of Buddhism! Sri Lanka is reported to be one of the top most boozing nations in the world! Frankly I thought the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) would stand up against at least these two vices and have them banned by the state. But no, that didn’t happen. I was disappointed that far from campaigning to close the distilleries corporation the JHU went and voted for the casino bill! It seems the JHU is not for safeguarding Buddhism.
Their only aim was to get into Parliament and enjoy the benefits of office, like luxury cars and other perks like most politicians. They have got a bit active lately because of the competition from the BBS.
Kings
There is a general aura of piety about the kings of the past being portrayed. But they were no better than their counterparts elsewhere. There were no halos over their heads. King Pandukhabhaya had to kill eight of his uncles to come to sit himself on the throne.
Moreover, the Mahavamsa records that ‘the Sinhalese Kings of the so called ‘Great Dynasty’ (543 BC – AD 275) all but a few were weak and inept. Of the 54 kings of this dynasty, 15 ruled less than a year, 30 were killed in battle and 22 were murdered by their successors.
The dark dismal record of the early Sinhalese kings was of incessant struggle for the throne, fratricidal and parricidal slayings, conspiracies and internal strife’ (The National Question and the Tamil National Struggle –page 231)
During the fraternal struggle between Mayadunne and Bhuvenaka Bahu the latter sought the help of the Portuguese to defeat his ambitious brother.
The Muslims rallied round Maydunne whom they considered a national leader, because of Bahu’s treachery. Mayadunne sought the help of the leader of Calicut who sent him three Muslim generals to fight the Portuguese. The Portuguese and the Sinhalese largely supported Buhavenuka Bahu whilst the Muslims stood firm with Mayadunne. Eventually Mayadunne lost to his brother who was helped by the Portuguese. Tell me who the traitor was?
Tidbits
As a condition for surrender the Portuguese demanded that Mayadunne hand over the three foreign Muslim generals. He obliged to save his skin. The Portuguese beheaded these generals and the people of Calicut (now Khozikode) never forgave Maydaunne for his ingratitude and betrayal. Come to think of it, if the descendants of these three generals were to launch a hate campaign against the Sinhalese similar to the hysterical one that Shenalai Waduge and her fellow travellers have started against Muslims, this act of ingratitude and of betrayal by Mayadunne would be an excellent starting point!
Waduge claims that since Tamil is the mother tongue of Muslims they must have married only Tamils and not Sinhalese women. Well, the answer to that is that the seat of learning Islam at that time was in Southern India and that is how ‘Arabic’ Tamil became the lingo of the Muslims as narrated by Dr. M.A.M. Shukri in the book Muslims of Sri Lanka – Avenues to Antiquity.
Cat never in the bag
Ms. Waduge then wants me to explain the ‘Oluvil Declaration’ that the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) had made. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, I am no apologist for any political party least of all the SLMC. So I kindly request her to pose her question to the SLMC’s leader. I don’t hold her responsible for the Bodu Bala Sena’s (BBS) Maharagama Declaration do I? Why then should she hold me responsible for the declarations the SLMC makes, for God’s sake?
Shenali says that M.B.M. Zubair has let the cat out of the bag when he said that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. Actually and specifically it’s the fastest growing religion in the West, though there have been converts here as well as in India. I know a Roshan Madwala who is a Muslim and we all know Tilakarathe Mahanama Dilshan used to be Tuan Mohammed Dilshan. So now what can we do about these things. Such things will happen, but they are not going to change the stats. We must handle such things in a civilised way and without paranoia.
As far as Islam’ spread is concerned the cat was never in the bag. Since the day the Prophet Muhammad (pboh)proclaimed the message there have been converts to the faith every day for the past 14 centuries or so. Recent high profile converts to Islam include Indian Prof. Periyar Dasan, journalist Yvonne Ridley, Lauren Booth, the sister of Tony Blair’s wife, Hollywood film director Sean Stone, the son of the famous Jewish director Oliver Stone who had told his son ‘Allah be with you’ when he told him of his conversion.
The famous musician A.R. Rahman is also a convert to Islam. Rap and hip hop artistes from Ice group to Snoop Dogg have converted to Islam. Just yesterday (March 7, 2013) a notorious anti Muslim formerly belonging to that racist party of Geert Wilders (the Dutch version of BBS) in the Netherlands converted to Islam. His name is Arnoud Van Doorn (check the net).
Meanwhile according to an al-Jazeera story, British university reported the number of converts in the UK has nearly doubled in the last decade to about 100,000 people. Muslims need not be apologetic about the spread of Islam. From day one when the Prophet declared his divine message Islam attracted converts every day. One of the primary reasons was the simplicity of the message and its stand on social and economic equality for all without caste, colour or creed considerations, according to author Karen Armstrong. Today the number of Muslims stands at over 1.5 billion with over 300 million in the SAARC region alone.
The Prophet came more than 600 years after Jesus Christ and he was the last of the Divine messengers. Islam is today the second largest religion in the world after Christianity including Catholicism. If Catholicism and Protestantism were separated Islam would be the largest religion in the world. Islam is a culmination of all faiths, say Muslim scholars.
According to the Qur’an God almighty had sent messengers to all nations and tribes with the message of Islam, which, in its spiritual connotation means, submission to the Will of God almighty. Up until today, as far as I know, our Veddas have no graven image; neither do the Aborigines of Australia which suggests they have had some message given to them at some point of time in history.
As a Muslim I can say without being contradicted by my co-religionists, that is, that Gautama Buddha could have been a prophet of God! Shenali Waduge might have a different take.
Courtesy: Ceylon Daily News
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