Kooks & Criminals #1
This is the 1st installment in an inward looking series to find the lame and limping in the Muslim community and create discussion and solicit suggestions for a cure.
Wahhabi incites persecution of Sufis in Sri Lanka:
Lankan police hunt for Muslim preacher from TN
P K Balachandran
First Published : 03 Aug 2009 04:34:00 AM IST
COLOMBO: Sri Lankan police are looking for Kovai Ayoob, a controversial Islamic preacher from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu.
The hunt assumes significance in the context of a clash on July 24 between fundamentalist Tawheed Jamaath and moderate Sufis in the western coastal town of Beruwela in which two persons were killed.
Immigration Controller P A Abeykoon told The Sunday Times that he had asked the police to catch Ayoob. As per Ayoob’s visa he is a tourist, but violating the rules he was propagating, through public speeches, the ideas of the radical Wahabist Tawheed Jamaath in Sri Lanka and creating tension between the fundamentalists and the traditional sufis.
Ayoob’s plan to be present at a religious gathering in Kalmunai in the Eastern Province last Friday was called off because of the police hunt. But his speech for the occasion, delivered over the phone, was broadcast with loudspeakers.
In 2006, another radical Islamic preacher from Tamil Nadu, P Jainulabdeen, popularly known as PJ, was deported for creating sectarian tension in Colombo. Recently, in Ottamavadi in the eastern province, the moulvi of one sect had the moulvi of another sect abducted.
In Beruwela on July 24, the moulvi of the Tawheed/Wahabi Masjidur Rahman mosque publicly dubbed the moulvi of the Sufi Bukari Thakkiya mosque and his congregation as kafirs (rejectors of Islam) because the latter were holding a “Kanduri” feast in honour of a Muslim saint. In the clash that followed, two persons were killed. More than 130 are currently under detention for rioting.
The Wahabis condemn the deification of human beings, however saintly they might have been. They also consider holding feasts, with music and other forms of merriment, in honour of saints as utterly un-Islamic. However, most Muslims in Sri Lanka, being under the influence of South Indian Islam, believe in the worship of saints and observe their anniversaries with feasts.
SURRENDER ARMS: The DIG of the Eastern Province, Edison Gunatilleke, extended the deadline for the surrender of arms by Muslim militants. He believes that there are about 300 Muslim militants in Sri Lanka, most of them operating in the Eastern Districts of Batticaloa and Amparai.
Police believe that some of these militants have links with Saudi Arabia-inspired young Islamic scholars. They could also be part of the underworld in Colombo and also be working for Muslim political leaders.
A great comment followed:
Islam is a religion which preaches PEACE and CHARITY. If there is anybody propagating conflict he should be decapitated in the market place. I am Sure Sri lanka people will solve this problem
