By Ameer Ali –

Dr. Ameer Ali

Three weeks after the Easter Massacre of 21 April 2019 this journal published a three-parts article authored by this columnist titled Anatomy of an Islamist Infamy. In the first part which appeared on May 5, 2019, after a few comments on JR’s Open Economy the following was said:  The unintended consequence of this two-way economic traffic was to open the flood gates to Wahhabi/Salafi fundamentalist penetration. It was from the 1980s that one could witness a distinct change in the Muslim male and female attire and appearance in the country and it was from that period one could see the proliferation of mosques and madrasas with elaborate designs and open display of Islamic rituals. The Arabization of dress quite unintentionally added an external element to Muslim identity in Sri Lanka, while public display of rituals like calling for prayer over loudspeakers was beginning to create rumblings among other communities. Muslim leadership took less notice of these changes and was in a state of denial.   

A year before the Easter massacre and on 22 April 2018 five Muslim lady teachers of Shanmuga Hindu Ladies College, an institution at Trincomalee in the Eastern Province founded in 1923 by Thangamma Shanmugam Pillai in memory of her husband but became a government institution in 1996, gave notice to its principal that henceforth they would attend the college wearing only the Muslim attire or abaya. This led to protests and counter protests from different ethnic parent groups and finally ended in the court where the said teachers won their case on grounds of human rights. Soon after that this columnist in expressed the view in a local newspaper that even institutions have their rights and they expect their rules and norms be accepted and respected by the staff working in those institutions. Now, at the Kalmunai base hospital in the same province Muslim dress code has become an issue because the hospital administration has disallowed staff to come in abaya and Muslim politicians and their supporters are up in arms appealing to the government to overrule the decision of the administration.  These politicians argue that abaya does not cover the face and therefore not a hinderance to perform the duties expected from Muslim doctors, nurses and other officials. However, based on human rights argument what is there to stop a woman coming to work one day wearing an all-black attire with her face covered except for a window for the eyes to see? This confronting dress is creeping in several multicultural countries and is stirring up unwanted trouble.     

For over a millennium Muslims in Buddhist Sri Lanka had no issue with their mode of dressing which was not very different from what members of other communities were wearing, and there was undisrupted social cohesion across all local communities.  The locally woven coman, kambayam or celai and the imported saree for women, and sarong and veshti for men fitted the cultural ethos of this country and did not disrupt the social cohesion among its component communities.  More importantly those dresses suited the climatic condition of tropical Sri Lanka, a basic criterion for any dress worn by any community in any country. Muslim women covered their head with one end of the cloth they wore and during the hot and humid months that dress provided an element of cool comfort. However, the Muslim attire started changing for men since 1950s because of Tablighi Jamaat influence and for women after 1980s because of Wahhabi ideological penetration.  There were complaints at that time that bearded Muslim male undergraduates in universities acted as spiritual Sartorialists and harassed their female colleagues for not wearing the abaya. Does dress a measure of one’s religiosity?

The changing attire of Muslims and imitation of Arab cultural norms led to another unfortunate development which did not draw the attention of local Muslim leaders. Sociologically speaking the confrontational attire of Muslim males and females led to an unintentional consequence of alienating the Muslim community from the rest of the ethno-cultural pack. It set a trend towards self-alienation, a point I made in an interview with a local journalist. This is happening in other multicultural societies too. As a result, the previous social cohesion started weakening and the social distance between Muslims and other communities started widening. This self-alienation provided he platform to the rise of Muslim identity politics. The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and its splinter All Ceylon Makkal Congress (ACMC) are political parties that exploited this alienation to enrich their respective vote banks.  Mullahs rallied behind these parties and Muslim cultural issues started occupying the front stage of Muslim political campaigns. Currently, when a frustrated political opposition is trying hard to exploit whatever means available, including issues which could provoke communal tensions to destabilize the ruling government the hullabaloo over the abaya is a welcoming addition from Muslim politicians.  Incidentally, one of the ironies of this identity politics is that while these politicians are ready to champion the cause of abaya, they don’t show the same commitment in reforming the male-biased Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act.

It is an indisputable fact of history that no Muslim minority in Asia or for that matter anywhere else had enjoyed over a millennium such a peaceful, magnanimous and hospitable environment as in Buddhist Sri Lanka. Let politics over a piece of cloth not spoil this glorious record.