By Feroze Shamsudeen –

A recent holiday back to my (once) beautiful Sri Lanka proved to be a journey to hell. I wanted to cherish the dreams of my childhood in what was once the paradise on earth but had to return to my second home deeply disappointed and angry.

My childhood seems like tales from a fairyland. Sri Lanka has changed. Racism, violence and hate have become the norm in Sinha-le Sri Lanka. The Tamils have been crushed and humiliated after the brutal war victory and now it’s my community, the Muslims that are targeted. No one trusts each other in Sri Lanka anymore. Children no longer play cricket on the streets, TOGETHER. They are ethnically divided even in sports. 20 years seems like two centuries, to come back to a land that was once heaven on earth.

The much-hyped government of good governance that was elected in January 2015 with the promise of peace, tranquillity, and dignity to all Sri Lankans has become a pawn in the games played by some extremists.  These include some saffron robed racist bigots who probably are on a paid mission to bring back the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa to power.  A left over suicide bomber of Velupillai Prabhaharan may be needed to settle this threat once and for all for the 6.2 million voters.

Maithripala Sirisena, the current president could have stepped in where Mahinda Rajapaksa failed to be the bridge between communities after winning the protracted civil war, which liberated the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. I see Maithripala playing the racist card and hoping to become popular. In my opinion, he is turning out to be the greatest racist of them all when he got Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe to elevate the sadist Galagoda Atte Gnanasara Thero to the same level as that of the Mahanayakes in meetings at the presidential secretariat. My guess is, he would soon outdo the Rajapaksa dynasty. What a sad end to the promised Yahapalanaya.

The once respected Mahanayake’s too have started prostituting in politics probably fearing a threat to their comfort zones. They too want this land for the Sinhalese. The saffron politics is becoming a tornedo. Ashin Wirathu, the face of Buddhist terror has already paid a visit. Aluthgama, where my aunt lost everything seems a precursor. The international Islamic Terrorists, like ISIS, Al Qaida, Taliban, Boko Haram etc.. will soon be at our doorstep at the invitation of some bloody extremist Muslims. The saffron brigade is opening the doors for them that could lead the country to another 50 years of armed conflict.

The Wattalapam loving neighbours I grew up with are no longer our friends. The school that I attended is as strange as it could be, because they would no longer take any from my Muslim community. The mosque that was part of my childhood does not welcome me any more because it has been taken over by a few fundamentalist ideologists, the females in my extended family I knew so well will not speak to me anymore, because they have been forced in to exile behind a black veil by their fanatical men. Religiosity or at least the outward appearance of it seems to be visible everywhere amongst my Muslim community. The mosques are fuller, but there seems to be no serenity, the women are well covered but seem to expose their nakedness in humanity, our children are segregated, most of them schooling in exclusive Muslim schools or the so called International schools set up by rich illiterate businessmen. The kids in these schools have no opportunity to be friends with kids of other ethnicities.

What has gone wrong with my beautiful country? I forgot my dream holiday and started talking to my once brothers and sisters from the different communities. I realized that quite a few of them do not believe that I belong to them anymore. My 20 years in greener pastures have deprived me of my country, culture and traditions. I started believing that I am an alien in my own country.

I started loafing around in the Malls of the new elite shopping centres that have sprung up during the last 20 years. Many of the window shoppers were Muslims, easily identified with their Islamic clothing covering their ever-emerging bulge. I was wondering whether I was in a mall in Dubai. I soon realized that the only entertainment these women have is window-shopping in their spare time? There was the conspicuous absence of the Mullah clothed Muslim men, but there were plenty of good-looking Muslim boys in designer clothes and flip-flops, flirting around with young women. I couldn’t figure out whether they were after the Muslim girls or not as their eyes were set on scantily dressed women. Most of them spoke English with a foreign accent convincing me that they were the kids of the nouveau riche Muslims who have attended international schools. They probably have left their traditional shop keeping and are ready to leap into the corporate world of entrepreneurship.

My Biryani and Watalappam loving Sinhala “uncle” next door is now a big racist. He sees us Muslims as Islamic fundamentalists or extremists and feels that the Arab world has financed us to colonize Sri Lanka. He thinks that my Muslim sisters are breeding children like rabbits and not registering their births even though his daughter and my sisters have only two kids each. He thinks my brother has multiple wives, as he has never seen my sister in law’s face. She even covers her eyes with a net veil, a real ninja for sure and my bloody brother can take any women along the streets in that attire.  My neighbours do not have access to our house as they used to when my father was alive because of the fundamentalism of my brother. Their late night political discussions with strong cups of coffee would never come back to our generation. We have become distant and lost.

I was bored, depressed and angry for coming home. I pulled out the duty free scotch that I bought for my eating-drinking uncle Farook and forced myself for dinner with this lovable character. He has three beautiful daughters who I believe are to be amongst the best human beings, but they are still single past their 30s. Their mother died some 10 years back of cancer, and my uncle who was a devout husband hit the bottle more by the day. For my Muslim community, he doesn’t belong to the current day Islam, so it would be difficult to find Muslim suitors for my beautiful cousins.

I opened the bottle of scotch for him (I am a teetotaller) and asked, “what’s all this racism that has set in”. He said, “BULLSHIT, the Sinhala Buddhists are probably the most humane race on earth. Its all because our buggers in Mullah clothing and women in Ninja dresses. Just look at your sister in law. That is the curse that has befallen us. It’s these Mullah buggers who have made all these ‘ableeq’. Almost every one of them has more than one wife and they want to hide them behind the bloody face cover called Niqab. The eyes of these buggers pop out at the sight of a Redda Hetta Manike, but want to hide the faces of their women. The mafia called ACJU headed for the last 21 odd years by the biggest extremist of them all, Mufthi Risvi is the biggest despot of the community. There is probably no other Muslim despot who has ruled his kingdom as long as this sadist. They dabble in everything Muslim from halal food to pedagogy but don’t know Islamic governance. This bugger has not been chosen to lead by Islamic principles but by ballot fixing and bribery. They are the cause for all our problems in Sri Lanka. They are the ones who are taking our Muslim community to the Stone Age. This has triggered off violence against us, the traditional Muslims. Yes, that is what this new Anagarika Dharmapala – bloody racist,  Gnanasara calls us, Traditional Muslims.

The fourth glass of scotch brought back the history of the contemporary Muslims. Now, with a slight stammer, my uncle Farook started. “You remember, Uncle Somasundaram from 36th lane? He was also a good friend of your father. He phoned me from Canada and asked why our f… mullahs went to Geneva against the Tamils. You see, that Risvi and his Mullah lot were kissing the ass of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the brother of Mahinda Rajapaksa. All these fellows were taken on a luxury trip to Geneva for the Human Rights session to support the Sri Lankan Government. He was given a duty free car permit to import a luxury vehicle. The Tamils, curse us from that day onwards because we betrayed them and supported the genocide of over 300,000 Tamils. Gotabaya also played the Buddhist extremists against the Muslims and since then, fellows like this stud, Gnanasara started dancing to the tune of Gotabaya and his bunch of murders. Our Mullahs are accused of getting millions by John Keells Susantha and the Chamber of Commerce to give up halal. That CIA agent, Millinda Moragoda was behind this. Risvi demanded and got millions as compensation to support his Mullahs who would be out of work at the Halal unit.

They are the ones who support him to lead this Muslim religious mafia. This Mufthi bugger tried kissing Ranil’s backside, but Ranil has better men. Now he is supporting Mahinda Rajapaksa to come back to power, so that he would be showered with more privileges and probably another duty free permit.

He is also leading the division of Muslims by objecting to the reforms proposed to the Muslim Marriages and Divorce Act. Our Colombo ladies claim that they have been fighting for this for over 30 years. Quite honestly, I don’t care a damn about some of these loose women who want to be on top of the men, but by doing this, Mufthi is distancing the Muslims from the UNP, claiming that the UNP is working to an Israeli/Western agenda. Mahinda Rajapaksa, the racist might get back on the saddle.

I agree, we must bring reforms against polygamy and child marriages. You know, uncle Deen’s daughter from Mount, Sherine? One of these fellows got a big dowry and the house. He was married to her for 5 years and they had three children. Then, one day, he had told her that he is getting married again and left. He didn’t even divorce her. This girl has no one now and no alimony or childcare allowances. All what uncle Deen possessed was given to this bastard. Some of these Mullahs want to marry girls as young as 12 years old. Bloody perverts! Those days, they used to abuse all the young boys in Madarasas like what Ganansara types do in Buddhist temples, but now they have got the taste of young pu…..! They can have fun legally for a few years with some young blood, give them a few babies and leave them in the lurch, as the Muslim women do not have rights to ask for alimony or even a divorce. The fundamentalists control the Quazi system and they are all males. No women can complain about her sexual needs or impotency of her husband. A man can just throw out his wife by saying “TALAK” three times. So our fellows can take many wives, and throw them out as and when they want. So, they want to keep these archaic traditions that are not truly Islamic. Islam has placed the Muslim women at the highest pedestal, but these mullahs misinterpret and treat them worse than slaves. That is the curse that has befallen the Muslims in Sri Lanka. We lost our peace and the friendship with the Buddhists. We lost our Sinhala neighbours because of these religious bigots.

How about this new fellow Ganansara? Oh, forget him. He is a politician and modern day mercenary like any other opportunist. I hear he is an eating drinking man like me. He was fined Rs. 10,000 for drunkard driving. Imagine a man in cīvara, drunk and driving! I also hear he has a women and child in France. He cannot be as bad as we hear. He doesn’t want to live in the temple and behave like a traditional hamuduroo. He wants the life of a Mahanayake with luxury vehicles, public and political recognition and above all lead a good life – wine women and song. See, I have this fellow dancing in my phone, which is also on YouTube.

He has chosen to incite hate against the Muslims like Anagarika Dharmapala, SWRD Bandaranaike or Cyril Mathew because that will keep his coffers filling. Our fellows have fallen in to his trap. He is a smart ass who knows what to say when and where to incite hate. He has also managed to split the Muslims by calling them traditional and new Muslims. The divided Muslims are providing him the ammunition to fire all around. There was a Muslim Hajj operator who went and complained to him because some Muslim minister bugger had played out his Haj quota. What a bunch of hypocrites. These Muslims are the ones who are divided on ideology and are funded by the Wahabi Islam from Saudi Arabia who are forcing archaic values. Now, the Shia’s also have come in with the support of Iran to propagate their brand of Islam. We had the Borah’s who are Shias but now we also have Sri Lankan Shia Muslims.

Tragedy stuck the Farook family, Uncle Farook died two days later. I probably lost the last logical Muslim I knew. He got a Muslim burial at the Dehiwela cemetery in an unmarked grave and no one objected. I am not sure what caused his sudden death, as he looked hail and hearty. But one thing is for sure; he was very uncomfortable with the extremist Islam he was seeing amongst the Muslims. May Allah forgive his sins and grant him a decent place in heaven, because he was a good human being with a huge heart.

I am not sure how many more of “Uncle Farooks” are still alive in the Sinhala, Hindu and Muslim communities. They are a dying breed that love this country and will not compromise on the principles of humanity and justice.  What can we do, other than try to follow in the footsteps of the dying breed of uncle Farooks that would bring mutual respect amongst all religious and ethnic communities in this pearl we call home, Insha Allah. I have decided that I shall not return unless the Muslims reconcile with our Buddhist brothers and sisters. Ma‘a Assalama.