{"id":40771,"date":"2012-05-07T19:53:58","date_gmt":"2012-05-07T19:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=40771"},"modified":"2012-05-09T22:03:59","modified_gmt":"2012-05-09T22:03:59","slug":"sri-lankan-buddhists-demand-demolition-of-mosque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/sri-lankan-buddhists-demand-demolition-of-mosque\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lankan Buddhists Demand Demolition Of Mosque"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><strong>By\u00a0deccanchronicle &#8211;<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/sri-lankan-buddhists-demand-demolition-of-mosque\/lanka_kalutara-protest\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-40772\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-40772\" title=\"Lanka_Kalutara protest\" src=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Lanka_Kalutara-protest.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a>Dozens of Buddhists led by monks joined a demonstration on Monday urging Sri Lanka&#8217;s government to proceed with plans to dismantle a mosque located in a sacred Buddhist area.<\/div>\n<p>The protesters marched peacefully through Kalutara town, south of Colombo. Last month, thousands of Buddhist monks and lay supporters stormed the mosque in the central town of Dambulla, saying it was constructed illegally.<\/p>\n<p>But residents say it has been there for nearly half a century, long before the area was declared a sacred zone. The government announced that the mosque and a Hindu temple would be demolished and relocated.<\/p>\n<p>Muslim clerics and politicians have strongly opposed the decision. An organiser of today&#8217;s protest, Asoka Menikkgoda, said the government should safeguard Buddhism,\u00a0the state religion, and not yield to Muslim pressure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":40772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2187,1,2375],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-most-popular","category-news","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Sri Lankan Buddhists Demand Demolition Of Mosque - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/sri-lankan-buddhists-demand-demolition-of-mosque\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sri Lankan Buddhists Demand Demolition Of Mosque - 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