South African Muslim organisations have known as on the nation’s international minister to intervene within the proposed Sri Lankan ban on the burqa and closure of tons of of Islamic faculties.
This adopted the announcement by Sri Lanka’s minister for public safety, Sarath Weerasekera, in the course of the weekend that his nation would ban the normal full-face masking worn by some Muslim ladies as a result of it posed a risk to nationwide safety.
This was rapidly adopted by an announcement from the Sri Lankan international ministry, which stated a choice would solely be taken on the proposal after consultations and additional dialogue.
The United Ulama Council of South Africa (UUCSA) has now requested South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Co-operation Naledi Pandor to intervene within the matter.
UUCSA had earlier additionally known as for such intervention when Sri Lanka determined that Muslims also needs to be cremated moderately than buried, in defiance of Muslim necessities, which prohibit cremation. The cremation ruling was rescinded later.
“The UUCSA will once again appeal to the Department of International Relations and Co-operation to engage with its counterparts to stop state-sanctioned Islamophobia,” Yusuf Patel, the secretary-general of UUCSA, instructed the weekly Post.
“Muslims in Sri Lanka have become targets of virulent hate speech in mainstream and social media. The ban on the burqa and the closure of schools are meant to appease Sri Lanka’s Buddhist majority, who thrive on entrenching sectarian and religious divides through hate propaganda,” Patel stated.
Adding its voice to the decision for motion towards Sri Lanka, the South African Muslim Network (Samnet) stated it was hypocritical of the Sri Lankan authorities to focus on Islamic faculties.
“There are other religious groups who also have institutions that teach their religious teachings, but there has been no attempt to target those,” Samnet chairperson Dr Faisal Suliman instructed the weekly.
“Such moves like this, on the Muslim community, will likely give rise to radicalism, fundamentalism and underground movements, which will in fact be a greater source of insecurity than working with religious schools, interacting with them and looking at the syllabi taught. By doing this, they will be ensuring that there are standards and uniformity of the teachings.”
Suliman stated Samnet would specific its issues to each the native international ministry in addition to the Sri Lankan embassy in South Africa.