Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) leader and Minister Rauff Hakeem insists Muslims have not been radicalised in the East.<\/p>\n
In an interview with The Hindu newspaper, Hakeem said that while there are different schools of thought in Islamic philosophy it is not a case of sectarian radical groups taking root.<\/p>\n
He was responding to the question on claims that there is rising fundamentalism in the Eastern Province, with funding from West Asian countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, it\u2019s very typical, this question after a lengthy interview of this nature. Not only you, several media people who have come to interview me end up asking this question. It is again a manifestation of an international mindset. But locally, I don\u2019t see that Muslims have been radicalised to that extent so as to resort to violence. Whatever radicalisation has been happening, it is in the cultural domain \u2014 you see their dress, their attitude to observing their faith, you see a certain amount of this happening, they talk about Wahhabism, or the Salafi ideology being the cause for most of this radicalisation. Then there are various Jama\u2019aths like Sri lanka Thawheed Jama\u2019ath. It is not a case of sectarian radical groups coming and taking root, but these are different schools of thought in Islamic philosophy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Hakeem says politicians like him monitor what is taking place and keep their ears to the ground and interact with all the people.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes when it is necessary we criticise the attitude of some of these people \u2014 the way they propagate their ideology because it can give a different perception to the outsider, that this community is becoming a bit introverted, very exclusivist and reducing interaction with the rest of the community \u2014 these are frowned upon by a majority of Muslims in this country. When it comes to religious practice, whether it is in Hinduism, Christianity, or Judaism, there are different strains, different ideologies being practised by fringe groups. I don\u2019t think we need to worry about these fringe groups as long as they don\u2019t resort to violence as a means to propagate their culture or ideology,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Hakeem also noted that issues like women\u2019s rights have come into focus and people tend to think Islam is very slow in embracing certain liberal values when it comes to women\u2019s emancipation or their rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are cultural issues and those reforms will have to come from within and that is happening now. Today one of the main issues is women\u2019s participation in the labour force. In South Asia, we are far behind compared to other countries. There are several factors contributing to it. It is because we are more protective of women. But any religious taboo against women working has over time got de-escalated so much that a large number of Muslim women are freely working. But of course, the way in which they dress or behave will be dictated by cultural norms, and that you cannot prevent. That is the right of those people to practise their own culture. That accommodation needs to be there and it should not be perceived as \u201cthe other\u201d.<\/p>\n
Courtesy: Colombo Gazette<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) leader and Minister Rauff Hakeem insists Muslims have not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-srilankan-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}