The International Union of Muslim Scholars condemned the systematic racial targeting and discrimination against Muslims in Sri Lanka, and called on the international community to protect the rights of the vulnerable in this country.
And Sri Lanka's Minister of Public Security, Sarat Wirassekera, announced Friday that his country will completely ban the wearing of the veil and close more than a thousand Islamic schools, in the latest measures targeting the Muslim minority in the country.
The Federation said in a statement that it condemns and rejects all manifestations of targeting and racial discrimination of Muslims in Sri Lanka, and calls on Islamic countries, the United Nations and human rights organizations in the world to protect the rights of the vulnerable.
In the statement, the union’s general secretary, Sheikh Dr. Ali Al-Qarah Daghi, affirmed the union’s firm position rejecting all policies and practices that target the rights of Muslims, but rather the rights of any human being anywhere.
Al-Qaradaghi called for ensuring the safety, security, and rights of the Muslim minority, commitment to respecting their religious practices and rituals, preserving their dignity, and firmly confronting all parties behind the spread of hatred towards Muslims in Sri Lanka.
He also renewed the call to reject hate speech and violence, the necessity of mutual respect and peaceful coexistence among the components of a single society, and to move away from stirring hatred by insulting religions, and to devote himself to achieving good, cooperation and comprehensive development, establishing justice and eliminating aspects of societal division.
Sri Lanka had temporarily banned the wearing of the veil in 2019, after an attack on churches during Easter, which killed more than 250 people at the time, and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was elected in the same year, pledged to launch a campaign against what he called extremism and terrorism.
There is no official statistics available on the number of Muslims in Sri Lanka, but human rights reports say that they constitute 10% of the population of about 22 million people.