COLOMBO, KOMPAS.com – Sri Lanka will prohibit usage burka and closed more than a thousand schools Islam in his latest policy.
This policy will affect the population of the Ummah Muslim who are a minority in that country.
Sri Lanka’s Minister of Public Security, Sarath Weerasekera said he had signed a document last Friday for submission to the cabinet.
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The contents of this document are the rules prohibiting the full face covering or burqa worn by some Muslim women for “national security” reasons.
“In the past, Muslim women and girls never wore a burqa,” he said.
“This is a sign of religious extremism that has emerged recently.”
“We will definitely ban it.”
Previously, the wearing of the burka in a predominantly Buddhist country had also been temporarily banned.
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The ban came in 2019, after Easter Sunday bomb attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka that killed more than 260 people.
Two local Muslim groups that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group have been blamed for the attacks at six locations, namely two Roman Catholic churches, one Protestant church and three top hotels.
At the end of the same year, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, notorious for crushing a decades-long insurgency in the country’s north as defense minister, was elected president after promising to crack down on extremism.
Rajapaksa was accused of human rights violations during the war, but he denied the allegations.
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More than 1,000 Islamic schools will be banned
Security Minister Weerasekera said the government also plans to ban more than 1,000 madrassas which he says violate national education policies.
“No one can open a school and then teach whatever you want to the kids,” he said.
The government’s move to ban the burka and schools is in line with last year’s rules mandating processions cremation for victims of Covid-19.
Even though this cremation procedure is against the wishes of Muslims who want to bury their bodies.
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This rule was repealed earlier this year after criticism from the United States and international rights groups.
The decision to ban burqas and madrassas is the latest move to affect Sri Lanka’s Muslim minority.
Sri Lanka’s Muslim population accounts for around 9 percent of the 22 million people, of which Buddhists make up more than 70 percent of the population.
The ethnic Tamil minority, who are predominantly Hindu, make up about 15 percent of the population.
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