Are eastern Muslims Jihadists – and practising violence?

The recent Special Report No. 26 on the East of Sri Lanka by University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) commonly known as UTHR (J), is entitled “Can the East be won through Human Culling?” The report attempts to expose the post-liberation reality and trend of Eastern Sri Lanka from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an ethno-political movement, claiming to fight for self-determination for ethnic Tamils for a little more than two decades.

The LTTE is commonly labelled as a terrorist outfit both by the Government controlled by the majority Sinhalese and the minority Muslims whose political and economic elites generally cooperate with the successive governments for their perks, positions and privileges in the name of the interests of the Muslim masses.

The purpose of this piece is not to examine whether the UTHR’s reporting on the post-liberation East is accurate or whether it reflects a correct understanding about the current trends in the corner of Eastern Sri Lanka, particularly after what the LTTE calls its strategic withdrawal this summer. The aim here is to give some thoughts on its use of the existence of what it calls violent Muslim Jihadists in the Eastern province.

The UTHR’s use of Jihadists

The UTHR Special Report 26 section 3.2 titled “Muslim Extremism and Military Patronage” deals with the existence of what I call violent Muslim movements. The report points that there are violent Muslim elements existing in Eastern Sri Lanka. They are called Muslim home guards and Jihadists. According to UTHR, the former have been functioning under full-state security force patronage and “collect their weapons from the police station when going for duty and return them.” The latter are largely ideology-oriented Muslim extremists some of whom hail from the former.

According to the report, “Some home guards have sold their weapons to jihadist elements, some bought them from cadres on the run after the LTTE split and recently the security forces have also given weapons to them. The Police have given up trying to account for weapons. In Valaichchenai jihadists operate under military patronage parallel to the Karuna group in Tamil areas and novel things happen, such as a parallel legal system with the Military turning a blind eye” (emphases are not in the original).

Also, UTHR (J) seems to be well aware of the Jihadists’ nature, their estimated membership, and their activities including their collaboration with the state-supported Tamil paramilitary Karuna-group, as well as its intimidation of the rich local Muslim farmers and traders. UTHR (J) maintains that “in Valaichchenai itself there are an estimated 300 jihadists – the figure is also a reflection on unemployment [there]. While both home guards and jihadists operate with the security forces, the former are fairly well paid. The latter like the Karuna group support themselves by extortion, so that the Government gets their services for free…There is far reaching intimidation of the local Muslim populace as extortionists go around demanding money and threatening dire consequences for non-payment, particularly from those better off, parallel to what Karuna and Pillaiyan are doing among the Tamils…After the LTTE evacuated, Karuna’s men and the Jihadists once close, are now prone to clash” (emphases are not in the original).

Are Muslims using Jihadists?

There is a theoretical understanding about the existence of violent Muslim groups in the volatile Eastern region. Academically speaking, social, political, and/or economic grievances motivate communities to rebel violently against the dominant actors, particularly when they effectively exhaust options of dealing with the political moderates and liberals. This understanding can be applied to read the trend of radicalization of the Eastern Muslims.

It is true that, “there is discontent among Muslims, particularly among the young in some areas” and a section of the youth has been turning their attention to violent alternatives. However, the key question is this: can such discontent be linked to Jihadism led by Jihadists as UTHR (J) emphatically claims? If UTHR says yes, then we have at least two more questions to help understand the existence of Jihadists of the Eastern province. They are: what form does Jihadists’ violence take? And who is financing it? This article is not intended to seek answers to these two questions (which I take up separately in an article being submitted to an academic journal).

I am not thoroughly denying the existence of violent Muslim movements in the East or attempting to say that these violent elements have not received any state support to attack the Tamils or to defend their community.

I am honestly aware of the reality and admit that some violent elements do exist among the Muslims of the East and they are reasonably influenced by both domestic and global political environment.

Also, there is an increase of interest among the Muslims of Sri Lanka in Islamic faith. Non-mainstream Islamic views and those who hold such views, for example, Sufism and Sufis, have been brutally and violently targeted by violent elements attached to mainstream camps.

However, what is also true is that such violent activities remain disproportionately limited among Sri Lanka’s Muslims of the East and there is no reason to believe that these violent elements deserve to be called Jihadists. In fact, the term Jihadist is ideologically and politically heavy and constitutes many political implications.

Also, the term has been used and abused in the post-post-cold war political environment where culture (religion) and ethnicity replace the role played by class-oriented politics during the cold-war area. In Sri Lanka, Tamil nationalists often attempt to portray violent Muslim activists as Jihadists to draw global political attention and in order to exploit easily forthcoming global help.

It seems Muslims are not very comfortable with the post-post-cold war world order. They believe that the global powers systematically marginalize the legitimate concerns and aspirations of the Muslims and classify their political activities into a broader Jihadism. Many Sri Lankan Muslims feel this way. Thus the UTHR (J)’s employment of the term Jihadists more likely brings unwelcome, perhaps even unfair, global attention on the Muslims of Sri Lanka, since its reports are widely read by western scholars on South Asia, particularly Sri Lanka.

Beyond the label

Sri Lanka Muslims who are evolving from an isolated religious community into a separate group based on the Islamic faith, are at the crossroad. They are subject to discrimination and unfair treatment as well as negative media coverage both by the Sinhalese polity and the Tamil polity.

It is undeniably true that there is increasing discontent among Sri Lanka Muslims of the East over the delivery of democratic Muslim political representatives and thus a certain section of the Muslim youths have been slowly turning their interests towards non-democratic channels and working actively and independently to seek a new non-traditional leadership, and are associated with the Sinhalese-dominated state security forces.

However, the labelling of such violent activism simply as Jihadism may not in anyway help to weaken the violent tendency and interests among Sri Lanka Muslims. Rather it may serve counter-productively and could strengthen Muslim interests toward Jihadism at a stage where democratic political representatives totally fail their Muslim constituencies.

(The author is a Sri Lankan political scientist who is currently affiliated as a visiting scholar at the Department of Political Science, Temple University, USA.)