Chandraprema on Gnanasara Thera in 2014

C. A. Chandraprema, in …5 July 2014,  with the title “Gnanasara Thera & the UNP” — a repetition of this article from 2014 in the light of Dayan Jayatilleka’s recent intervention and the clutch of news items and articles on hate-speech and Sinhala Buddhist –Muslim tensions

Last week, the cat jumped out of the bag when the US Embassy in Colombo cancelled Galagodaatte Gnanasara thera’s US visa. When this writer asked the US embassy in Colombo in a previous column how this monk had gone to the USA after he had begun this campaign of hatred and incitement of violence, we assumed that he had entered the USA on the kind of single entry visitor’s visa that ordinary mortals like us get after answering a whole string of questions and producing copious documentation. Now it turns out that he had a five- year multiple entry visa which had been granted to him in 2011 and had not yet expired. The US authorities appear to have panicked that if this monk made another visit to the USA on this visa in the middle of all this controversy, their role in all this mayhem would be badly exposed.

 Gnanasara Thero

“Api Yannadha Malli ” — A Poetic Reflection from July 1983

Niranjan Selvadurai, … a poem composed within a context derived from a personal experience in the streets Colombo, on Monday 25 July 1983

 Pic at Borella Junction 24 July 1983 –taken by Chnadragupta Amarasinghe **

May we pass brother?

But are you one of us!

Or someone other?

Roving eyes survey thus

Effrontery …. or Bust !!!

A Vaginal “Lode”

Loaded News Item from 22 April 2017,  with the title “Loaded Gun hidden in suspect’s Vagina”

A 19-year-old Tennessee woman had a loaded handgun hidden in her vagina when she was brought into jail yesterday afternoon following a collar for driving with a suspended license, police report. As Dallas Archer was being booked into the Kingsport jail, a female corrections officer alerted to an “unknown object” in the teenager’s crotch during a search. The jailer and a female cop then accompanied Archer to a bathroom for further examination, a review that led to the recovery of a “North American Arms 22 LR revolver (loaded) which Ms. Dallas had concealed in her vagina,” according to a Kingsport Police Department report.

Dallas Archer   her hand-gun

Questions for Charles Wooley’s Secular Reasoning

“Islam is yet to start the journey towards reformation” …. From a position radical secular the journalist Charles Wooley slashed at Christian fundamentalist claims as well as those espoused by the Islamic faithful. This position has been questioned in reasoned ways by several readers of The Australian who are not necessarily believers in religious dogma — that is, by individuals working within the body of intellectual discourse spawned in the world over the years. I present these comments together with one of my own as an encouragement to Sri Lankan and other readers to participate. 

Ken Moncrieff, Stafford Hts, Queensland: …. Its time for believers to ask why do I believe what I believe? Then after consideration why do I believe that? If thye are honest, answers based on their indoctrination must come to the fore. And that is the key to solving the world’s dilemma with terrorism in its present form–a full analysis of religious indoctrination. Religious fanatic should remember that the holy books they follow were written at a time when superstition, supposition and myths formed the basis of all beliefs and were written by men with little understanding of natural phenomena or of science.

Kepel’s Koranic Expertise renders him a Prime Target for Assassination

Matthew Campbell, in The Times, 28 May 2017, where the title is “Islamists vow to murder academic who know Koran better than them”

Gilles Kepel is waiting for a taxi on a London street corner. The roads are gridlocked, the cab is late and France’s foremost expert on Islam is starting to look nervous. He has every reason to be. Isis has placed this polished, polyglot professor on a death list, calling on its followers to kill him without delay. In France he has round-the-clock police protection. Yet here he is, alone and unprotected in the British capital – “Londonistan” was the term he coined for it years ago – barely two days after a suicide bomber killed 22 people at a Manchester concert.I have just interviewed him and he has ordered a cab to get to another meeting. But it is nowhere to be seen. Ushering him into the Underground, I ask him what it feels like to be threatened by a group that specialises in beheading its victims in front of a camera.

 Gilles Kepel’s expertise has unsettled Islamic extremists.

Blind Faith in Both Islam and Christianity

Charles Wooley,  in The Australian, 1 June 2017, where the title reads “When Blind Faith crosses out Reasoning”

I was watching the aftermath of the Manchester bombing on television when there came a knock on the door. I answered it to find two conservatively dressed and smiling women, one young and the other considerably older. I got in first: “Ah, religious people, I am guessing.” They agreed that this was the case but, before they could tout their sectarian wares, I explained politely that I wasn’t interested and closed the door.