Buddhist extremists brutally attack Catholic church in Sri Lanka

Catholic News Agency ^ | 12/11/2009 | n/a

[Pyro7480]

More than 1,000 Buddhist extremists armed with clubs, swords and stones ferociously attacked a Catholic church in the town of Crooswatta, Sri Lanka on December 6, destroying the altar, statues and pews.

L’Osservatore Romano reported that Father Jude Denzil Lakshman, pastor of Our Lady of the Mystical Rose, said “I still can hear their shouts in my ears, ‘Cut him to pieces, kill him’.”

The attack took place after the 7 p.m., Sunday Mass, leaving several parishioners wounded. “It is obvious that the attack was well-planned and that the mob waited for us to come out after Mass,” Father Lakshman said....

he archdiocese noted that Air Force personnel were deployed immediately to bring the mob under control. Guards are still in the area to guarantee the safety of the faithful, which include 293 families.

As of now, police have arrested 11 suspects from Buddhist extremist groups that have attacked the church in the past.

[ichabod1]

That’s why our job in the war on terror is to kill the muslum before he can kill himself.

[Earthdweller]

"They may think the Catholics are sheep stealing."

Yep...I'm thinking it's some sort of local issue. Of course some people (commie MSM) would love for it to be a global "religion" problem. All religions are evil and cause strife and war...don't you know.

[Rippin]

Are you promoting the trope that ‘all religions are the same?’

[r9etb]

Huh? Are you retarded? This is, in fact, exactly what the Muslims do all over the World. Like in Indonesia when armies of them went from island to island murdering entire congregations of Catholics, beheading the priests and burning the churches.

Ah, Deb, how disappointing to see you of all people get all stupid about a rather obvious point.

As I said, one cannot deny the fact that Islamic extremists are guilty of great violence. The "stupid trope" is that Muslims are not the only ones who do this sort of thing. They're not -- as you should damned well know!!!!! The same sorts of things happened in Rwanda -- where neither side was Muslim. Uganda ... no Muslims there, either. How about the Congo or Liberia? Zimbabwe? Hindu/Sikh clashes in India?

I was in Sri Lanka for six months and was told continuously how the four great religions coexisted without incident.

And yet Sri Lanka has not been noted for its peacefulness, has it? The Tamil Tigers, for example, were not particularly pleasant -- and they're not Muslims. (Anti-Muslim, in fact.)

This incident is completely uncharacteristic of the Buddhists.

It may be "uncharacteristic" for Buddhists ... but there were a thousand of them in this mob. That's an awful lot of Sri Lankan Buddhist extremists, Deb -- perhaps there's a bit more to the situation than you were told?

[r9etb]

Are you promoting the trope that ‘all religions are the same?’

Uh, no, son.

[r9etb]

Dude, I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I know the Hindus have been known to go on the offensive against the muslin, but that’s usually in retribution for past insults. Who’s attacking whom, that we should be so open minded. If you hear of an attack and guess it’s the dirty arab up to his old tricks, your track record is bound to be pretty good over time.

Well, "Dude," I think it's generally a better idea to learn the facts of the situations as they occur, and make my judgments based on those, rather than on guesses.

It makes for a more adult decision-making process.

[Teófilo]

From the pages of Vivificat:

I'm shocked and saddened by this turn of events. I've always maintained a high regard for Buddhism, particularly the Theravada Buddhism practiced in Sri Lanka. I've enjoyed on ocassion the insights of Bhante Henepola Gunaratana in two he books that he wrote, Mindfulness In Plain English and Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness.

However, although I've said before that Buddhism provides, in my opinion, a highly-evolved system of ethics, in many aspects the best we can find outside of revealed religion, that is, of Judaism and Christianity and that, in the words of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, we are called to recognize how Buddhism, in its various forms, realizes the radical insufficiency of this changeable world; on how it teaches a way by which men, in a devout and confident spirit, may be able either to acquire the state of perfect liberation, or attain, by their own efforts or through higher help, supreme illumination, these news from Sri Lanka give me pause.

Sure, I recognize that a religion, any religion, no matter how noble, can hope to shape every aspect of the civilizations they spawn for the best. Then yet again, I've never heard of a Catholic mob attacking a Buddhist holy place, whether in Sri Lanka or anywhere else.

I congratulate the Sri Lankan authorities for having arrested many of those responsible of this unjustified attack, and pray that Sri Lankan Catholics and Buddhists may coexist in peace, side-by-side and help and assist each other in the building of a civilization of peace and compassion.

[potlatch]

[They may think the Catholics are sheep stealing. Unholy poaching.]

Unholy sheep poaching? Poached mutton? Lol, sorry....gave me a laugh.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Some bad weed? Moldy bread? Rice fungus?

[anglian]

Taking a page out of the book of Hindu fundamentalists, who have passed anti-conversion law in six Indian states, monastic legislators from the Jathika Hela Urumaya drafted a similar bill that would outlaw the conversion, “by the use of force or by allurement or by any fraudulent means,” of a person from one religion to another. Some Buddhist extremists have spread rumors that Christians had assassinated the Buddhist monk who initiated the bill, even though an autopsy showed that he had died of a heart attack. Śri Lankān police have been criticized for being slow in making arrests and for dismissing the attackers as mere drunks, but some observers suspect that they are encouraged by radical elements of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), a socialist party that has supported a strong nationalist platform for decades. The monks in the JVP are disciples of Anagarika Dharmapala, the father of Buddhist nationalism and whose second generation monks, as H. L. Seneviratne contends, upset the “delicate balance” established by first generation Dharmapalite monks with “violence, breaking it up into pieces, never to be put back together again.”[4] BUDDHIST NATIONALISM AND RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE IN ŚRI LANKĀ http://sothi.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/various-papers-on-sinhala-buddhist-nationalism-2/

[anglian]

http://sothi.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/various-papers-on-sinhala-buddhist-nationalism-2/

[Prodigal Son]

Also, when you hear hoofbeats in central park, your first thought is horses, not zebras.

If you hear hoofbeats in Africa though, what do you think of then? Many hooved critters in Africa. Could be anything, no?

[livius]

I’d suspect a political/economic component. Christianity, because it stresses the individual, it is often seen as a threat to established structures that stress either the state or a group.

Christians, in particular Catholics, have often been attacked in Hindu areas of India because they were perceived as violating the economic status quo simply by ignoring the caste system (which, while technically forbidden by the Indian Constitution, remains very much alive, especially in rural areas).

I would suspect that there is some kind of nationalist/political/economic motivation behind this Buddhist attack. It may be that the outlook of Buddhism combines well with Communism (the Marxist guerrilla movement is very active there), but less well with Christianity, and at some point they came into conflict.

[StormEye]

"This shocks me, I didn’t know the Buddhist were anti Catholic, or anti Christian."

Really? Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims have have been attacking Christians and each other for a very long time.

[Prodigal Son]

Guess I’m naive, but I’m always shocked when one religion tries to kill another.

Why? From my earliest memories as a child the one thing that has seemed self-evident to me is that religions pretty much pit humans against each other. Your tribe against mine. That's what it's all about. That's what humans are. That's what we do. Violence is the ordinary. Peace and respect are the shocking things.

Not saying I like it that way. Just saying that's how it is. Parents don't do their children any favors by hiding the hard nature of the world/humanity from them when they are young. Nor are they helping them by creating a false world for them to live in where everything is safe and certain. Because when that facade gets ripped away and the truth is exposed, it can be quite traumatic.

[potlatch]

If you read through the early part of the thread, you will see that many others were shocked and surprised too.
Muslims do not surprise me.

[potlatch]

{Your tribe against mine. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what humans are. That’s what we do. Violence is the ordinary. Peace and respect are the shocking things.}

I’ve been a Catholic all of my life and during my growing up I never experienced a single instance of the thoughts and experiences you just wrote about.

You talk of a ‘dog eat dog’ world and that was is just foreign to me.

You grew up in a whole different environment than I did.

[Prodigal Son]

You talk of a ‘dog eat dog’ world and that was is just foreign to me.

LOL. You're living in it. Maybe not in your neighborhood. But that's sort of what I was talking about with the 'sheltered' thing.

I guess what I'm trying to say is- you have to realise that with the 'safe, sheltered environments' that many of us find ourselves in, this is not the norm. Most of the world is not like this at all. The norm for the world is suffering, quick and brutal lives and violence and corruption in every direction.

One could probably say that 98% of all our current problems are not down to that harsh truth but on the failure of Western Culture in realising that harsh truth. We live in a small bubble. It seems rather big because it has everything we have been taught to desire. The mistake we- as conservatives AND liberals- make is, we assume everybody else is basically like us. And they're not. Their lives are different. Out there in the world, people get f---ed over. HARD. And it's a way of life.

And when I say 'out there in the world' I don't just mean in other countries. Right in your own country you would find things that absolutely shock you going on right and left- right under your nose. People leading lives of incest and abuse, kids with violence as a routine and normal part of their existence. People so ignorant of anything better it would break your heart to talk to them.

It's not just about growing up in a different environment. I've gone out and looked at the world a bit. It's an eye-opening thing. And it's out there. Right now.

[ichabod1]

It may BE literally somebody stealing the other’s livestock. I didn’t even think of that. Haha.

[GodGunsGuts]

Hmmm...they sound more like the Tamil Tiger-like group to me. Any news about their wider affiliations?