Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe today said that the solution to the acts of religious extremism being witnessed now in parts of the world, does not lie solely in security measures and intelligence systems.

From time to time you will find extremism taking over amongst some people in some religions, sometimes in ethnic groups, he said. 

“We have gone through this in Sri Lanka,” he said, speaking at the International Conference on the theme of ‘Muslims and the Prospects for Co-Existence’ organized by the Muslim World League (MWL) in Colombo.

He said that today in a world in what can be described with one word: connectivity, nothing is parochial and that nowadays it is also easy to organize any campaign through social media. 

What we are witnessing now is a very small section of the Muslim community who is committed to extremism and also to arms struggle, Wickremesinghe said. 

“Now first and foremost security measures have to be taken to protect innocent people of Islam religion or other religions throughout the world,” he said. 

“But on the other hand solution does not lie only in security measures, only in deploying the armed forces, only in better intelligence systems.  All those are necessary but you’ve got to understand the basic problems and find the necessary solutions to it.” 

He also assured the gathering present at the conference that Sri Lanka will oppose communalism.

“As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, we will oppose communalism.”

“We have people who talk about communalism. We also have those who try to get votes by running on religion whether it be trying to rouse the feelings of Buddhists or the Muslims or Hindus or the Christians,” he pointed out.

We know there can be occasional disagreements but that does not lead to major communal or ethnic incidents, he said. 

The PM said that the government of Sri Lanka is also holding a seminar in November this year looking at discussing religion and democracy in South and South East Asia and the first one will be on the Islamic perspective. 

He stated that Sri Lanka had a 30-year war which was not merely an ethnic war but also had fights within the same ethnic groups as well as religious tensions and that at all times the Muslims in Sri Lanka were committed to upholding the unity and the unitary nature of the Sri Lankan state

“I don’t think anyone has forgotten that whatever the other problems are because they themselves are Sri Lankans.”   

We have recognized each other’s special identity but also that we have a common identity in being Sri Lankan, he said.