“Burqa Sign Of Religious Extremism, Will Definitely Ban It”: Sri Lanka Minister

Minister Sarath Weerasekera said the country will ban the wearing of the burqa and shut more than a thousand Islamic schools.

A Minister in Sri Lanka government, in the latest actions affecting the country’s minority Muslim population, has said that the country will ban the wearing of the burqa and shut more than a thousand Islamic schools, Reuters reported.

Sarath Weerasekera, the Minister for public security, told a news conference that he had signed a paper on Friday for cabinet approval to ban the full face covering worn by some Muslim women on “national security” grounds.

“In our early days Muslim women and girls never wore the burqa,” he said. “It is a sign of religious extremism that came about recently. We are definitely going to ban it.”

After the bombing of churches and hotels by Islamic militants that killed more than 250, the wearing of the burqa in the majority-Buddhist nation was temporarily banned in 2019.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, later that year, was elected president because of his past achievement of crushing a decades-long insurgency in the north of the country as defence secretary and promise of a crackdown on extremism.

Though accused of widespread rights abuses during the war, Rajapaksa has denied the charges leveled against him.

The government plans to ban more than a thousand madrassa Islamic schools that were flouting national education policy, Weerasekera said.

“Nobody can open a school and teach whatever you want to the children,” the minister said.

The Sri Lankan government’s moves on burqas and schools follow an order last year mandating the cremation of COVID-19 victims – against the wishes of Muslims, who bury their dead.

The government later lifted the ban after criticism from the United States and international rights groups.