Sri Lanka backs monks in fight over mosque

Sri Lanka’s government has advised the trustees of a 60-year-old Muslim mosque north of the capital to relocate the structure after angry protests by Buddhist monks. Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne reacted after demonstrations by monks and their followers on Friday triggered tension in the pilgrim town of Dambulla. “The prime minister as minister of Buddhist and religious affairs advised the trustees to have their mosque elsewhere,” the premier’s spokesman Sisira Wijesinghe told AFP. “They have been offered the choice of three alternate locations. Steps are being taken to immediately shift the mosque.” The Indian Ocean island nation, emerging from decades of ethnic war, is a majority Buddhist nation where monks are politically influential. A trustee of the mosque, Mohamed Mustafa, said they had objected to a forced eviction. “This mosque has been there from the mid-1940s,” Mustafa told AFP. “We don’t mind shifting if it is to make way for town expansion, but we don’t want to be be forced out by those trying to drive a wedge between religions.” Monks in Dambulla, 150 kilometers (93 miles) north of the capital Colombo, claimed that the Mosque was an illegal construction on land belonging to the Buddhist temple. It is not immediately clear why the monks are pressing a claim more than 60 years after the mosque was built. A ruling party Muslim lawmaker, A.H.M. Azwar, said talks with Muslim and Buddhist clergy would be held in the coming days to find a solution acceptable to all. Residents in Dambulla, a pilgrim town which is also a favorite destination for foreign tourists, said a petrol bomb had been thrown at the mosque on Friday, but there were no casualties. Last year, Buddhist activists vandalized a Muslim symbol in the neighboring district of Anuradhapura and the government promised to restore it. More than two thirds of the country’s population is Buddhists while 7.5 percent of the 20 million populations are Muslims.