Ceylon, modern-day Sri Lanka, has often come under fire lately, particularly in the post-war period, for religious intolerance. The case is the same with most other countries in the region, with Myanmar engaging in a genocide of the Rohingya Muslim minority, a brutal Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and an alleged Uighur Muslim minority genocide by China. In India and Pakistan, although genocide is not formally state-sponsored, too many “isolated incidents” of violence against minorities tell a different story. India has an extremist right-wing government in power. Pakistan has a clergy that uses its socio-political power over the largely illiterate masses to bend the government to its will.
However, medieval Sri Lanka, tells a different story. Before we move on to the story, I feel it necessary to give a small background to violence associated with religion in the region. I might dive into this further someday. Contrary to public opinion, Muslims were not the harbingers of violence in the region, nor are Muslims the only violent community. Not to whitewash the crimes of much-hated brutal Muslim conquerors, or to justify the violence today taking place in the name of Islam, but to talk about the concept of religiously motivated violence in South Asia at large, and how years of propaganda war machines turned it into something usually associated with Muslims.
Religiously Motivated Violence in Asia
The roots of religiously motivated violence caused by the fusion of state and religion occurred in medieval Tibet and Bhutan, but interfaith conflict also followed colonial incursions in India, Sri Lanka, and Burma. Before that time, there was a general premodern harmony among the resident religions of the latter countries, and only in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries did religiously motivated violence break out.
Although the conflict caused by Hindu fundamentalists has been serious and widespread for a long time, interestingly, it is the Chinese Taiping Christians who hold a rather gruesome world record: the highest number of religious killings by one single sect. Moreover, a combination of medieval Tibetan Buddhists and modern Sri Lankan, Japanese, and Burmese Buddhists has caused the most violence among the Asian religions. Usually, the aspects of the Abrahamic religions, an insistence on the purity of revelation, and a transcendent deity are some of the primary causes of religious conflict with non-Abrahamic religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism. Only one factor — a mystical monism not favored in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — was the basis of a distinctively Japanese Buddhist call for individuals to identify totally with the emperor and to wage war on behalf of a divine ruler.
Sheikh Abu Abd Allah Ibn Khafif
Making his way to the Serendib mountains, after traveling India, the Sheikh found himself wandering in the islands archipelago of Ceylon, along with his party of thirty fakeers.
The situation of the party was dire, they were facing extreme hunger, clueless and uncertain about what the future held. In desperation, they consulted the Sheikh and asked him for advice and a ruling on hunting an elephant and consuming its meat, given their situation.
Sheikh Abu Abdallah advised them against the hunt. However, impelled by hunger, the Fakeers transgressed the orders of the Sheikh. They caught a baby elephant which they killed and ate. They offered a share of the meat to the Sheikh, who refused to partake once again.
The same day, after nightfall, the Sheikh and his Fakeers arose from their slumber to a horde of elephants surrounding them. The elephants sniffed each man and put him to death. However, upon sniffing the Sheikh, they did him no harm. An elephant swept the Sheikh off his feet with his trunk and carried him towards some houses before it gently put him back down, and walked off back to the horde.
The villagers were absolutely delighted with what they had seen. To them, it was a miracle, as was Sheikh Abd Abdallah, regardless of his religion.
The Ceylonese locals treated him very kindly and took the Sheikh to their King, who not only listened to the story but also believed it. The King treated the Sheikh with respect and kindness, offering benefits, and an endowment, and welcoming the Sheikh to stay on at his court.
What is not questioned, is the amount of respect he commanded. In Shiraz, his shrine is said to be in the most important Meshed of the city. When Ibn Battuta traveled to Ceylon in 337AD, he found out the endowment was made in 317, and the Sheikh passed on in 331. He also wrote about the people of Ceylon in regards to the Sheikh.
When I entered Ceylon, I found them still infidels, although they had given great credit to the Sheikh. They also very much honour Muslim Fakeers, taking them to their houses and feeding them, contrary to the practice of the infidels of India; for they neither eat with a Muslim nor suffer him to come to eat near them.
-Ibn Batutta
The tomb of the Sheikh lies in present-day Iran, in the city of Shiraz. He is also known by other names, al-Shaykh al-Kabir and Shaykh al-Shirazi, and is credited with bringing Tasawwuf to Shiraz.
