City of many mosques mourns victims of Sunday’s slaughter
Kattankudy, which normally bustles with life, is a dead town on Wednesday. All shops are closed, and people are scarce on the streets. White pennants hang across small palm trees and date palms on the road’s median strip, while some shops carry banners with messages of condolence for the Easter bombing victims and their families.
“This was done by the Muslim people of Kattankudy for three days to condemn the attacks, and as a show of solidarity with the Christian community,” says Eastern Province Governor M.LA.M. Hisbullah. The Hisbullah Cultural Centre, a large building designed in the style of an oriental mosque, also has condolence banners draped along its walls.
The area resembles an under- developed West Asian town more than a town in Sri Lanka, with palm trees and date palms planted all around and a dry and barren terrain. Mosques of all sizes and architectures are present in every corner. These mosques follow different strands of Islam from one another, and its followers maintain their distance from a mosque that isn’t theirs. Despite this, the townspeople co- exist and have done so for years, with an occasional inter-Islamic conflict, like the one in 2017.
Most of the townspeople belong to the Sunni Islam represented by the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulema (ACJU). Also practised are different versions of the Thowheed ideology and Sufism. The people are wary of outsiders and stare with suspicion. But, once you get them into conversation they open up and can be helpful.
“Zahran was not well-received by the people, following his extremist preaching,” says one resident who did not want to be named. The animosity towards the terrorist increased and culminated in the 2017 Aliyar junction conflict, which led him to flee his birthplace and seek refuge in an undisclosed location.