The Man Who Bombed Lanka

More than a week after terror returned to Sri Lanka, the island nation is looking inwards at the growing radicalisation of muslim youth. An example is the small town of kattankudy on the eastern coast, which produced Zahran Hashim, the suspected mastermind of the easter blasts. The coastal town has, over the years, turned from peaceful sufism to extreme wahhabism

- Lakshmi Subramanian/colombo, Negombo, Batticaloa, Kattankudy

An arched gateway featuring verses from the Quran welcomes you to Kattankudy, a coastal town in the eastern Batticaloa district of Sri Lanka. Date palms line the road beyond the arch. Cafes sit cheek by jowl on either side of the road and offer tiny cups of Middle Eastern coffee; a rarity in the land of Ceylon tea. A monument in the shape of an Arabic letter adds to the ambience of the town.

Like the rest of Sri Lanka, Kattankudy, too, is in grief after the April 21 blasts that killed more than 250 people in three cities across the country. But there is fear, too. For the mastermind of the attacks—Zahran Hashim—was a native of Kattankudy. It is here that he established the National Thowheed Jamaath, the radical group that bombed Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. It was banned on April 27. Zahran reportedly blew himself up for the attack.

“He learned Islam the wrong way,” Mohammed Aliyar Falahi, who once taught Zahran, told THE WEEK. Falahi is vice principal at the Jamiathul Falah Arabic College, which had kicked out Zahran because of his radical views. “He was a half-baked person and did not even complete the course to become a maulvi. He was always ambitious, radical and violent in his thoughts.”

But he was not alone. Most of the Muslim youth in Kattankudy have turned to monotheism and radical preaching, which came from the Middle East. Kattankudy, which borders the Tamil towns of Manjanthoduvai and Arayampathy, has 66,000 Muslims. Overall, Muslims make up 9.7 per cent of 21 million people in Sri Lanka. But unlike the ethnic Tamil minority, Muslims have largely kept away from violence and have kept to themselves.