بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
Sinhala Internet Media Campaigns Against Islam

 As an Islamic Information Centre, DAWAH CORNER has been running three Sinhala language websites. Out of themwww.sihalamuslims.org has been about new Muslim view point about Islam. www.dawahcorner.com acts as a Sinhala database about Islam. www.dawahcorner.net is a research on religions website, which compares Islam with other religions. While we were doing these sites others also started Sinhala Islamic websites. But what we noticed was though the number of Islamic Sinhala language websites increased the number of non-Muslim visitors who view them and read them did not increase.

But we saw non-Muslims making websites against Islam in Sinhala language which have become very popular amongst non-Muslims of Sri Lanka. In order to attract viewers and increase their visitors these anti-Islamic Sinhala websites started publishing a lot of bad things about Islam. One of their tactics was to pick a small point in Islam, show it in the worse possible light and make a big issue out of it. Even if we reply to these negative things said about Islam in our websites non-Muslims don’t visit them because they have already got a bad image about Islam and Muslims.

As a solution to this we thought to create a website where we publish articles regularly about Social, Economical and Political aspects with a Islamic perspective on them. To make it controversial we named the websitewww.anvermanatunga.com.  Alhamdulillah, from the day we started, this website is progressing very successfully and has managed to gain popularity among non-Muslims too. This website has had so many visitors now there are only two other anti-Islamic websites that have more views than us.

We publish at least one or two article everyday onwww.anvermanatunga.com. We talk about all kinds of problems in our society in these articles. At the same time we give general replies in articles to issues and questions that are raised against Islam. Alhamdulillah, sometimes we notice even non-Muslims taking our side in these issues. When anti-Islamic websites raise or manufacture new issues against Islam or Muslims we then and there counter them and publish articles on our site. On such occasions we have seen non-Muslims also support us and speak for us.

There were many negative images among Sri Lankan non-Muslims about Muslim community. For example there are negative perceptions among Sinhala speakers about Muslims regarding beef and slaughtering animals, population increasing, taking over all the business places, making Mosques everywhere, operating Jihad terrorist groups, taking over old temple lands, etc. In addition they also labeled Muslims as, “Thambiya”, “Marakkalaya”, “Hambaya”. We managed to silence their mouths sometimes with the replies we published. Their biggest problem was these replies were given by a Sinhala guy who had embraced Islam.

Up to now what we have done is counterattack when we are attack. In other words we have being reactionaries. Now the time is right to be proactive. We need go to the Sinhala media and create a good image about Islam. Insha Allah, we at DAWAH CORNER are planning to do it in a professional way very soon. There are 17 million Sinhala speakers in Sri Lanka and overseas. We are asking you to please help us in our current and future planned projects to share Islam with these 17 million people. Please write to us and we will let you know about the projects we have planned.

Khadheeja Sudarshani

Secretary DA’WAH CORNER – SRI LANKA

DA'WAH CORNER - SRI LANKA
DA'WAH CORNER TRUST - SRI LANKA
Chairman: Brother Anver Manatunga