Solidarity of India’s Catholic Church and Islamic organization for
Sri Lanka terror bomb victims
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| Relatives remembering the victims of Easter Sunday's bomb blast in St. Sebastian's Church, Negombo, Sri Lanka (AFP) |
Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the President of India’s Catholic
bishops and Maulana Mahmood A. Madani, the General Secretary Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind,
have jointly condemned Sri Lanka’s terror attacks.
By Robin Gomes
The Catholic Church of India and a leading Islamic
organization of the country have issued a joint statement vehemently
condemning the Easter Sunday suicide bomb attacks in Sri Lanka. They also
plan to send an inter-faith delegation as a gesture of their condolence and
solidarity with the victims.
“We, the undersigned, condemn unequivocally these dastardly
acts. The persons and the groups responsible for the serials blasts are
anti-human, anti-civilization and anti-God,” said the statement signed by
Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of
India (CBCI) and Maulana Mahmood A. Madani, the General Secretary Jamiat
Ulama-I-Hind, an Islamic scholars’ organization.
The coordinated bombings of April 21 by a group of Sri
Lankan nationals linked to the Islamic State group, targeted 3 churches and 4
hotels that killed more than 250 people, including foreigners, and injured over
500.
Describing the perpetrators of the attacks as “the
incarnation of the most heinous forces on the earth,” the two leaders said, “to
associate them with any faith would be most sacrilegious to
the faith itself”.
Card. Gracias, the Archbishop of Bombay, and Madani called
on all faiths to “disown and condemn such barbarous individuals
and groups.” “The terrorist attacks become all the more gruesome if
launched under the garb of religion and holy mission,” they wrote, calling on
people of all faiths to “disown and condemn such barbarous individuals and
groups”. “It is our duty,” they wrote, “to expose them and banish
them from civilized society.”
Noting that the attacks on religious places during religious
festivals such as at Easter are perpetrated to create a divide between people
of various faiths and communities, the two leaders expressed their closeness
with Christians everywhere, sharing their sorrows and pains.
The CBCI and Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind also proposed to send
a high-level delegation of various faiths to Sri Lanka to
explore the possibilities of cooperation and also to offer their condolence to
the bereaved families.
Their message with an appeal to “everyone irrespective of
their religion, caste and creed to come forward to save humanity and to
maintain social harmony and peace.”
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