Portrait of a Sri Lankan Wahhabi

This report should be read in conjunction with my last post:

"Zaharan Hashim, a radical Muslim preacher accused of masterminding the Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka, never hid his hatred. He railed against a local performance in which Muslim girls dared to dance. When a Muslim politician held a 50th birthday party, he raged about how Western infidel traditions were poisoning his hometown, Kattankudy.

"There were, Zaharan said in one of his online sermons, three types of people: Muslims, those who had reached an accord with Muslims, and 'people who need to be killed'. Idolaters, he added, 'need to be slaughtered wherever you see them'.

"Zaharan has been described by Sri Lankan officials as having founded an obscure group with inchoate aims: a defacement of a Buddha statue, a diatribe against Sufi mystics. But in his hometown, and later in the online world of radical Islam where his sermons were popular with a segment of Sri Lankan youth, it was clear for years that Zaharan's hateful cadences were designed to lure a new generation of militants. 'He was influential, very attractive, very smart in his speeches, even though what he was saying about jihad was crazy,' said Marzook Ahamed Lebbe, a former Kattakudy politician and member of a local Islamic federation. 'We all underestimated him. We never thought he would do what he said.'

"Standing among seven masked men in black, Zaharan is the only one with his face exposed. Sri Lankan investigators believe that eight suicide bombers carried out the attacks on the hotels and mosques Sunday, one of the bloodiest assaults ever claimed by IS. On Thursday investigators said they believed Zaharan was one of two suicide bombers who targeted the Shangri-La Hotel in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital. (The Sri Lankan police have also identified him as Mohammed Zaharan.)

"Muslims in Kattakudy said they had repeatedly contacted the police to warn that Zaharan was dangerous, but that the authorities played down the threat [...] Growing up in Kattakudy, an oasis of Islam on a majority Buddhist island with significant Hindu and Christian minorities, Zaharan's religiosity was unremarkable. Most houses here have a picture of Mecca on their wall, and road intersections are decorated with golden monuments in Arabic.

"Zaharan and his brothers were sent by their father, a small-time seed and spice seller, to a madrassa, where teachings adhered to a strict interpretation of Islam. But even as he impressed with the fluency of his Koranic recitation and easily made friends, Zaharan confronted his teachers and accused them of failing to adhere to true Islam. Like other Kattakudy youths lured by new overseas fashions, he had come under the spell of foreign preachers whose sermons were being passed around town by DVD, said MBM Fahim, one of his classmates... 'He spread misinformation about us,' Fahim said. 'He said the the school should close because it was teaching the wrong way. He was just a student and he was saying like this. Zaharan was kicked out of school. He enrolled at another Islamic college but never graduated, his acquaintances said. Still, by listening to the sermons of charismatic but extremist preachers based in India and Malaysia, Zaharan was honing his oratory.

"After getting ejected from serving as imam of one mosque for his extremist views, Zaharan started a group in 2014 called National Thowheeth Jamaath or NTI, which drew from the austere Wahhabi tradition that claims to follow the faith as practiced in the age of its founder, the Prophet Mohammed." From Sri Lanka bombings: 'Mastermind' never hid his hatred, Hanna Beech, The New York Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 26/4/19)