COLOMBO: A Sri Lankan court jailed a politically influential, firebrand Buddhist monk on Thursday, putting him behind bars for a second time for insulting Islam and stoking religious hatred in the island nation.

Galagodaatte Gnanasara was sentenced on Thursday to nine months for his anti-Muslim remarks, which date to 2016. He was previously jailed last year on a similar charge of disparaging Sri Lanka’s minority Muslims, who account for just over about 10 percent of the 22 million population.

He was on bail while appealing that four-year sentence.

The monk is a close associate of former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who made him the head of a panel to reform Sri Lanka’s legal system to ensure religious harmony in 2021.

At the time, opposition lawmaker Shanakiyan Rasamanickam described Gnanasara’s appointment as “the definition of irony”.

In 2018, Gnanasara was also sentenced to six years for intimidating the wife of a missing cartoonist and contempt of court, but was freed nine months later after former president Maithripala Sirisena pardoned him.

His patron Rajapaksa was forced to step down following months of protests over the country’s unprecedented economic crisis in 2022 and Gnanasara once again fell from grace and faced prosecution.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2025