Sri Lanka, Nov. 19 -- There is a line between baiting a community, and being politely concerned about extremism. This tension between keeping extremism at bay and being civil to a historically co-existing community has come to the fore in the issue of deciding between burials and cremation of Muslim Covid victims in this country.

Muslims do have cultural practices that are on a scale of normality, a little - perhaps by the reckoning of other fellow citizens - severe. Take the Charlie Hebdo affair and what happened recently in France.

The French free-speech advocates insist that the Prophet Mohammed should be depicted in cartoons, but it is a fact that any depiction whatsoever of their religious leader is anathema to Muslims. If that is ...