Activists, politicians and members of the Moslem minority said Warakagoda Sri Gnanarathana Thero's speech last week was likely to fan communal tensions, weeks after Buddhist mobs attacked scores of Moslem homes and businesses.
The riots were an apparent response to deadly bombings on churches and hotels on Easter Sunday that killed more than 250 people and were claimed by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
of Iraq and Levant (ISIS, or ISIS) group. Sri Lankan authorities blamed the attacks on two small Moslem groups.
With the country still reeling from the bombings and subsequent riots, Gnanarathana repeated unsubstantiated accusations that a Moslem doctor in the central Kurunegala district had covertly sterilised 4,000 Buddhist women.
"Some female devotees said [people like the doctor] should be stoned to death. I do not say that. But that's what should be done," he said in a speech broadcast on national television.
The monk, who heads the Asgiriya Chapter, one the largest and oldest Buddhist chapters in Sri Lanka, went on to call for a boycott of Moslem-owned restaurants, reinforcing a long-standing and unsubstantiated rumour that Moslem restaurants served their Buddhist customers food spiked with sterilisation medication.
"Don't eat from those [Moslem] shops. Those who ate from these shops will not have children in future," he told worshippers at a temple in the central district of Kandy, where that same rumour had unleashed days of anti-Moslem riots last year.
On Saturday, Gnanarathana defended his comments, saying: "The remarks I made are only in line with what the majority are thinking."
Buddhists make up more than 70 percent of Sri Lanka's 21 million population, while Moslems account for 10 percent.