Islam in Sri Lanka is practiced by 99.7% of the Moorish population of Sri Lanka.
1,967,227 persons adhering Islam as per the census of 2012. The attitude among
the majority of people in Sri Lanka is to use the term "Muslim" as an ethnic
group, specifically when referring to Sri Lankan Moors.
History of Islam in Sri Lanka With the arrival of Arab traders in the
7th century A.D., Islam began to flourish in Sri Lanka. The first people
to profess the Islamic faith were Arab merchants and their native wives, whom
they married after having them converted to Islam. By the 8th century A.D., Arab
traders had controlled much of the trade on the Indian Ocean, including that of
Sri Lanka. Many of them settled down on the island in large numbers, encouraging
the spread of Islam. However, when the Portuguese arrived during the 16th
century, many of their descendants now called the Sri Lankan Moors - were
persecuted.The Sinhalese ruler King Senarat of Kandy gave refuge to some of
the Muslims in the central highlands and Eastern Province, Sri Lanka.
During 18th and 19th centuries, Javanese and Malaysian Muslims bought over by the
Dutch and British rulers contributed to the growing Muslim population in Sri
Lanka. Their descendants, now the Sri Lankan Malays, adapted several Sri
Lankan Moor Islamic traditions while also contributing their unique cultural
Islamic practices to other Muslim groups on the Island.
The arrival of Muslims from India during the 19th and 20th centuries has also
contributed to the growth of Islam in Sri Lanka. Most notably, Pakistani and
South Indian Muslims have introduced Shafi'i and the Hanafi school of thought
into Sri Lanka, however although most Muslims on the island still adhere to
the traditional practices of Sunni Islam and Fassiyatush Shadhiliyya Sufi order.
Muslims generally follow Sunni Sufi traditions like Mawlid, Tawassul and
Dhikr. Ummu zavaya at M.J.M.Laffir mawatha stands as the head quarters of
Fassiyatush Shazuliya Sufi order which is widely practiced all over the
country. Sufi Dawat-e-Islami and Deobandi Tablighi Jamaat too have
centers in Colombo. Sunni scholar Muhammad Abdul Aleem Siddiqi built
Hanafi Masjid in Colombo for Sri Lankan Muslims.
In 2012, Sri Lankan government ordered 161 foreign Tablighi Jamaat preachers to
leave the country for flouting visa regulations. Local Muslims had
complained that the visitors were not teaching a moderate form of Islam.
In modern times, Muslims in Sri Lanka are handled by the Muslim Religious and
Cultural Affairs Department, which was established in the 1980s to prevent the
continual isolation of the Muslim community from the rest of Sri Lanka.
Muslims of Sri Lanka, mostly from the Moor and Malay ethnic communities on the
island with smaller numbers of converts from other ethnicities, such as the
Tamils. Muslims and Sri Lankan Civil War
The Sri Lankan Civil War was a 26-year conflict fought on the island of Sri
Lanka between government and separatist militant organisation Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam. In this civil war Sri Lankan Muslim were targeted by LTTE and
a few hundred Muslims died {cn}, whilst hundreds of thousands were expelled from
their homes and their properties were destroyed. Most of these destroyed
properties belonged to Muslims and were propagated in an attempt to make Sri
Lanka into a Tamil country. The expulsion of the Muslims from the
Northern province was an act of ethnic cleansing carried out by the Tamil
militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam organization in October 1990. In
order to achieve their goal of creating a mono ethnic Tamil state in the North
Sri Lanka, the LTTE forcibly expelled the 95,000 strong Muslim population from
the Northern Province. The expulsion still carries bitter
memories amongst Sri Lanka's Muslims. In 2002, the LTTE militant leader
Vellupillai Prabhakaran formally apologized for the expulsion of Muslims
from the North. There has been a stream of Muslims travelling to and from Jaffna
since the ceasefire. Some families have returned and the re-opened Osmaniya
College now has 60 students enrolled. Two Mosques are functioning again.
According to a Jaffna Muslim source, there is a floating population of about
2000 Muslims in Jaffna. Around 1500 are Jaffna Muslims, while the rest are
Muslim traders from other areas. About 10 Muslim shops are functioning and the
numbers are thought to be growing. Sri Lankan Moors
The Sri Lankan Moors are native speakers of the Tamil language and follow Islam
as their religion. Several genealogical theories point out that they belong to
Tamil ethnicity and the majority of their ancestors were Tamils who had
lived in the country spanning generations, and had simply converted to
Islam from other faiths. Other theories claim that they are all descendants of
the Arabs who had settled in the island and therefore a different ethnic group.
This view is held by the Sinhalese favoring section of the Moors as well as
the Sri Lanka government which controversially lists them as a separate
ethnic group. The Moors as per the Sri Lanka government's definition of a
separate 'ethnic' community comprise about 9.2% of the country's population.
This classification and their exclusion from the rest of ethnic Tamils has been
critically challenged by several sources.
= Education = There are 749 Muslim schools in Sri
Lanka, 205 madrasas which teach Islamic education, and an Islamic university in
Beruwala. Al Iman Schools in Colombo was the first Islamic school of its kind,
teaching an integrated Islamic curriculum since 2008. In the early 20th
century there were few Muslim professionals in accountisc, medicine,
engineering, etc., but at present they are exceeding the national average. Due
to the lack of opportunity in Sri Lanka, many Muslim professionals are emigrating
to get jobs abroad, such as to the Middle East, United States, Canada,
Australia, and Europe. The Moors have had better social and economic mobility,
thanks to the historic head start they had in getting education and government
jobs under the British colonial rule. = East Coast Moors =
In the eastern provinces of the country Muslims are predominant. These Muslims
were settled on land given by the Sinhalese King Senarat of Kandy after
the Muslims were persecuted by the Portuguese. East coast Sri Lankan Moors
are primarily farmers, fishermen, and traders. According to the controversial
census of 2007, the Moors are 5%. Their family lines are traced through women,
as in kinship systems of the southwest Indian state of Kerala, but they govern
themselves through Islamic law. = West Coast Moors =
Many moors in the west of the island are traders, professionals or civil servants
and are mainly concentrated in Colombo, Kalutara, Beruwala, Dharga Town,
Puttalam, Jaffna and Mannar. Moors in the west coast trace their family lines
through their father. Along with those in the Central Province, the surname of
many Moors in Colombo, Kalutara and Puttalam is their fathers first name,
thus retaining similarity to the traditional Arab and middle eastern
kinship system. The Malays
The Malays of Sri Lanka originated in Southeast Asia and today consist of
about 50,000 persons. Their ancestors came to the country when both Sri Lanka
and Indonesia were colonies of the Dutch. Most of the early Malay
immigrants were soldiers, posted by the Dutch colonial administration to Sri
Lanka, who decided to settle on the island. Other immigrants were convicts
or members of noble houses from Indonesia who were exiled to Sri Lanka
and who never left. The main source of a continuing Malay identity is their
common Malay language, which includes numerous words absorbed from Sinhalese
and the Moorish variant of the Tamil language. In the 1980s, the Malays made
up about 5% of the Muslim population in Sri Lanka and, like the Moors,
predominantly follow the Shafi school of thought within Sunni Islam.
Other Indian Muslims The Indian Muslims are those who trace
their origins to immigrants searching for business opportunities during the
colonial period. Some of these people came to the country as far back as
Portuguese times; others arrived during the British period from various parts of
India. Majority of them came from Tamil Nadu and Kerala states, and unlike the
Sri Lankan Moors, are ethnically related to South Indians and number
approximately 30,000. The Memon, originally from Sindh, first arrived in
1870; in the 1980s they numbered only about 3,000, they mostly follow the
Hanafi Sunni school of Islam. The Dawoodi Bohras and the Khoja are
Shi'a Muslims came from northwestern India after 1880; in the 1980s they
collectively numbered fewer than 2,000. These groups tended to retain their own
places of worship and the languages of their ancestral homelands.
See also Kattankudi mosque massacre
Notes References
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of
the Library of Congress Country Studies. Victor C. de Munck. Experiencing History
Small: An analysis of political, economic and social change in a Sri
Lankan village. History & Mathematics: Historical Dynamics and Development of
Complex Societies. Edited by Peter Turchin, Leonid Grinin, Andrey
Korotayev, and Victor C. de Munck, pp. 154–169. Moscow: KomKniga, 2006. ISBN
5-484-01002-0 Pieris, Kamalika. The Muslims and Sri
Lanka.[3].Mission Islam, 2006. External links
The Muslims of Sri Lanka - One Thousand Years of Ethnic Harmony. By Lorna
Dewaraja All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama website
www.slmuslims.com - Community portal of Sri Lanka Muslims
www.slhub.com - Latest Lectures, Jummah Schedules, Job Listings, Obituaries,
Notices and events of the Sri Lankan muslim community, "Inviting the
Community Towards Goodness" www.TamilBayanS.com - Listen Online And
Free Download Latest Tamil Bayans of SriLankan Ulamas
www.SriLankaMuslims.net - Islamic And Muslim News & Commentary Website
Sailanmuslim.com - The Online Resource for Sri Lankan Muslims
ACJU Halaal Certification Committee Sri Lanka
Spiritual Voice of Sri Lanka Muslims Political voice of Sri Lanka Muslims
Sri Lankan Muslim Community Website Sri Lankan Muslims Online News Website
History Of Muslims In Sri Lanka The Story Of Sri Lanka's Malays
Sri Lankan Malays and their coexistence The Virtual Motherland of Sri Lankans
Sri Lanka Genealogy