The Sri Lankan Muslim Council of Britain.

(Ziyath Gaffoor)  

Islam in Sri Lanka is practiced by a group of minorities who make up 9.72% of the population of Sri Lanka. 1,967,227 persons adhering Islam as per the census of 2012(There is 57227 converts not included in the latest census as Muslims) The Muslim community is divided into three main ethnic groups: the Sri Lankan Moors, the Indian Muslims and the Malays, each with its own history and traditions. 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 8th century, 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 converting to Islam. By the 15th century, 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 Shia Islam 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.

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

Main article: Expulsion of Muslims from the Northern province by LTTE

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 (the LTTE, also known as the Tamil Tigers). In this civil war Sri Lankan Muslim were targeted by LTTE and tens of thousands Muslims died, hundreds of thousands were expelled from their homes and their property was destroyed . 

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 (LTTE) 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 have grown. 

Sri Lankan Moors

Main articles: Tamil Muslim and Sri Lankan Moors

A significant Tamil-speaking Muslim population exists in Sri Lanka; however, unlike Tamil Muslims from India, they are not culturally linked with ethnic Tamils, they are therefore listed as a separate ethnic group in official statistics. The Moor community of Sri Lanka also consists of Tamil Muslims migrated from Tamil Nadu region of India and converts from Sri Lankan Tamil community. The Moors had better social and economic mobility, thanks to the historic head start they had in getting education and government jobs under British colonial rule. 



The Sri Lankan Moors make up almost 9.2% of the population of the country. They are predominantly Sunni Muslims of Shafi School. The Moors trace their ancestry to Arab traders who settled in Sri Lanka sometime between the seventh and eighth centuries. The Arabic language brought by the early merchants is no longer spoken, though various Arabic words and phrases are still employed in daily usage. Until the recent past, the Moors employed Arwi as their mother tongue, though this is also extinct as a spoken language. Currently, the Moors in the east of Sri Lanka use Tamil as their primary language which includes many loan words from Arabic. Moors in the west coast are fluent in Sinhala, an Indo-European language spoken by the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka, but use English within the community. Thus, the Moors are multilingual ethnic and religious group. The Sri Lankan Moors lived primarily in coastal trading and agricultural communities, preserving their Islamic cultural heritage while adopting many Southern Asian customs. During the period of Portuguese colonization, the Moors suffered from persecution, and many moved to the Central Highlands and Eastern Province, where their descendants remain.

Education

There are 749 Muslim Schools in Sri Lanka, and 205 madrasas which teaching Islamic Education, and there is an Islamic university in Beruwala (Jamiya Naleemiya). In early 20th century there are few Muslim professionals in Accounts, Medical, Engineering, etc. But at present they are exceeding the national average. Due to lack of opportunity in Sri Lanka, many Muslim professionals are migrating to get jobs abroad, such as the Middle East, United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe.