Disunity among Islamic groups in Sri Lanka.

-By Omer Mukhthar-

        You do not be a pundit to know the significance of unity among Muslim community in Sri Lanka. As a second minority community, we have to be united to face many challenges in this country and yet, we are politically, religiously, ideologically and sometime geographically disunited among ourselves.  Unlike other communities this disunity is a big challenge for our community and we are scattered in Sri Lanka all over the country and we do not have that much of political authority as Tamils or Sinhalese communities.  Therefore, unity is paramount important for our existence in this country. 

         We are politically divided into many parties.  Some of us traditionally support UNP and some of us support SLFP. Today newly formed Muslim political parties have further divided us.  All these political disunities harm our community immensely. The political leaders of our forefathers put the welfare of our community over their personal interest. They immensely contributed to the nation building process of this country.  They did a wonderful service to this nation and yet, they did not forget the general welfare of our community. Their political life had some clear missions and visions. They came to politics to serve our community.  Today many Muslim politicians come to politics not to serve our community rather to accumulate wealth and power for their families and friends. That is why, our politicians are divided politically to accomplish their political ambitions. Do our Muslim political leaders have any common agenda to help out our community? Do they have any common ground to help out our community?  Do we see them united in any issue? … This political disunity is not good at all for the future of Muslim community in Sri Lanka. This political disunity among Muslims political leaders can lead this Muslim community into a collective political suicide. 

Secondly we are religiously divided. We should accept that we have many different groups among us. I do not mean that different groups outside Sunni Muslim tradition rather among Sunni Muslim community we have different ideological groups. This group disunity has created unnecessary trouble for Muslim community in Sri Lanka for the last 2 decades. This disunity is eating out the limited resources we have in our community. What do I mean by this? our resources are limited in Sri Lanka.   Different groups have begun to have their own mosques, their own Arabic colleges, their own institutes and centres. Sometime we have built more Arabic colleges and mosques than what Muslim community need. This competition   is not a healthy competition. It is purely done in line with different ideological groups we have in Sri Lanka. This is indeed, lead to utter waste of our financial and human resources in Sri Lanka. I notice some villages Arabic colleges streets to streets without any need to have such Arabic colleges.  Of course we need Arabic colleges and institutes but we should have a limited numbers of Arabic colleges to meet the real needs of Muslim community in Sri Lanka not in line with different groups needs and demands. 

To be continued