Islamic Fundamentalism in Sri Lanka



Table of Contents

Introduction1

Research Problems & Questions3

Research Overview4

Literature Review5

History of Muslims in Sri Lanka6

Sri Lankan Civil War and the Impact of War on Muslims10

The External Impact on the Sri Lankan Muslim Population14

Possible Conditions/ Courses for Islam Radicalization in Sri Lanka16

Measures to Prevent Radicalization of Muslims in Sri Lanka17

Conclusion20

End Notes22

Islamic Fundamentalism in Sri Lanka

Introduction

The core of fundamentalism is the effort of defining the fundamentals of a religious system and adhering to them. The types of fundamentalism vary from religious revivalism to extremist political movements. The fundamentalism of Islam has acquired a critical meaning of the current Western political discourse because of the fact that the political fundamentals resistance against Western dominance in the Middle East.

A broad tendency among religious believers to stress strict adherence to a set of core principles and practices, often derived from a literal reading of a scripture such as the Christian Bible, the Koran, or the Torah. Fundamentalist interpretations are usually made exclusively of other social groups and more pluralistic points of view. However, that tendency leads to a vast variety of directions, even within a single faith, conditioned by time, place, and circumstance. Within Islam, for instance, there have been numerous varieties of fundamentalists. Among more recent examples: Sunni fundamentalists dominated Sudan in the late nineteenth century (and again in the late twentieth century) under the Mahdi and his descendants. The Muslim Brotherhood threatened radical Islamic revolution in several other Sunni states, most notably Algeria and Egypt. Shi'ite fundamentalists controlled Iran after the Iranian Revolution (1979). Muslim fundamentalists of a wholly different sort (Wahhabi) dominated Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States during parts of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth. And starting in the 1990s a severe, indeed totalitarian, movement, the Taliban, led by reactionary theology students, took power in Afghanistan and took it back (or so they hoped) to the “purity” of Islam near to its founding in the eighth century C.E. They abolished all female education, set up religious police and courts of inquiry, imposed draconian punishments for even minor “moral offenses,” and destroyed the ancient monuments of Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past. Fundamentalist regimes or movements also sought to Islamize Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and other populous Muslim countries at different times.

In this back ground, focus of my study will be “the Islamic fundamentalism in Sri Lanka”. The Muslims in Sri Lanka comprise of eight percent from the entire population in the country. Traditionally, the Moors have been on good terms with the Sinhalese Buddhists, who were also living in that region. Sri Lanka has been a society of peace-loving Sinhalese people, who have historically co-existed side by side with varied cultures and it has been adapting the control of varied cultural influences that the region has gone through.

Sri Lanka has been the middle one in a disastrous and brutal civil war in which lot of people lost their lives, who were innocent. As an outcome, Sri Lanka faces a major political break, cultural and commercial property ...