Islam in Sri Lanka

The majority of Muslims in Sri Lanka are concentrated in the Eastern Province where they form a plurality. Other areas containing significant Muslim minorities include the Western, Northwestern, North Central, Central and Sabaragamuwa provinces. Muslims form a large segment of the urban population of Sri Lanka and are mostly concentrated in major cities and large towns in Sri Lanka, like Colombo. Most Sri Lankan Muslims primarily speak Tamil and Sinhala. Sri Lankan Muslims of Pakistani and Indian origin also speak Urdu while Sri Lankan Malays speak the Sri Lankan Malay creole language in addition to Tamil and Sinhala.

Islam in Sri Lanka traces its origin back to the arrival of Middle Eastern merchants in the Indian Ocean. By the 16th century, Middle Eastern traders' were the main traders of spice in Sri Lanka, with networks extending to the Middle East. The descendants of these merchants are commonly believed to be the Sri Lankan Moors.

History

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 taken control of 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 these Arab traders' descendants – now called the Sri Lankan Moors – were the main traders in spice, with networks extending to the Middle East. The Portuguese colonists attacked, persecuted, and destroyed the Sri Lankan Moor settlements, warehouses, and trading networks. Many defeated Moors sought refuge from persecution by escaping to the interior of Sri Lanka. The population of Sri Lankan Moors declined significantly during the Portuguese colonial rule due to the pogroms against the Moors. The Sinhalese ruler King Senarat of Kandy gave refuge to some of the Muslims in the central highlands and Eastern Province, Sri Lanka.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Javanese and Malaysian Muslims brought over by the Dutch and British rulers contributed to the growing Muslim population in Sri Lanka. Their descendants, now the Sri Lankan Malays, adopted several Sri Lankan Moor Islamic traditions while also contributing their unique cultural Islamic practices to other Muslim groups on the Island.

The arrival of Arab and Yemeni merchants through maritime trade networks starting from the 7th and 8th centuries introduced the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, the majority of Sri Lanka follows the Shafi'i school of Islamic jurisprudence, despite their neighboring countries such as India and Bangladesh having a vast majority of Hanafi school followers

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 Indian Muslims have introduced the Hanafi school of thought into Sri Lanka. Most Muslims on the island adhere to the traditional practices of Sunni Islam.

The majority of Sri Lankan Muslims adhere to Sunni Islam. Within the Sunni community, several Sufi orders (turuq) have historically played an influential role. The Fassiya ash-Shazuliya tariqa, headquartered at Ummu Zavaya on M. J. M. Laffir Mawatha in Colombo and associated with scholars linked to the Al-Fassi family since the 1870s, has been one of the most historically influential Sufi orders among Sri Lankan Sunni Muslims, alongside the Aroosiyathul Qadiriyya. In addition to these Sufi traditions, non-Sufi Islamic revivalist and reformist movements such as the Deobandi-oriented Tablighi Jamaat, Jamaat-e-Islami, and Thawheed Jamath also maintain centers in Colombo.[1] The Sunni scholar Muhammad Abdul Aleem Siddiqi, associated with the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence, established the Hanafi Masjid in Colombo for the Muslim community.[2]

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 continue to derive from the Moor and Malay ethnic communities on the island with smaller numbers of converts from other ethnicities, such as the Tamils.

In recent years, Sri Lankan Muslims have become more affected by the growing influence of Salafism; due to investment from Saudi Arabia, Sri Lankan Sufi Muslims have been wary of increasing Wahhabism among Sri Lankan Muslims. The brutal 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings revealed that the radical National Thowheeth Jama'ath, a Salafi influenced organization, was behind the bombings, leading to increasing censorship of the Salafi movement in Sri Lanka.

In April 2020, the Sri Lankan government made COVID-19 cremations mandatory, saying that burying bodies could contaminate groundwater and spread the disease. Islam prohibits cremation and Muslims make up 10% of the population in Sri Lanka.

In late February 2021, after intense objections from human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the United Nations, the Sri Lankan government decided to allow burials to take place for Muslims. They were to be done on Iranathivu island, a remote island in the Gulf of Mannar. It lies 300 km (186 miles) away from the capital, Colombo, and was chosen because of its low population density.