Post-war Tension between the Buddhists and the Muslims in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Sri Lanka is a multi religious, multi lingual and multi cultural environment, and the members of all communities lived in peace and harmony with good social integration with one another. Since the arrival of Arab-Muslims in Sri Lanka in the early period the Buddhists and the Muslims have been maintaining a cordial relationship between them for more than ten centuries. However, in recent past years, particularly aftermath of ethnic war (1983-2009) in Sri Lanka, considerably from 2011 to later part of 2014, the unsteadiness of the relationship-a kind of tension- between the above two communities has come to be observed. In the case of Sri Lanka, the Muslims are most privileged society in terms of religious rights comparing to other minorities. Because of this reason, a few Buddhist nationalist groups posed questions on socio-cultural practices of the Muslims such as religious beliefs and practices, dressing culture and social customs. In fact, these factors have been transformed into issues and brought them out by mentioned groups on the mindset of Buddhist public as a threat against the Sinhalese and their religion-Buddhism. On the above backdrop, therefore, this paper is going to review the existing literature on post-war tension between the Buddhists and the Muslims as well as the acts of the Buddhist nationalist groups against the socio-cultural practices of the Muslims in Sri Lanka.

Key words: post-war, tension, Buddhists, Muslims, Sri Lanka