Sri Lankan Muslim community and its challenges today: part 1

-by Dr Rifai.UK-  

               No time in Sri Lankan Muslim history Muslim community is facing enormous challenges as of today, Today Muslim community is facing some existential threat internally and externally. Sometime internal threats are deeper than external threats. some internal challenges are destroying gradually Muslim identity and Muslim way of life without any realization.  internal challenges are taking place around us and yet, we do not know seriousness of these challenges.  Poverty, drug addiction, involvement in drug business, backwardness in education and employment, feminism, secularism, Atheism, conversion, disunity, radicalism among us, and spread of Shi’ism are some of these challenges that Muslim community is facing today. External challenge is treating Muslim community today than ever before. BBS and some Buddhist extremism have been threating Muslim community for the last five years.  Muslim community is caught up in this new wave of social dilemma. Some good minded people such NSC, JU, MF and many other Islamic groups have been trying their best to sort these problems out and guide Muslim community into right direction and usher them into right path.  Out of all these challenge I will pen down a few words about our internal dispute and dawa techniques.      

          Extremism is extremism.  All religions have got it. But in our case, we should stop it now soon in Sri Lanka. We should know our limitations in our country when we speak about Islam within different four communities. when we speak about Islam we should take into consideration the sensitive issues of all four religions among us. How to do dawa among our community is one of main subjects that all Arabic college graduates need to know. Unfortunately, Arabic colleges teach Islam and yet, they do not teach how to do dawa or dawa techniques in our contexts, Pakistan dawa methods or Saudi dawa methods are not viable in Sri Lankan contexts, In Sri Lankan Dawa field we must face Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity. We should know the sensitive areas of all these religions in this modern day of mass communication networks to do dawa. Any unnecessary talk or speech on any areas of comparative religious talks could trigger communal violence or communal hated. Islam sets some ethical and moral principles to discuss or talk about other religious faiths or dogma. 

                Our Arabic colleges graduates need to have some solid training and education on this issue. Until recent time we did not have good imams to speak about Islam in Sinhalese language. Experts in Sinhalese language with sound Islamic knowledge is a must.  Producing some Sinhalese language medium Muslim clerics with sound Islamic knowledge is religious obligation as we build mosques. We have been spending more on building most but we did no produce enough good Imam with Sinhalese language skills to reach out with the message of Islam. And we ignore the 75% of people in this country. We over spent money on building more Tamil medium Arabic colleges but we failed to build some Arabic colleges for Sinhalese mediums.  Now we pay the price for this historical mistake. 

               I think that today, we should have some Sinhalese medium Jummah sermons in some mosques at least in Sinhalese areas: We should have some arrangement to invite some Buddhist monks and educated people from Sinhalese community to let them know what is going in our most each Friday. It appears our five time prayers and Friday sermons have created some religious jealousy among some elements of monks. So, it is our duty to educate them with the message of Islam. If we do not do this, they will get distorted form of anti-Islamic message from Sheikh Google and other networks.  We have failed to produce enough books, talks, speeches, journals, Newspapers and TV programmes in Sinhalese languages. This created an intellectual vacuum in Sinhalese community and they went into mass media, Sheikh google to collect information about Islam. 

               As we know Sheikh google and internet networks are bombarded with anti-Islamic message in English medium. There are millions of Anti-Muslim Literatures online today in various forms. Since crusade time western world has been producing anti-Islamic literature on various Islamic issue. Western anti-Islamic literature has got some bad description about Allah, our prophet, Jihad and many issue in Islamic teaching. Some of these literatures now freely available to all. Some modern anti Muslim forces in Europe and elsewhere make use of all these anti-Islamic literary works to insult Islam and its teachings. Today, millions of online anti- Islamic hate speeches and talks are freely available to Gnanasara and to his people to spread hatred among us. Recently, BBS sought some clarification from JU about some Quranic verses that speak about Non-Muslims. These types of questions are nothing but taken from sheikh google and from some anti-Muslim internet networks. To meet these types of challenges we must educate our Arabic college graduates with these facts. They need to master in some branches of knowledge   to reply to these people.  

1)  Arabic college graduates should have Good knowledge of Sinhalese language.

2)  They must have Thorough Islamic knowledge with high level of IQ.

3)  They must have Speaking skills.

4)  They should know all those anti- Islamic blasphemies and accusation. 

5) They should know little bit about orientalism and its agents. 

 Today we live in a global village. So, all ideas and philosophies are spreading like wildfire. If we do not update our knowledge and if we not educate our Arabic college graduate with modern challenge that we face today, I’m afraid our community will have a bleak future in Sri Lanka. We should have Arabic colleges in Sinhalese medium too, we should have Muslim schools too in Sinhalese medium and We should have mosques that do bayans and Friday sermons in Sinhalese language. It was an historical mistake that we failed to do this in the past. We have been using Tamil language for our all religious duties. To do dawa , to make bayan, to give talks and to write Islamic books in Tamil and to have Arabic Tamil and yet, we have failed to do all these in Sinhalese language too. 

         We have many Islamic words in Sri Lankan Muslim Tamil Islamic literature and yet, we failed to create Sri Lankan Muslim Sinhalese Islamic literature. This is an historical mistake and from now on if we want to reach out to Sinhalese people we should plan to take some step to change this. I think that in our universities Islamic subject should be taught in Sinhalese languages too. We have been teaching Islamic subjects in Tamil medium alone and in some case in English. Now is the time that we approach UGC and introduce undergraduate studies in Sinhalese medium. I do not think that UGC will object such proposal at all. Why not we do this so that future generation will have more opportunities. Moreover, we will be able to produce good Islamic scholars with good Sinhalese knowledge to take Islam into educated people of this country.  

Some planning is taking place to reach out with Islamic message into different groups of people among Sinhalese community. Yet, this will short live if we do not have long term plan as noted above. We need to make some dramatic change to Islamic teaching at all levels. Not merely we react to BBS threat rather we should have some long-term plan. In this modern world mass media is a challenge. So, we need to have some grass root level and high level plans to do this. Why not have some schools base plan to take Islamic message to school children, some university based plan to take Islamic message at university level and some interfaith dialogue to take Islamic message to monks and some academic discussion to take it at academic levels. 

 Muslim community did not plan for all this changes in our country and we have been complicit in our duties and we have been lazy and heedless in this aspect. Now we are facing all this challenges and yet, to meet all this we need to do some strategic planning. We need to show them that we are here in this country to contribute and develop this nation.