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Scholarly work exists on how Muslim minority positioning affects identity and politics, but what is less known is its impact on religion. Sri Lanka's 9% Muslim population, the country's second largest minority, has undergone a series of recent changes to religious identity, thinking and practice, which have been shaped by its relationship to the dominant and warring 'ethnic others'. As Sri Lanka plunged deeper into armed conflict in the 1990s, Muslims experienced significant shifts in religious thinking and practice, identifying strictly with a more 'authentic' Islam. After the war ended in 2009, Muslims became the target of majoritarian Sinhala-Buddhist violence, resulting in a reinterpretation of Islam and a counter process of change. Using the Sri Lankan Muslim case study to engage with scholarly critiques of majority-minority binaries, this article analyses how religious change is brought about through the interjection of minority status with ethno-nationalisms and conflict. Its focus on Islam in Sri Lanka contributes to area studies and to Islamic studies, the latter through a rare analysis of Islamic reform in a Muslim minority context.

This chapter explores how Sri Lanka's ten percent Muslim population engages in peacebuilding through identity and religious reforms. It looks at two processes of Islamic reform Muslims have undergone during and after the armed conflict and explains how they were fundamentally shaped in response to the ethnic and religious other. During the armed conflict, the reforms were a form of nonviolent separatism, concerned with identifying with a ‘true Islam’ and eliminating influences of the ethnic and religious other. After the conflict as Muslims are increasingly being seen by majoritarian Buddhist nationalists as a threat, the former have responded to persecution and violence through another process of religious and identity reforms. On this occasion, inclusive, opening up and adapting to the religious other and actively engaging in peacebuilding. The chapter questions the nature and sustainability of this ‘oppressed peace’, which is one dimensional and void of justice and accountability.

The Muslim community has also been one of the victims of the 30-year-old civil war in Sri Lanka. Constituting a substantial portion of the internally displaced persons, Muslims require the Sri Lankan government to address the phenomenon of displacement, put in place a system of self-governance and guarantees of their rights, and be equally responsive to their concerns as much as those of any of the other minority in the country.

This positive step by the Sri Lankan government comes as a result of months of international and local pressure. Displacement continues to be a huge issue in Sri Lanka. Apart from this group of IDPs, there are some 300,000 other people displaced through the course of the decades of war, including close to 100,000 ethnic Muslims. The government must find a solution to the serious problems faced by minorities in the country. Sri Lanka's 30-year-old conflict stemmed from the lack of minority rights protection - an issue that can't be ignored if the country is to achieve lasting peace.

This deafness to international pressure cannot be sustained - Sri Lanka has already appealed for international aid to rebuild the war-torn areas. The British Government must continue to work with the US to keep Sri Lanka top of the UN agenda. They should not be put off by Sri Lanka's wrath; there are hundreds of thousands of people in displaced camps who need support.

This should have been a month of celebrations for Sri Lanka as it reached 60 years of independence on February 4. Instead, it was marked by battles and Tamil Tiger bombings. In January, Colombo abrogated a five-year Norwegian-brokered ceasefire, which for over a year had been undermined by violence from both the government ...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka--The first woman in the world to become a prime minister was Sri Lanka's Sirimavo Bandaranaike four decades ago, and another woman is Sri Lanka's current president.

COLOMBO : The Norwegian Monitoring Mission will have to intervene soon to resolve a dispute brewing between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan Navy over the rebels conducting political work in the northern Jaffna islands.

COLOMBO : Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe said on Wednesday that he had formally requested the Norwegian government to facilitate in the peace process and expected talks with the LTTE to commence around March next year.