Abstract:
Historically, Sri Lankan Muslims have been having a close relationship with Tamil Nadu
Muslims ever since the ancient period. It has been observed that there are some
similarities between the Muslims of both countries in the fields of political, economic,
languages, cultural and education. Naleem Hajiyar was born on 4th April 1933 in the
Western coastal town of Beruwala in a middle class family. He started his life as a local
gem trader, and through his honesty and perseverance soon become one of the leading
and internationally renowned gem business men in Sri Lanka. Naleem Hajiyar had a
mission to uplift the Muslim community through education. He founded the Renaissance
Movement through which he gave a new impetus to education of Muslim youth,
supporting them with extra classes and educational activities. His apex achievement was
the founding of the renowned Islamic University the Jamiah Naleemiah in 1973,
combining traditional academic education of international standards. B.S.Abdul Rahman
was born on 15th October 1927 to Buhari Aalim of Kilakarai of Tamil Nadu. The pearl
diving tradition of the Kilakarai coast led to many of its Muslims choosing the Gem trade
as a means of livelihood. Among them was BuhariAalim, a descendent of Imam
Sadakathulla Appa. He has studied in Tamil Nadu local Schools, colleges and traditional
Madrasa. Abdur Rahman has started the Crescent School for boys in 1968. He believed
that quality education, discipline, mutual help and understanding could be developed
only in residential schools. He therefore began scouting for sites to build a residential
school and acquired 120 acres of land in Vandalur of Tamil Nadu. Determined to
provide students with greater opportunities, Abdur Rahman turned his attention to higher
education, especially in the field of Engineering. The Crescent Engineering College that
he had dreamed of came into being in 1984. It has been developed and named B.S.Abdul
Rahman University. Now B.S. Abdur Rahman University has several faculties with
international organization. Both the leaders had been pioneers in promoting education of
their communities and have adopted different methods to achieve their goals and both
communities received a fruitful development in the field of education. The aim and
objective of this paper is to identify contribution of Naleem Hajiyar and B.S.Abdul
Rahman in the field of education of their communities in the different attitudes and multicultural life and to focus the similarities and differences of their methods and
achievements. This research will help to identify the exact ways they adopted for the development of education. The study takes the form of qualitative, quantitative and
descriptive analysis. In this research primary data were collected through
questionnaires, key informant interviews and focus group discussion. Secondary data
were collected through related books, magazines, research articles from print and
electronic publications.
