Socio-cultural issues and the relationships between Buddhists and Muslims in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi lingual country comprising four of the world’s major religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. Buddhists are the predominant ethnic group, constituting three quarters of the total population, while Muslims make up the second largest minority in the country. There are a wealth of records in history that prove the cordial relationship between Buddhists and Muslims in the past. However, the aftermath of civil war (1983-2009) caused tension to brew between these two communities. This is because of hate campaigns undertaken by a number of Buddhist Nationalist Groups (BNGs) through instigation of Buddhist nationalism among Buddhists adherents. These groups have been actively protesting against the Muslim socio-cultural practices and behaviours, such as the issuing of halal certification on consumer goods, slaughtering of cattle, conducting of prayer services, maintaining worship places, Muslim women’s hijabs and niqabs and so on with disseminating misunderstandings about them with derogatory speeches among the public. Given the above backdrop, this study attempts to identify the outstanding quality of historical relationship between Buddhists and Muslims as well as its nature in post-war context. Also, this study tries to explore the views in regard to the hate campaigns and the impacts of it on the relationship between Buddhists and Muslims with identifying major interrupting factors to the relationship. In order to achieve the above objectives of the study, in total 1219 questionnaires were distributed among Sri Lankan Buddhists and Muslims in 14 Buddhist majority districts and also 28 individuals were interviewed. Analysis and results of this study reveal that 50% of the Buddhists maintain a moderate approach neither opposing nor supporting on the recent protests against the Muslims by the BNGs. Besides, the recent attempts instigated by the BNGs have not impacted the relationship between Buddhists and Muslims in any way and especially in the case of Muslims, even though the Buddhists had attacked some of them, they are still hopeful of reviving their once harmonious relationship with Buddhists as better as maintained throughout the history. However, these hate campaigns could be expected potentially ruin their already harmonious relationship, turning it into a conflicting relationship instead. The finding of this research is essential to the policy makers to effectively design the corrective measure to increase inter-religious understandings and peaceful co-existence among the societies in Sri Lanka.