Muslims in the Post-War Sri Lanka: Repression, Resistance and Reform, Colombo: Alliance for Minorities

Abstract

Shereen Abdul Saroor’s edited work titled Muslims in the Post-war Sri Lanka: Repression, Resistance and Reform is a welcome addition to the ongoing discussion on the socio-political and religious dynamics of the Muslim minority in Sri Lanka. The theme has attracted wider scholarly attention in the last ten years for a reason. It is because since the civil war ended in 2009, the community has been portrayed as a ‘new other’ that should be controlled by dominant majoritarian apparatus. As a result, ultra-Buddhist nationalist forces in Sri Lanka systematically mainstreamed global Islamophobic discourses that connect Islam/Muslims with violence and barbarism, exclusivist culture. Hence, the scholarly community showed a deep interest to study the root causes of the phenomenon, its impact as well as responses of the Muslim community in general. As such, quite considerable amount of academic works was published exploring the unfolding dynamics and its historical genealogy in detail.