Is Sri Lanka's spurned Muslim minority ripe for fundamentalism?

The island nation's Muslim minority was driven into camps 17 years ago. Rising frustration over their plight raises concerns they'll turn to radical forms of Islam.

from the December 7, 2007 edition

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"It hasn't happened yet, but there is a lot of anger, especially among young people," he says.

Currently, the biggest problems in the area concern the original Muslim inhabitants and the displaced Muslims. Relations between the two are growing dangerously tense, says a report published by the Campaign to Restore the Rights of the Ethnically Cleaned Northern Muslims, an organization formed by displaced Muslims, on Oct. 27.

The 75,000-plus internal refugees, many of whom have had children since they arrived, has doubled the original population of this area, putting heavy pressure on jobs, housing, and education. Puttalam's original residents are quick to agree.

"We did all we could for them when they first arrived," says Shahad Muhammed, an amiable businessman. "But they're placing an unbearable strain on resources. They work cheap, so they've taken people's jobs. They take education, healthcare, too. The situation has created a lot of hate."

Abdullah Mahmood Alim, the white-haired principal of a local madrassah, says: "In the mosques, our imams stress Islamic brotherhood to prevent clashes. But I worry about the future."

Neighbors turned enemies

Only two decades ago, Sri Lanka's Muslims and Tamils, who are mostly Hindu, shared a common grievance over their discrimination at the hands of the Buddhist Sinhalese majority. A number of Muslims in the north and east even joined the Tigers as fighters.

"I remember the LTTE guys walking through our village with their guns and radios," says Rizni Mohammed, who is from Mullativu and now lives in Puttalam. " Back then, they seemed quite glamorous."

But by the late 1980s the Tigers had decided that the presence of Muslims in their would-be homeland threatened their eventual control of it. This belief was bolstered when the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) contested the 1988 North Eastern provincial council election despite Tiger demands they boycott it.

Since then, however, the SLMC has failed to gain sway over most Muslim voters – highlighting the community's lack on unity. In the south, many Muslims vote for Sinhalese-dominated mainstream parties. At the last parliamentary elections in 2004, the SLMC won a mere 2 percent of the votes.

The war, meanwhile, rages as fiercely as it has ever done. In the camps of Puttalam, many older people seem miserably resigned to the fact that they will never, now, make it home.

After a cease-fire agreement was signed in 2002, several did return to the north. The few who found their houses standing or uninhabited were once again kicked out by the rebels when the ceasefire folded last year.

Mohammed Fareed found his farm destroyed when he went home to Mullativu in 2003. Sitting in the miniscule front room of his leaf shack, which is closed off from the family bedroom by a cardboard wall, the impeccably mannered former farmer says he thinks of home every day. "I lost everything," he says. "I miss everything."

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