Rainer Krack / CPAz Mosque, Haputale.

1.  Between Hammer and Anvil: Sri Lanka's Muslims  
[By Text copyright © Andrew Forbes / CPAmedia 2001]

Adam's peak, a symmetrically conical mountain set in the gorgeous hill country of southern Sri Lanka, is sacred to all of the island's main faiths. There is a strange indentation set in the living rock of the summit. To the majority Sinhalese Buddhists (69% of the total population) it is the footprint of the Buddha Gautama. The Tamil Hindus (21%) know better - it is, of course, the sacred footprint of the god Shiva. Then again, the island's Muslims (7%) insist, it is the footprint left by Adam when, cast out of the Garden of Eden by a wrathful god, he fell to earth in the place nearest to that celestial grove in terms of beauty, fertility and climate - Sri Lanka.

2.Sri Lanka
[By CIA THE WORLD FACTBOOK ] 

Religions : Buddhist (official) 69.1%, Muslim 7.6%, Hindu 7.1%, Christian 6.2%, unspecified 10% (2001 census provisional data)

3. Sri Lanka Muslims
[By International Islamic News Agency(IINA)]

Colombo, Muharram 7/Mar 21,2002 (IINA) - Sri Lanka’s Muslims were in the past mainly centered in the eastern part of the country, but the war between the government’s security forces and the Tamil Tigers has forced many of them to leave and settle in such places as the capital, Colombo, according to one of the Muslim leaders in the country, Ibraheem Salim, who had come to the holy sites to perform this year’s Haj. He said that while the Muslims of Sri Lanka enjoy freedom of worship, they somehow perceive that they are being discriminated in other fields, such as senior civil service jobs, and the like, though there are some who do hold senior political positions, such as ministers.

4. Srilanka: Muslims in Sri Lanka ethnic conflict
[By Farzana Haniffa,University of Colombo]

 Regardless of when, precisely, Sri Lanka’s protracted conflict began, this conflict is most often cast as one between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. In this bipolar understanding of the conflict, the Muslim community seems to have no place, even though Muslims constitute close to 40 percent of the population in the conflictaffected Eastern Province and have been expelled from the Northern Province. This article describes the plight of these Muslims and analyzes the discursive and political powers by which Muslims are marginalized.