Community Leadership in Sri Lanka’sEastern Province

May 2009 marked the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war,but uncertainty among people of different faithsand ethnicities is still very much evident across thecountry. The conflict between the government andthe Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cre-ated increasing distrust within and among commu-nities in Sri Lanka. Muslims remain unacknowl-edged victims of a civil conflict viewed largely as awar between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities.Although a minority in most districts, apart fromTrincomalee and Ampara in the East, the Muslimcommunity has approximately 3,000 mosques and200 madrasas (also referred to as Arabic Colleges)across the country. As in most Muslim communi-ties, the mosque plays a crucial role in shapingcommunity trends, as do the imams that providethe Friday sermons (Khutuba).

Last May, through two local NGO partners, TheAsia Foundation began working in Sri Lanka’sEastern Province to provide training programs forMuslim religious leaders, both women and men(Moulavias and Moulavis, respectively). The train-ing of imams, madrasa teachers, and mosquetrustee members focuses on building their capaci-ties as leaders in their communities who canengage in social justice, development, and recon-ciliation in a post-war context. The goal is to cre-ate a strong network of religious leaders to

become agents of change, committed to bringingtheir training and learning back to their villagesin order to proactively involve the Muslim com-munity in post-war reconciliation efforts.

The Muslim Women’s Research and ActionForum (MWRAF), one of the Foundation’s localpartners working in Ampara and Batticaloa, pro-vided some insight into initial reactions to thetraining. Laila Udayar, senior program officer forMWRAF, commented that this was the first timethat “Moulavies and Moulavias from differentsects have come together to participate in thesame training program,” and that this was a bigvictory in terms of cooperation within theMuslim community itself. Interestingly, MWRAFprovided training programs in both the East andin Colombo, and they found that women andmen were able to interact more freely, and betterexpress and discuss the training modules whenthey were further away from their homes and vil-lages. When religious leaders were taking part inthe training in their home areas, they were morecautious, and felt as if they were representingtheir communities and self-censored accordingly.

Recently, MWRAF provided a Training ofTrainers program for 40 influential religious lead-ers from Ampara and Batticaloa Districts on

In the three districtsof the Eastern

Province, Muslimscomprise approxi-mately 30% of

Trincomalee’s popula-tion, 24% of

Batticaloa’s, and41% of Ampara’s.

Islam was brought to the island betweenthe 8th and 15thcenturies by Arab

traders.

Religious leaders of all faiths are highly regarded in Sri Lankan society, and an accurate picture of thecurrent reality for this island nation is incomplete without considering Muslims. Sometimes referred to asSri Lankan Moors, they comprise 7 percent of the country’s population. Their mother-tongue is Tamil butthey are a distinct ethnic group with their own customs. Muslims are found all over the island but thelargest concentration is in the Eastern Province.

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themes of Islam and pluralism, gender justice,jihad, new dimensions in Islamic theology andthe role of madrasas in nation-building. Thesetrainers provided a program for 500 additionalreligious leaders across 20 Divisional SecretariatDivisions in the East.

Ms. Jezima Ismail, recently named one of the 500most influential Muslims in the world, and thefounder of MWRAF, explains that the engage-ment with religious leaders “is not a project orprogram, but an absolute mission.” A mission shesays is about “socially engaged spirituality,” wherespiritual qualities are developed in the context ofinvolvement with society, work, family, politics,and community.

The Asia Foundation’s partner in another Easterntown, Kantale, is the Rural Economic andCommunity Development Organization(RECDO). RECDO staff recently facilitated adiscussion between visiting Asia Foundation pro-gram officers and an imam, a mosque trusteepresident, and a madrasa teacher. They spoke can-didly about the training, its strengths and weak-nesses and how it has changed the way some reli-gious leaders preach, teach, and engage with theMuslim community.

All three leaders—the imam, the mosque trusteepresident, and madrasa teacher—said they wereoften sought out by the community for guidance,but that schooling in madrasas and religious train-ing abroad does not necessarily teach leadershipskills and how to co-exist with people of otherfaiths. And, in a district like Trincomalee, coexis-tence is essential, where Muslim, Tamil, andSinhalese populations are all represented. Themadrasa teacher in Kantale said they learned howto “communicate to the villages, bringing ininternational examples to discuss in school andwithin the community.” J.M. Azhar, the presidentof RECDO, agreed that learning how to commu-nicate and discuss international issues has beenone of the most important successes of the train-ing program. For example, Muslim religious lead-ers in the Eastern Province recently petitioned for10,000 signatories in support of a housemaid inSaudi Arabia condemned to death by the judiciary,and later the King, after the death of an infant inher care. Such engagement is something theseleaders said they would not necessarily have donein the past. A second, but no less important suc-

cess of the program, is learning to effectively com-municate topics that are generally outside thescope of their religious training, such as gover-nance, human rights, development, and politics.

Local issues, both Muslim in nature (coexistingwith other faiths, understanding other faiths) andcommunity-related (access to resources, land dis-putes, education), were discussed in the trainingand have now been incorporated into discussionswith the community after class-time in themadrasas and after Friday sermons.

There are nearly 1,000 religious leaders inTrincomalee District who lead over 250 mosquesand 21 madrasas. These numbers may seem vastfor the 170,000 Muslims living in the district,however, Trincomalee only accounts for one tenthof the total Islamic religious and educational insti-tutions in Sri Lanka. RECDO, with The AsiaFoundation’s support, organized four trainingprograms in the Trincomalee District for 70female madrasa teachers, 50 male madrasa teach-ers, 60 imams, and 40 mosque trustees. The seriesof workshops examined leadership styles, presen-tation skills, Quran and leadership, Islam andpluralism, Muslim understandings of other faiths,conflict resolution, interfaith dialogue, Islamicperspectives on development, community mobi-lization and the role of mosque in communitydevelopment.

The training program has had an importantimpact on religious leaders in Trincomalee District,and they unanimously agreed that continuation ofsuch training is important, but perhaps for asmaller group of people and for a longer period oftime. An imam who attended a recent workshop-suggested to Asia Foundation staff that one of themost important results of the training was, “thecourage, and the ability we now have to discussissues of governance, human rights and communityproblems in our sermons and teachings, not justworship and faith.”

At the workshop, the madrasa teacher guided thediscussion to an appropriate end when he saidthat the war is over, but mistrust remains – acommon sentiment across Sri Lanka. His phonerang as he suggested that future programs shouldinvolve joint activities with religious leaders ofother faiths. Who happened to be on the otherline? A Catholic priest, of course.

02/2011

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