ISAS Insights

The Sri Lankan political crisis of 2018 kicked off with sitting President Maithripala Sirisena sacking Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe and replacing him with former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The political culture of the country was paralyzed by Sirisena’s drastic move. The biggest Muslim political party, the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress (SLMC) sided with Wickramasinghe. One of the reasons for the siding with Wickramasinghe was out of fear that Rajapaksa’s return would bring back the anti-Muslim sentiments in the country. The SLMC also fears that Rajapaksa might once again bring in a Sinhala nationalistic agenda into political discourse. But the SLMC’s choice has consequences. SLMC leaders, along with other Muslim political leaders, are now forced to navigate different Muslim categories that they themselves have introduced when choosing political sides. Muslims in Sri Lanka are defined in different ways, including, for example, through linguistic belonging or belonging to a religious sect. In the last decades, however, the dominant definition among the Muslim political elite has been belonging to the religious community of Islam. Yet the new political conflict may revive an old definition of Muslims in Sri Lanka, based on the Tamil language, which they share with other religious groups. Thus, after years of Muslim political leaders trying to distance themselves from other Tamil-speaking groups (Hindus and Christians), Muslims once again might turn to a bigger Tamil alliance in their bid to balance the blossoming Sinhalese nationalistic tendency in the country.