Sri Lanka’s Muslims have long kept quiet while Tamil militancy has made its own demands. Now they are becoming restive, fearing that silence may have cost them too much.

By | Dilrukshi Handunnetti

If you were to go by the international headlines, the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict appears to engage only the two main communities, the Sinhalese and the Tamils. Yet when the conflict exploded into war in 1983, and in the more than two decades following, it was not just the two communities locked in battle that suffered. The impact of the internal war on the island’s Muslim community has been massive – and severely overlooked.

In Colombo, when issues of politics or peace deliberations arise, the ‘Muslim question’ has long been …

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