From a speech delivered by Lecturer of Economics at University of Western Australia Dr. Ameer Ali at the Annual Dinner of Udayam Newspaper in Melbourne, Australia.

Although the subject of this lecture is particularly related to the situation in Sri Lanka, it is important to understand the general predicament of the Muslim community wherever that community live as minorities in non-Muslim countries.

Whether the Muslims live in large numbers in heavily populated but relatively less developed countries like India or in small numbers in thinly populated but relatively affluent countries like Australia their predicament remains permanent as long as they remain a minority.

The reason for this predicament arises from a fundamental conflict between their religious identity and ethnic or national identity. Whether a Muslim is an Arab or Caucasian, Dravidian or Aryan, whether that Muslim is a Saudi, Iraqi, Indian or Sri Lankan, and whether that Muslim is one by birth or conversion, his or her religious identity supersedes all other identities. This is a phenomenon that is unique to the Muslim community.

The late 19th century and particularly the year 1885 marked a turning point in Muslim political history in Sri Lanka. In that year, the Tamil representative at the Ceylon Legislative Council P. Ramanathan, while addressing the Council on the "Mohammadan Marriage Registration Ordinance" stressed the point that the Moors of Ceylon were of Tamil origin. First of all, the name Moor was an epithet bestowed by the Portuguese indiscriminately upon the Arabs and their descendants, whom, in the 16th century, they found established in every port on the Asian and African coast.

Not all the Muslims of Sri Lanka in the 16th century were Arabs or of Arab origin, and in fact, it could be argued that a majority of them were from the subcontinent and of Dravidian ethnicity. The Muslims neither loved the name Moor nor hated it. Their attitude was one of indifference. However, by calling all the Muslims Moors, the Portuguese, perhaps inadvertently, had instilled in the general mind the idea that all Muslims in Sri Lanka were descendants of Arabs.

Ramanathan's claim that the Moors were of Tamil origin came at a time when the Colonial Government was considering the appointment of a Moor member to the Legislative Council. If this claim were to go uncontested it would have allowed Ramanathan to argue further that a Moor member in the Council was superfluous.

Political necessity therefore demanded the Moor community to establish its separate ethnic identity. The name Moor, an accidental label tagged on to the Muslims by a Christian power, now, because of political necessity, and thanks to the Tamil leader Ramanathan, turned out to be a blessing and a worthy cause to fight for and maintain a separate ethnic identity. The Moor identity was established and officially accepted.

Following this struggle Governor Gordon appointed M.C. Abdul Rahman as the first Moor member to the Legislative Council. The upshot of this episode however, was that the Muslims of Sri Lanka, for the first time in history, became conscious of their ethnic origins. What is even clearer from this episode is that the Muslims were not claiming that they were all of Arab origin but disclaiming that they were of Tamil origin. This fact should also be kept in mind when analyzing the current discord between the Tamil militants and the Muslim community.

Having established this Moor identity does any Muslim in Sri Lanka today call himself or herself a Moor? The answer is, absolutely not. The name Moor only appears in the census reports, and certificates of birth and death. They all identify themselves as Muslims. This religious based identification grew even stronger after the Islamic reawakening that swept the Muslim world since the 1970s. "We are Muslims first and last" is the emphatic message from the Tabligh Jamaat, a fluid religious movement well entrenched in Sri Lanka that invites the followers of Islam to adhere strictly to the fundamental tenets of the religion.

"O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise each other). Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most Righteous of you." Based on this Quranic message the Tabligh Jamaat has successfully worked to eradicate all ethnic identities and made the religious identity paramount. To the LTTE think-tank Muslims are not a separate ethnic group but Tamils of a different religion, Islam.

They are therefore Islamiyath Thamizhar or Islamic Tamils in the parlance of the LTTE. This is the resurrection of the Ramanathan theory from the graveyard of 19th century history. Ramanathan propounded this theory in the 1880s to deprive the Muslims of separate political representation in the legislature. He failed in his attempt.

After that the Federal Party, which held the mantle of Tamil leadership for more than three decades, never addressed the Muslim community as Tamils but always included them under a broader category, Tamil speaking people. The LTTE, however, went back and resurrected the Ramanathan theory a century later to strengthen its demand for Tamil Eelam based on a single ethnic contiguity throughout the north, east and the northwest of Sri Lanka.

The Muslims were thrown into a new predicament - to support the militants and live as a divided community, one-third in Tamil Eelam and the rest outside of it, or to deny Tamil Eelam, identify totally as Muslims and face the wrath of the militants. What were the pros and cons of the two alternatives?

Firstly, the historical experience of Muslim-Tamil relations in Sri Lanka since the days of Ramanathan episode had not been a happy one to say the least. It was in the field of education that this relationship showed its darkest side. No serious research has yet been undertaken on the history of Muslim education in Sri Lanka. Therefore I can only make certain general observations.

The Muslim community had to fight hard in the fifties and sixties against the "tyranny of Tamil teachers". Fortunately it was the widening gulf between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities that provided the opportunity to Muslim politicians to demand and get whatever they could from Sinhalese dominated cabinets. It was through a series of politically motivated concessions and privileges granted to the Muslims by successive Sinhalese governments that the community was able to make considerable progress in education within a short space of time.

Those educational achievements laid the foundation for Muslim youth to compete for employment in the public sector, which in the fifties and sixties, was also under disproportionate influence of the Tamil community. Hundreds of Tamil medium schools with almost one hundred per cent Muslim children and Muslim teachers teaching with a Muslim syllabus and operating on a Muslim calendar; Muslim Teachers Training colleges; Muslim Education Directors; and lately a separate university with almost one hundred percent Muslim undergraduates - these are at least quantitative gains made by the Muslims without the support of the Tamil leaders.

These achievements are unique in the history of any contemporary ethnic minority and they were achieved without an independent Muslim political party but simply by playing politics with the existing national political parties. These achievements, the Muslims consider, would be jeopardized were Tamil Eelam become a reality. Moreover, in a divided Sri Lanka whether the Tamil medium Muslim schools would survive in the Sinhalese districts is another fear that has added to the anti-Eelam Muslim sentiment.

Secondly, the very existence of hundreds of scattered Muslim settlements in the Sinhalese provinces would be endangered if a section of the community were to take side with the Tamils and provoke anti-Muslim Sinhala sentiment. Between the 1915 racial riots and the Mawanella riots in 2001 there had been numerous such outbreaks, which had cautioned the Muslim community of its vulnerability in the Sinhalese areas.

In spite of such concerns the Muslims in the north and east of the island did understand and shared in some of the genuine grievances of the Tamil community. For nearly ten years since the armed struggle for Tamil Eelam started and until the physical expulsion of the Muslims from the north by the LTTE the Muslims in the Tamil provinces were staging a balancing act.

A small number of Muslim youths even joined Tamil militant groups to fight against the Sinhala domination. Like the Tamils, the Muslims of the east have also been the victims of Sinhalese colonization. Muslim businessmen are still being discriminated and harassed by Sinhalese bureaucrats when the former approached the government for business licences and other commercial facilities.

Unfortunately the Tamil militant hierarchy did not have a proper strategy to handle the Muslim situation. It presented the Muslim community with a simplistic solution like what George Bush had down after September Eleven, i.e., either you are with us or with the enemy.

Ever since the Westminster Model of parliament was introduced in Sri Lanka the Tamils always accused the Muslim community of being untrustworthy. Thoppithiruppikal is the derogatory title the Tamils gave to the Muslims. I would describe this Tamil attitude as politics of myopia emanating from a refusal to understand the politics of pragmatism. Whenever there is a second minority in a triangular communal polity that minority will always side with the majority in times of political conflict between the first two.

The political behaviour of the Indian community in Malaysia and that of the Muslim community in Sri Lanka are on parallel path. The Malaysian Indian Congress has always been with the Barisan National, the ruling coalition in that country. The Tamil community in Malaysia has engaged in the same politics of pragmatism as the Muslims of Sri Lanka.

Neither the Chinese opposition in Malaysia nor the Tamils in Sri Lanka have devised any practical strategy to harness the support of the second minority in their conflict with the majority. In Sri Lanka, having resorted to an armed struggle to win their cause the Tamil militants had been too hasty and too simplistic in expecting total Muslim support to the Tamil cause. When that support did not come frustration led to futilities.

The tragic expulsion of the Muslims from the north in 1991 followed by the massacre of 123 Muslims who were praying in the mosque at Kattankudy, the slaughter of nearly half that number in Eravur, both in the Eastern Province, and the abduction and murder of Muslim public servants and village leaders, removed every sympathy that the Muslims had with the Eelamists. In the Eastern Province, Muslim paddy landowners and Muslim tenant cultivators have been practically evicted from their paddy fields in areas like Unnichchai, Karadiyanaru, Pullumali, and Paduvankarai in the Batticaloa District.

The implications of these events had struck the very heart of Muslim-Tamil relations. At the beginning of my talk I referred to the three zonal categories from the perspective of classical Islam, the zone of Islam, the zone of war, and the zone of peace; and I mentioned that Sri Lanka falls into the third category, the zone of peace. It is a zone where the Muslims, although ruled by non-Muslims, enjoy religious freedom and security of life and property.

The LTTE's anti-Muslim actions in the north and east had virtually converted the zone of peace into a zone of war. The fact that until now the LTTE top leadership has not publicly announced that the Muslims of Mannar and Jaffna could return to their homeland and reclaim their lost properties, the fact that public notices had been circulated in the Muslim divisions of the Eastern Province asking the Muslims to quit their villages and towns, and the fact that Muslims are still being abducted while declaring and enforcing unilateral ceasefire with the fighting Sinhalese army can mean only one thing.

That is, the LTTE does not recognize the historical legitimacy of the Muslim community to exist in their territory. As far as the Muslim community is concerned they are now living in a zone of war. In a zone of war the Muslims have two options. One is to make hijra or migrate to a zone of Islam, which means going to a Muslim country, or migrate to a zone of peace, which in the context of Sri Lanka would mean settling in the Sinhalese areas. The second option is to fight until Islam or peace is established.

Wholesale migration of an entire community is no option in this age of nationalism. That option is available today only to the Jews who want to settle in Israel. Therefore the only choice is to fight. This fight need not be a bloody one and it will be suicidal for the Muslims to even contemplate on such an option. Therefore, it can only be political and the rise of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress as a political party should be viewed in this light.

With the rise of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, the Muslims of Sri Lanka for the first time in their history has become active participants in the politics of the country. Until then, they remained as simple observers. Muslims are now a party that cannot be ignored in any future solution.

What is the future solution? No one knows for sure what it is going to be. Whatever it is, in my opinion, it is not going to be an independent Tamil Ealam. I say this not because I am privy to some revealed knowledge or have access to some hidden information. My conclusion is based on a study of the inherent dangers of an independent Tamil Eelam to Indian geo-politics and more particularly the regional hegemony of the Indian ruling classes.

I have written about this briefly in a short article published in the Tamil Times in 1986. Therefore, the solution has to be some form of federation. As far as the Muslim community is concerned the major fear is the potential domination of the LTTE in any future political outcome. How can the Muslim community allow the LTTE to represent Muslim interests when that organization has demonstrated repeatedly its intention of ethnic cleansing? The LTTE has not done anything so far to remove these fears.

The SLMC leadership on the other hand has mooted the idea of a Muslim province later devaluing it to a Muslim administrative unit and now it is talking about a coastal Muslim district. There is no better way of describing this depreciating entity than to quote the Tamil proverb 'ulakkai thenju ulippidiyanatham'. To me these are all political gimmicks without much substance.

The Muslims have to live where they live and there is no question of voluntary or involuntary transmigration. The analogy of 'pittu and coconut' the traditional Tamil delicacy describes how adjacent the Tamil and Muslim villages are and how intermixed their economic and social relations in the north and east of Sri Lanka. The Eastern Province in particular, which is my place of birth, has been, until the second half of the eighties, one of the most exemplary sites of multiculturalism in operation. With temples, mosques, churches, and vihares dotted along the coastline different communities lived in total harmony in that region.

It is an all too common site in the Eastern Province to see a Tamil cultivator in his loin cloth and a Muslim cultivator in his folded sarong toiling side by side in the same plot of land, cooking rice and curry in one set of pots and pans and perhaps eating in individual plates. It was indeed a zone of peace as far as the Muslims and Tamils were concerned. Will a future solution destroy this peace forever? Will it turn the region into a darul harb or zone of war? This is the ultimate question. There in lies the Muslim predicament.

The 2001 General Elections produced 18 elected Muslim parliamentarians in a parliament of 225. This is the largest gain the community ever made in a general election.

The SLMC is now a partner in the Government. With this enhanced strength, what will be the role of SLMC in the proposed talks between the Government and LTTE? Will the long-term interests of the community be sacrificed at the altar of short-term political expediency? Only time can answer these questions.

If the ultimate solution is going to create a zone of peace the Muslims must at least be guaranteed of their religious freedom and security to life and property. Those Muslims who were expelled from the north must be allowed to go back to their places of birth, and property confiscated from the Muslims in the east must be returned to them. The Muslim leadership must ensure these in the proposed talks.