9 - Ideas in Motion: The Transmission of Shi‘a Knowledge in Sri Lanka

Summary

Origins

Twelver Shi‘ism emerged in Sri Lanka following the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. The political upheaval that inaugurated the fifteenth Hijri century also heralded an important shift in the transmission of religious knowledge. Disseminated widely, Iranian publications found a Sunni Muslim audience curious about different expressions of Islam. Interest in Shi‘ism eventually solidified into the establishment of a small Shi‘a community. In subsequent years, students and scholars attended the centre of traditional learning, hawza ‘ilmiyya, in Qom and returned to Sri Lanka to found educational institutions, embodying an alternative intellectual order to that of majority Sunnism. This chapter surveys the scholarly networks that undergird the Shi‘a community and enable the transmission of knowledge in Sri Lanka. Bound by conceptions of religious authority, the Shi‘ites gather for religious observance and instruction in centres led by local ‘ulama’ and intellectuals. In the face of numerous challenges, they have adapted global discourses to address concerns in the aftermath of the civil war (1983–2009) and an atmosphere of rising anti-Muslim hostility. Their double minority status in relation to the Sunni community and the national polity has led many of them to observe dissimulation (taqiyya) as a security measure (Medoff 2015). Into this multilayered context persecuted minorities from Pakistan and Afghanistan have sought sanctuary, and the Shi‘ites have played a crucial role in their resettlement. As asylum seekers and refugees on the margins of larger society, they share a sense of exile that resonates with narratives of oppression concerning the Prophet's family, the ahl al-bayt, and their followers. A distinctive Shi‘a identity has formed in this environment, one that connects to the indigenous heritage of Sri Lankan Islam, enculturated through practices of learning, and echoing trans-local, trans-regional and global perspectives. The community that has developed represents all socioeconomic backgrounds spread throughout three geographic areas: Colombo and the Western Province, the Kandyan Highlands, and the Eastern Province.2 Almost exclusively from Sunni backgrounds, and thus integrated into Muslim society, the new Shi‘ites number several hundred families, but no more than a thousand individuals, to attempt an estimate.

The transmission of knowledge has been essential to the contemporary formation of the community of Shi‘a Muslims, which in turn is composed of smaller, disparate sub-sections. It outlines a scholarly network embedded within a transnational political economy of knowledge production.