SAPRI with Moulavis in Mannar: The Latest Chapter of Building Tolerance, July 2017

                                                 

                                 SAPRI's Workshop for Moulavis held n Mannar

    Further expanding on its Building Religious Harmony initiative, the South Asia Policy & Research  Institute (SAPRI),  reached out to the district of Mannar in the Northern Province by organising a participatory workshop for Muslim Moulavis in the district, in collaboration with “Bridging Lanka”, an NGO in Sri Lanka having a partnership with Australia based organizations promoting ethno- religious and social integration.

  Al Azhar National School served as the venue of the event that took place on 23rd July 2017.

Mannar, a district with a majority population of Muslims and Tamils, is considered one of the most underdeveloped districts in the country. The district has 96 mosques and 5 madrasas. The workshop therefore was intended to test the waters of reception of the rural Muslim religious community towards interfaith dialogue and communal integration.

The workshop agenda motivated the participants to utilize Islamic teachings to form responses to modern-day issues including religious intolerance. The objective of the workshop was that the empowerment of Moulavis will result in their playing a leadership role in mitigating acts of religious intolerance in the society.

The session was interactive and engaging.  It encouraged the participants to open up and share their views and perceptions on the observance of religious harmony and coexistence in their district as well as in the country. Open discussion of haunting wounds and concerns of the community is a tried and tested method of SAPRI, to innovate practical and community driven solutions to ground level issues.

The Moulavis recognized a number of potential hindrances to effective interfaith dialogue, including the language barrier. The workshop itself was conducted in Tamil. The lack of formal education other than the Islamic education received at Madrasas was recognized as an issue,which was also linked to the lack of self-confidence in the participants.

The workshop saw icebreaker activities that encouraged collective thinking, which laid the foundation for a successful and cooperative group activity session that followed.

Activities on the importance of clear communication were conducted in an interesting manner while conveying the message of clarity and emphasizing the cooperation necessary in effective communication.The group activity session was then conducted, to get specific suggestions and ideas of the participants on the issues they face as Moulavis within their communities.

SAPRI representatives received overwhelming gratitude from the participant Moulavis of the workshop, for organizing an event that encouraged retrospection as well as an open discussion on common concerns faced by Muslim clergy members, which would undoubtedly lead toward the promotion of a tolerant society.

The programme ‘Building Religious Harmony’ is one of SAPRI’s prominent efforts that is on-going, having begun in 2013. Similar workshops targeting clergy representatives were previously conducted as intra-faith sessions in several districts including Galle, Puttalam and Kegalle, while several interfaith sessions were held in Imbulpe / Belihuloya with the participation of clergy from all major religions in the country.