From Wall Street Journal
by Preetika Rana
There was an uneasy standoff in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo this weekend after a group of Buddhists attacked a mosque and injured several Muslim worshippers.
Analysts say an anti-Muslim campaign by Buddhist nationalist groups in Sri Lanka is being fueled by fears about the swelling Muslim population.
Muslims account for only 9% of the island nation’s population of 20 million, the 2011 census found. But the community is the fastest growing. Between 1981 and 2011, Sri Lanka’s Muslim population grew 78%, from 1.04 million to 1.86 million. In that period, Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese-Buddhist community grew 38%, from 10.9 million to 15.8 million.
“There is fear that the Muslim population will engulf the Buddhist majority, fear that they will dominate businesses and occupy larger share of the native Sinhalese land,” said S. Chandrasekharan, director of South Asia Analysis Group, a New Delhi-based think-tank.
Unlike Myanmar, where clashes between Buddhists and the minority Muslim community have been running for decades, the tension in Sri Lanka has surfaced only in recent years, analysts say.
