Culture & Heritage

The Grand Mosque Tour held at Kattankudy’s Al Aqsa Mosque was a resounding success with around 500 visitors of other faiths participating in the event. The Mosque Tour organised by the Centre for Islamic Studies Harmony Center in association with the Trustees of Al Aqsa Mosque and local organisers involved a host of activities including a Guided Tour of the …

By Asiff Hussein, Vice President, Outreach Centre for Islamic Studies Harmony Center Muslims in Sri Lanka have a long and colorful history of over a thousand years and have lived in different parts of the country in harmony with the Sinhala and Tamil communities. Early Muslims came to Sri Lanka as traders and won the hearts and minds of Sri …

  Ali Haydar was part of the Zawi Zayd clan within the Sharif dynasty that ruled over Mecca for centuries (Kronik Kitap) Arab aristocrat’s career saw him serve as an Ottoman lawmaker and the empire’s go-to man in the Hejaz region Ottoman sovereignty over the Muslim holy city of Mecca began in 1517 after the conquest of the Mamluk Empire under Sultan Selim …

There is said to have existed in certain areas like Matale, a little community of South Indian Muslims known as Rawuttar. These folk evidently formed a sizeable community in Matale until about the 1960s before gradually declining in numbers probably due to migration as well as intermarriage and assimilation into the Moorish fold. They are said to have been relatively …

Al Haj A.M.A. Azeez, one of the rare Muslim intellectuals of his generation was a scholar, a writer, an innovative thinker and an educationist with a sharp and perceptive mind. When he quit the elitist and prestigious Ceylon Civil Service (CCS) to take over Zahira College, Colombo, back in 1948, he sacrificed a potentially bright professional career in the cause …