Department of Information Management, University of the Punjab, Lahore
Abstract
Traditionally the Muslim politics of Sri Lanka has been viewed as the politics of Muslim based on the major political parties in Sri Lanka since independence. On this backdrop, the Muslim politics viewed as politics of the southern Muslims and politics of north-eastern Muslim based on their affiliation with the major, ethnic and regional parties. However, the emergence of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), as a Muslim party based on Islamic faith and Muslim’s rights among the eastern Muslim in the middle of 1980s paved the way for tremendous impacts and contributed to dynamic changes in traditional setups of Muslim politics in Sri Lanka. Most importantly, the Muslim politics began to turn to a path of ideology and identity based politics. Then, the politics of Sri Lankan Muslims have come to be viewed as the politics of the SLMC and vice-versa, nationally and internationally. The politics of the SLMC brought the Muslim community in Sri Lanka at a time. However, the Muslim politics of Sri Lanka became to loose it pride and shifted to another trend after the demise of the founder leader of the SLMC, Mr. MHM.Ashraff, in September 2000. There were break-ups and ups and down in the politics of the SLMC as well as the Muslim politics of Sri Lanka. This research paper tries to pay attention on the cleavages within the SLMC and its impacts in the politics of the SLMC and in the discourse of Muslim politics of Sri Lanka. 
