On February 17, 2022, Dr. Shobhana Xavier delivered a SNID lecture entitled “Between Violence and Piety: The Case of Sufi Shrines in Sri Lanka”.

The religious topography of Sri Lanka remains delicate in its post-war context, especially for ethno-linguistic and religious minority communities, such as Muslims. Amidst this precarity Sufis, Muslims with esoteric orientation towards Islam, resist their social and political marginalization through sacred spaces, such as Sufi shrines. However, these spaces oscillate between contestation and accommodation in the present climate of Islamophobia and Buddhist hegemony.

 

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