ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s quarter-century of civil war that ended in 2009 between the militant Tamil separatists of the LTTE and the central government, a strongly Sinhala Buddhist chauvinist sentiment has imbued national politics. This has been expressed in the growth of several militant organizations headed by Buddhist monks who seek to reassert the primacy of Sinhala Buddhist culture and religion over what they consider alien religious communities, in particular Christians and Muslims (DeVotta and Stone 2008). The most powerful of these is the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS – Buddhist Strength Force), a group of militant monks who received tacit support from the government of former President Mahinda Rajapakse (2005–15). Among the Muslim targets chosen by the BBS is the Sufi hermitage shrine of Daftar Jailani, also known by the Sinhala name Kuragala, a mountainous location where Buddhist monastic cave-shelters have been dated to the second century bce. Compounded by reformist Muslim criticisms of the Jailani festival as a deviation from true Islam, the BBS campaign to reclaim the site as an ancient Buddhist monastery has given the Jailani shrine an uncertain future.
