The mosque programme of education in Sri Lanka: An anlysis

Abstract

Islamic textual resources and historical experiences emphasize on essential of the knowledge and education for human development and social progression. Thus, the education was a major programme of mosques from early Islamic period. The mosques in Sri Lanka conduct the educational programmes to facilitate Islamic way of life among the Muslim community. This paper aimed to study the educational activities of the mosque in Sri Lanka. The analysis of survey data administered and collected from the randomly selected mosques along with the interview data analysis and field notes were employed to achieve this objective. The major findings reveal that the mosques function as educational institutes to the certain extents with the confined religious objectives. The qur’an madrasas are only programme in the vast majority of the mosques to train the Muslim children to recite qur’an and provide the Islamic basics and principles to them. Some of the mosques extend its scope to include Tahfīz al-qur’ān and Tajwīdal-qur’an.In minority context, the mosques need to wider their educational activities to cope up with the Muslim educational needs and aspirations.