Mosques in enhancing the religiosity among the Muslims in Sri Lanka: an empirical analysis

Abstract

This main purpose of this paper is to investigates the mosques’ performance in enhancing Islamic religiosity and spiritual advancement. The study primarily used the analyses of the quantitative data obtained from 218 respondents through survey administered among the randomly selected mosques in Sri Lanka. The field observation and review of the textual resources were used as supplementary. The findings reveal that the mosques are mostly spiritually vital, and playing traditional role in enhancing Islamic religiosity in a minority context. In this sense, the prayers and rituals are main programmes of the mosques. The attendance of the Muslims to the daily and Friday obligatory prayers is gradually increasing. The Muslim women also participate in tarawih and ‘id prayers. Apart from some ritual practices such as qur’an recitation and i c tikaf, there is controversial opinion about most of rituals, particularly: mawlid, collective dhikr/ratib, Bukhari majlis and kanduri.