Ramez Ramzy Section

Ramez Ramzy Section

Ramez Ramzy
Section:1
October 30,2018
Belief systems in Sri Lanka

How did trade change belief systems in Sri Lanka? Buddhism is the most popular country in Sri Lanka with a popularity of 70%. Islam, christianity and hinduism has a popularity of 30%. People were divided into 2 ethnic groups and that caused a separation in the religion. The spread of different religions came from the middle east due to colonial period. The religions were spreaded by different ways like immigrants and colonizers and trade. Not only in Sri Lanka that these things caused the spread of different religions but in many countries. In Sri Lanka a variety of religions like buddhism, hinduism ,christianity, and islam were introduced by the immigrants came from Arab countries and the colonizers came from the British/USA.

The localness of Sri Lanka and the culture they had are absolutely determined by their religion. Buddhism has a total teaching with the popularity of 70%. Sri Lanka is founded to be as one of the most multi-religious societies and it contains 4 different religions. The remaining 30% is divided into different religions including Hinduism, christianity and islam. Due to that 70 % of the population of Sri Lanka practices Buddhism it is therefore considered to be the dominant religion. “The rest of the religions are divided like this: Hinduism 12,6 %, Muslims 9,7 % and Christians 7,4 % and this is in 2016.” Hinduism, Christianity and Muslims arrived to Sri Lanka because of immigration, the colonial period and trade in the Indian Ocean from the Middle East. Most of the Hinduism in Sri Lanka live in the north part of the country and the religion is mainly followed by Tamils.

Christianity tried dominating but buddhism and hinduism resisted and didn’t want to lose their popularity so they resisted but if they didn’t resist christianity would of been the largest population of religion in Sri Lanka. Portuguese brought christianity into Sri Lanka with a popularity of 7.4%. Buddhists and Hindus revivalism reacted against christian missionary activities. When Dutch ruled, Protestantism was also introduced and this is how protestantism started in Sri Lanka. Christianity would of taken the 70% of popularity from the buddhism religion but they were stopped by the hindus and by buddhism. Christianity had a hard time to get to Sri Lanka.

Arabs came to Sri Lanka and by that time islam was introduced.Islam had a big popularity because of the Arab trades that happened. Arab introduced islam but only a small population of Sri Lanka adopted to the islamic religions. 7% of the overall population in Sri Lanka practices muslim culture/religion. In 2016 islamic population increased and became 9.7%. The trade was one of the important things in Sri Lanka was trade and the ued ara trade because arab had the things that they didn’t have and the things they were missing. Islam joined in Sri Lanka and they got more population than christianity and hinduism.