Success Story – Mobile Islamic Bookstall in Wellawaya (Monragala District)

On the 6^th of October 2010 we went to Monaragala, Wellawaya area with the aim of turning a new page in Da’wah and Islamic Outreach in Sri Lanka. Actually by then, the only Da’wah activity that was conducted ever in history in Moneragala district was an interfaith dialogue I conducted in 2006 between 50 Catholic Sinhalese and 50 Muslims of the area.

Udawalawa Reservoir

Wild Elephant in Udawalawa

Wellawaya town

Wellawaya is situated 222km far from Colombo. The road to Wellawaya is very beautiful and scenic road to travel. When you near Wellawaya, near Udawalawe area you can even see wild elephants by the road side.

When we arrived in Wellawaya we stayed at Wellawaya Mosque, but we didn’t tell the local Mosque people who we are. They knew us as only some people who came to do a bookstall.

Main Entrance of Deyata kirula fair

MBS day time photo

This event we were going to do our da’wah with our MBS was the Government sponsored, “Deyata Kirula” fair at Wellawaya. And this fair was organized in the Wellawaya Municipal Council Grounds. It was a carnival like even and this is the first time we experienced such a event. Everyday this fair ended with a musical show event that went well into the night and was consequently the chief attraction for people. So the people come late in the evening to the fair with the aim of staying for the musical show. When we saw this, what we did was we kept our Islamic Bookstall open until the musical show starts. When the musical show started we close it and left the fair, so we won’t have to listen to Haram music of the musical show.

MBS night time photo

A Muslim visitor

The usual amount of people who come to Islamic bookstalls elsewhere came to visit our MBS stall in this fair too. But we noticed people were able to spend less amount of money to buy books. (People who bought books mostly bought cheap and very lesser priced books). We understood that their main income is from paddy harvests and during this time of the year they don’t have money with them because it is the paddy planting season. So we changed our strategy and started selling good books for the very lowest and reduced prices possible. For those who showed an interest in Islam and asked us about Islam we gave them a free copy of our Yahamaga Sinhala Islamic newspaper as a promotional copy.

Mobile Islamic Bookstall photo 1

Mobile Islamic Bookstall photo 2

When we were carrying on like this, the other adjoining stall owners understood what we were doing. They came and asked me about it. I told them we have two main aims. In this Wellawaya area there are Muslims who don’t know about their Islam religion, we want to educate them about their Islam religion through our work. The other aim is, there are lot of non-Muslims with misunderstanding and misconceptions about Islam and we want to clear away those and educate them. By my explanation, they realized we are actually doing some good work and they invited us to come for stalls in future too!

Muslims in Wellawaya have a school of their own but with Tamil medium only. But a lot of Muslim children go to the Central College in that area to study in Sinhala medium. In this Central College Muslim children can’t learn Islam for the school religion subject. They have to either learn Buddhism as the religion subject or don’t study any religion subject.

Mobile Islamic Bookstall photo 3

Da'wah Bookstall 4

Next thing is, there is a government rule in Sri Lanka that says, Muslim girls can cover their body according to Islam and attend any government school in the island. But in this Central College the principal doesn’t allow it. Many Muslim girls in that area have runaway (eloped) with Sinhalese Buddhist boys and live now as non-Muslims. There are some influential Muslims in this area but they are silent about this sad situation. What they do is, they send their children to study in nearby big towns like Balangoda and Ratnapura and protect their children from these evils. By this the rich and influential Muslims are saved, but the majority, poor helpless Muslims go astray in Shaytan’s path because they don’t have proper Islamic knowledge.

Da'wah Bookstall 5

So we canvassed and made a network with them to distribute Yahamaga Islamic Sinhala monthly newspaper in the Wellawaya area. We also got about 44 non-Muslim contacts. We personally invited several people directly to embrace Islam. Insha Allah, we will be able to see the results of this in future. Please make Dua from Allah to give them Hidayaah.

Non Muslim  contacts: 44

Muslim contacts: 12

Books sold: 184

Al-Qur’an Sinhalese translation sold: 11

Free distributed Yahamaga Islamic Monthly: 192

One on one Da’wah: 17

Visited non Muslims house: 1

On the last day when we were hoping to leave, we heard that a Mashoorah was been held about us! As a result, one good Muslim brother came and questioned me. He asked me, “brother you two guys are Muslims, but why do you speak in Sinhala language?” Then I introduced myself saying, “My name is Anver Manatunga, I’m a former Christian Missionary. My colleague here is Akram Ratnayake, and he is a former Buddhist Monk!” He was shocked! He told us, “Why didn’t you tell us this before?” I told him, “We came here not for that, we came to do Da’wah to non-Muslims. Today our work will be finished here, and tomorrow we will go to Colombo.” He and others were sad to hear this. They told us to come again and next time they will give their full support to us.

Like this we finished our da’wah mobile bookstall event in Wellawaya. And after writing this new chapter in Wellawaya history we got back to Colombo, Alhamdulillah.

Your Brother in Islam,

Anver Manatunga.

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