The Hon. K. Kader Masthan
Hon. K. Kader Masthan questioned the detention of copies of the Holy Qur’an, arguing that reading and understanding it in Arabic and Tamil without annotations is a fundamental right of Sri Lanka’s Muslim community. He asked that the detained copies be released and challenged the legality and authority of the Review Committee handling the matter. He further proposed that, if such a committee is required, it should include qualified university professors in the relevant field and sought clarification on its legal status.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Do you accept that reading and understanding the Holy Qur’an in its original Arabic, and in Tamil without any annotations, is a fundamental right of 2.5 million Muslims living in Sri Lanka? If so, the detained copies should be released. This Holy Book has been translated into nearly 50 languages and distributed to many countries—you should view it on that basis.
¶ 02 Please, one minute. I will conclude. For us, the legality of this Review Committee is questionable. If you must have such a committee, appoint university professors in this field in our country. The Holy Qur’an is the Muslims’ sacred scripture. People are ridiculing and denigrating this matter. You should not allow this. Please clarify the legal status of this Committee and who is vested with authority.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Tuesday, 21 October 2025 ·No. 22635 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/29590
Cite as: The Hon. K. Kader Masthan. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 21 October 2025. No. 22635. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/29590