A Third Way The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress discourse struggle between Islamism and Nationalism

Abstract: The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) has been a part of the Sri Lankan parliament since 1989 and in recent year scholars have noticed ?the Muslim factor? in Sri Lankan politics. Earlier research has concentrated on the conflict in Sri Lanka and its effects on the Muslim community. The present thesis focuses on the SLMC's organization and speeches in parliament. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the construction of the politics of the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress and the constructions of their organization and the guidelines. The second aim it to see if there is a discursive struggle between Sri Lankan nationalism and Islamism. To analyze this I have used Ernesto Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe's Discourse Theory. To complement this I have used Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis. The construction of SLMC's politics arises from an antagonism between different nationalistic discourses and Islamism. I can not see that a state of hegemony would appear in SLMC's politics because of the contradictions between the different discourses. My study shows that, like many other Islamist parties, SLMC tends to fall within the frame of the nation state. Therefore, before further studies are done, I would like to call SLMC politics ?a third way? in the antagonism between discourses of nationalism and Islamism, namely that SLMC bases its politics on the discourse of Islamism and then constructs its identity from Sri Lankan nationalism. This construction is continuously constituted and reconstituted as a discourse in SLMC's speeches, organization and guidelines.