“The restoration and digitization of endangered material such as the ‘Star of Islam’ belonging to the Sri Lanka Malay community has enabled sustainable preservation as well provide an opportunity, for anyone to retrieve and access historically significant events and details, simply and efficiently using any smart device. We are indeed privileged and grateful to have partnered with AILS on this invaluable project.”
– Taslim Rahaman, Sri Lanka Malay Association (President, 2017-2018 & 2018-2019)
The Star of Islam weekly newspaper is available on open access through the South Asia Open Archives platform. It is the pilot digitization project managed by the American Institute of Lankan Studies in their conservation and digitization program working with endangered historical material in Sri Lanka.
The 42 digitized volumes of the weekly span from July 1939 to September 1940. Several additional copies of the newspaper from later in the 1940s are available for consultation at the Department of National Archives.
The publication gives an insight into cultural and current affairs of the Muslim world and colonial Ceylon at the onset of World War II. Its coverage includes questions and debates surrounding pan-Islamic identities, religion and science; the military history of the Ceylon Malays; ethics in war; and Malay representation in the Ceylon Legislative Council. The paper can also be read for vivid glimpses of the fashion, food and lifestyle of middle-class Colombo. Printed and published at the Colombo Adana Press on Glenie Street, Slave Island, the Star of Islam was distributed from over fifteen locations across the island and had a readership from across the Muslim world. One prominent subscriber was Princess Nevine Abbas Halim of Egypt.
The publication was founded by Maas J. Majid, a past secretary of the Sri Lanka Malay Association (SLMA) and a prominent political writer of his time until his death in 1940. This project is a collaboration between the American Institute for Lankan Studies, Sri Lanka Malay Association and South Asia Open Archives.
For a detailed account of the context and content of the Star of Islam, see Ramla Wahab-Salman’s Reading the Star of Islam: The story of a Ceylonese press on the cusp of World War II.
