the malays of sri lanka originated in southeast asia and today consist of about 50,000 persons. their ancestors came to the country when both sri lanka and indonesia were colonies of the dutch. most of the early malay immigrants were indentured labours, posted by the dutch colonial administration to sri lanka, who decided to settle on the island. other immigrants were convicts or members of noble houses from indonesia who were exiled to sri lanka and who never left. the main source of a continuing malay identity is their common malay language "(bahasa melayu)", which includes numerous words absorbed from sinhalese and the moorish variant of the tamil language. in the 1980s, the malays made up about 5% of the muslim population in sri lanka and, like the moors, predominantly follow the shafi school of thought within sunni islam.