Sinhalese, general

Sri Lankans have worked in Bahrain since the oil boom of the 1970s, and the Sinhalese are the majority of a community of roughly 14,000 to 20,000 Sri Lankans: housemaids, garment-factory workers, technicians, engineers and nurses. They stand out as one of the few Theravada Buddhist peoples in the Gulf, and in 2008 they built the first Buddhist temple in Bahrain, at Riffa, where a gold-plated stupa pinnacle imported from Sri Lanka was unveiled in 2018 beside a Bo tree grown from a Sri Lankan sapling. Families gather at the Sri Lanka Club, whose Sinhala school teaches the language and dance to children born in the Gulf, while Vesak lanterns, Sinhala and Tamil New Year games and cricket mark the community calendar.

Sri Lankans in Israel, about 28,000 people and most of them Sinhalese, are a workforce that more than doubled after the October 2023 war, when Israel turned to Sri Lanka for farm hands, builders and caregivers to replace barred Palestinian labourers and departing Thais. Earlier arrivals were mostly women caring for elderly Israelis; since 2024 young men have come by the thousand under government agreements to work on farms and building sites. Most are Theravada Buddhists who keep their faith privately, while Sinhalese Catholics join Sri Lankan nuns and Filipino caregivers at migrant Masses in Tel Aviv, and a minority are Tamil Hindus and Muslims. Wages several times those at home have made Israel one of Sri Lanka's fastest-growing labour destinations despite the wars.

Sinhalese in Jordan are Sri Lankan migrant workers: women who have come since the 1980s and 1990s as live-in domestic workers in Amman homes, and, since the 2000s, garment workers who now make up most of the community. About four in five Sri Lankans in Jordan work in export clothing factories at Dulayl, Sahab and Madaba, where many hold skilled posts in quality control and pattern making for sportswear brands. Most are Theravada Buddhists, and each May several hundred gather at the Sri Lankan Embassy in Amman for Vesak with lanterns, chanting led by monks flown in from Colombo, and a free food stall, while the Embassy holds Buddhist programmes inside the factories.

Nearly 200,000 Sri Lankans live in Kuwait, about two-thirds of them Sinhalese, and Kuwait is now the leading destination for Sri Lankan migrant workers. About two in three are live-in domestic workers, most of them women: Sri Lankans are the second-largest group of domestic workers in Kuwait, behind only Indians, and their number has risen by two-thirds in a decade. As Theravada Buddhists in a country with no Buddhist temple, they keep Vesak, all-night pirith chanting and sil observance on the grounds of the Sri Lankan embassy, where visiting monks from Sri Lanka lead the rites. Their public culture has met resistance: in 2010 Islamist protesters forced more than 5,000 Sri Lankans out of a licensed cultural festival at the Jahra stadium.

Sinhalese in Lebanon are the remnant of what was once the country's largest migrant community: in 2006 some 90,000 Sri Lankans, nearly all women, worked as maids in Lebanese homes, and today only about 4,500 to 7,600 Sri Lankans remain, roughly three-quarters of them Sinhalese. Most are middle-aged women who came in the 1990s and 2000s and stayed through the 2006 war, the 2019 crash and the wars of 2024 and 2026, many for the same families. They are Theravada Buddhists in an Arab, Christian and Muslim land, and for more than a decade a Lebanese church has lent its hall free each year for the community's Vesak festival, where in May 2026 women held a day of Dhamma talks and gave free meals to more than 200 people displaced by the war. A Catholic minority among them worships in Beirut's migrant Masses.

About 17,000 Sinhalese live in Oman, most of them women working as live-in housemaids, alongside men in hotels, cleaning, garages and offices and a smaller professional class of doctors, bankers and teachers. Sri Lankans began arriving with the oil boom of the 1970s and set up their own community school in Muscat in 1989, which now teaches about 1,200 children. Unlike in most Gulf states, Oman's Theravada Buddhists have a shrine of their own: the Sambuddhatva Jayanthi Viharaya on the grounds of the Sri Lankan embassy, where visiting monks lead a week of Vesak rites with lanterns, a decorated pandal, free food stalls and a blood drive. Housemaids recruited on tourist visas by unlicensed agents remain the community's most vulnerable members.

The Sinhalese are the largest part of Qatar's Sri Lankan community, Buddhist workers from the island's southern, western and central districts who began arriving in numbers in the 1990s. Unlike the housemaid-heavy Sri Lankan communities of Kuwait, those in Qatar are mostly men: nearly nine in ten Sri Lankans who registered for jobs in Qatar in 2025 were men, working as drivers, technicians, construction tradesmen, security guards and hotel staff. With no temple allowed, Buddhists keep their faith in private and gather at the Sri Lankan embassy for Vesak, the festival of the Buddha's birth and enlightenment. The April Sinhala and Tamil New Year brings families and workers together for tug-of-war, pillow fights, pot-breaking and a traditional milk-rice breakfast.

Sinhalese in Saudi Arabia are Sri Lankan migrant workers, Buddhists for the most part with a Catholic minority, who make up about two-thirds of the kingdom's roughly 85,000 Sri Lankans. Labour migration began with the oil boom of the 1970s, and for decades Saudi households hired Sri Lankan women as live-in housemaids; today men and women come in about equal numbers among skilled workers, with housemaids, drivers, nurses, technicians and service staff the main jobs. Because no temple or public non-Muslim worship is allowed, their largest religious gathering is Vesak, which the Sri Lankan embassy and the Sri Lanka Community Club celebrate each May in Riyadh with lanterns, a Dharma talk, free dansal food and devotional songs by pupils of the Sri Lankan International School.

About 200,000 Sinhalese live in the Emirates, the largest part of some 300,000 Sri Lankans, who have come since the 1970s and still leave Sri Lanka for the UAE more than for almost anywhere else. Unusually for the Gulf, about a third of Sri Lankans here hold office jobs in banks, hotels, hospitals and IT, beside drivers, factory hands and women domestic workers living in their employers' homes. As Theravada Buddhists in a country with no purpose-built Buddhist temple, they meditate and bring alms food to Sri Lankan monks in two Dubai villas turned into temples, and keep Vesak with lanterns and free food stalls for thousands at the Dubai consulate and the embassy in Abu Dhabi, where a sacred Bo tree grows in the grounds. A Catholic minority worships with the large Sri Lankan congregations of Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi.