Why are Buddhist monks attacking Muslims?
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Why are Buddhist monks attacking Muslims?
By Alan Strathern1 May 2013 Last updated at 23:16 GMT
Of all the moral precepts instilled in Buddhist monks the promise not to kill comes first, and the principle of non-violence is arguably more central to Buddhism than any other major religion. So why have monks been using hate speech against Muslims and joining mobs that have left dozens dead?
This is happening in two countries separated by well over 1,000 miles of Indian Ocean - Burma and Sri Lanka. It is puzzling because neither country is facing an Islamist militant threat. Muslims in both places are a generally peaceable and small minority.
In Sri Lanka, the issue of halal slaughter has been a flashpoint. Led by monks, members of the Bodu Bala Sena - the Buddhist Brigade - hold rallies, call for direct action and the boycotting of Muslim businesses, and rail against the size of Muslim families.
While no Muslims have been killed in Sri Lanka, the Burmese situation is far more serious. Here the antagonism is spearheaded by the 969 group, led by a monk, Ashin Wirathu, who was jailed in 2003 for inciting religious hatred. Released in 2012, he has referred to himself bizarrely as "the Burmese Bin Laden".
March saw an outbreak of mob violence directed against Muslims in the town of Meiktila, in central Burma, which left at least 40 dead.
Tellingly, the violence began in a gold shop. The movements in both countries exploit a sense of economic grievance - a religious minority is used as the scapegoat for the frustrated aspirations of the majority.
On Tuesday, Buddhist mobs attacked mosques and burned more than 70 homes in Oakkan, north of Rangoon, after a Muslim girl on a bicycle collided with a monk. One person died and nine were injured.
But aren't Buddhist monks meant to be the good guys of religion?
Aggressive thoughts are inimical to all Buddhist teachings. Buddhism even comes equipped with a practical way to eliminate them. Through meditation the distinction between your feelings and those of others should begin to dissolve, while your compassion for all living things grows.
Of course, there is a strong strain of pacifism in Christian teachings too: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," were the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.
But however any religion starts out, sooner or later it enters into a Faustian pact with state power. Buddhist monks looked to kings, the ultimate wielders of violence, for the support, patronage and order that only they could provide. Kings looked to monks to provide the popular legitimacy that only such a high moral vision can confer.
The result can seem ironic. If you have a strong sense of the overriding moral superiority of your worldview, then the need to protect and advance it can seem the most important duty of all.
Christian crusaders, Islamist militants, or the leaders of "freedom-loving nations", all justify what they see as necessary violence in the name of a higher good. Buddhist rulers and monks have been no exception.
So, historically, Buddhism has been no more a religion of peace than Christianity.
One of the most famous kings in Sri Lankan history is Dutugamanu, whose unification of the island in the 2nd Century BC is related in an important chronicle, the Mahavamsa.
It says that he placed a Buddhist relic in his spear and took 500 monks with him along to war against a non-Buddhist king.
He destroyed his opponents. After the bloodshed, some enlightened ones consoled him: "The slain were like animals; you will make the Buddha's faith shine."
Burmese rulers, known as "kings of righteousness", justified wars in the name of what they called true Buddhist doctrine.
In Japan, many samurai were devotees of Zen Buddhism and various arguments sustained them - killing a man about to commit a dreadful crime was an act of compassion, for example. Such reasoning surfaced again when Japan mobilised for World War II.
Buddhism took a leading role in the nationalist movements that emerged as Burma and Sri Lanka sought to throw off the yoke of the British Empire. Occasionally this spilled out into violence. In 1930s Rangoon, amid resorts to direct action, monks knifed four Europeans.
More importantly, many came to feel Buddhism was integral to their national identity - and the position of minorities in these newly independent nations was an uncomfortable one.
In 1983, Sri Lanka's ethnic tensions broke out into civil war. Following anti-Tamil pogroms, separatist Tamil groups in the north and east of the island sought to break away from the Sinhalese majority government.
During the war, the worst violence against Sri Lankan Muslims came at the hands of the Tamil rebels. But after the fighting came to a bloody end with the defeat of the rebels in 2009, it seems that majority communal passions have found a new target in the Muslim minority.
In Burma, monks wielded their moral authority to challenge the military junta and argue for democracy in the Saffron Revolution of 2007. Peaceful protest was the main weapon of choice this time, and monks paid with their lives.
Now some monks are using their moral authority to serve a quite different end. They may be a minority, but the 500,000-strong monkhood, which includes many deposited in monasteries as children to escape poverty or as orphans, certainly has its fair share of angry young men.
The exact nature of the relationship between the Buddhist extremists and the ruling parties in both countries is unclear.
Sri Lanka's powerful Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was guest of honour at the opening of a Buddhist Brigade training school, and referred to the monks as those who "protect our country, religion and race".
But the anti-Muslim message seems to have struck a chord with parts of the population.
Even though they form a majority in both countries, many Buddhists share a sense that their nations must be unified and that their religion is under threat.
The global climate is crucial. People believe radical Islam to be at the centre of the many of the most violent conflicts around the world. They feel they are at the receiving end of conversion drives by the much more evangelical monotheistic faiths. And they feel that if other religions are going to get tough, they had better follow suit.
Alan Strathern is a fellow in History at Brasenose College, Oxford and author of Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land
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not sure of the current situations happening in our region (e.g. Burma) is driven by political reasons....
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They feel they are at the receiving end of conversion drives by the much more evangelical monotheistic faiths. And they feel that if other religions are going to get tough, they had better follow suit.
I believe the writer has ‘Hit the Nail on the Head’ with the above statement. This is beside such other reasons as economic grievance and the real and perceived erosion of the support for the religion.
The first Buddhist precept is ‘do not kill’, but when an issue becomes a case of survival, the most gentle of person when feeling corner or trap will fight back. This is regardless of whether a precept or commandment is sanctioned or not by their respective religions.
Violent will always beget violent and it becomes a never ending vicious cycle. Buddhists in these countries should be mindful of the repercussion of their actions should it go too far.
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because fuckwitism isn't the monopoly of any single religion.. especially when the fuckwits use the excuse of religion to attack another lot of people for their own material or social or political gain
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i guessed it's old news but still might worth reading it again
The monk dubbed Myanmar’s Osama
MANDALAY — Radical Buddhist nationalism is sweeping Myanmar and at the forefront of the movement is a group more commonly associated with peace and tolerance: Monks.
The most prominent among them is controversial cleric U Wirathu, who gives passionate sermons from his Mandalay base, calling on Buddhists to stand up against the “Muslim threat”.
“I believe Islam is a threat not just to Buddhism, but to the (Burmese) people and the country,” says the monk, whose boyish face and toothy grin belie the name his critics have given him: The Buddhist Osama bin Laden. Myanmar was formerly known as Burma.
The 46-year-old has been blamed for inspiring sectarian violence, which began in the long-volatile western state of Rakhine bordering Myanmar’s mostly Muslim neighbour, Bangladesh, but has spread to areas unused to such tension.
Myanmar’s President Thein Sein will face demands to rein in anti-Muslim violence as he was due to arrive on an official visit to Britain yesterday. He has been invited by Prime Minister David Cameron to reward the gradual moves towards restoring democracy to Myanmar.
The former general, once a part of the military junta that ruled Myanmar for almost 50 years, has been criticised for allowing the ethnic attacks to continue. He will also be questioned over official tolerance of outspoken figures such as Wirathu, who are blamed by many for whipping up hatred against Muslims.
It is an accusation Wirathu denies, instead blaming all the religious violence on Myanmar’s Muslims, who make up 5 per cent of the population of 55 million.
He insists he does not believe in, and has not encouraged, Buddhist attacks such as the riots a year ago in Rakhine that left 200 people dead and up to 140,000, mainly Muslims, homeless. He has, however, previously compared Muslims to “mad dogs” and called them “troublemakers”.
“I don’t know how you tame a wild elephant in your country,” he told The Sunday Telegraph, when asked what exactly he meant when he said Buddhist Myanmar people should “stand up for themselves”, “but, here, the first thing you do is take away all their food and water. Then, when the elephant is starving and weak, you give him a little bit of water and teach him one word. Then, you give him a little bit of food and teach him some more. That’s how we tame the elephants here”.
This is his metaphor for the imposition of economic sanctions on Muslims, who are also known as Rohingya, an ethnic grouping in the north-west that has long been denied Myanmar citizenship.
Buddhists, he insists, should not shop in Muslim stores, nor sell land to Muslims. This principle is being promoted by a movement, which he started in conjunction with other monks from southern Myanmar, known as 969.
Poet and artist Soe Wei, who was a political prisoner of the military junta for two years, says that, like many Myanmar people, he finds it difficult to criticise a monk, though he does not share all of Wirathu’s opinions.
Pressed on whether he sees Wirathu as a figure of terror or a man of peace, Mr Soe Wei shakes his head, then smiles wryly. “I don’t see him as a man of peace. I’ve never seen anyone in authority really willing to have peace in Myanmar.” THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
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Myanmar’s radical monk blames bombing on extremist Muslims
YANGON — A firebrand monk blamed Islamic extremists yesterday for a small bomb that wounded five people when it went off while he was preaching in Myanmar’s second-largest city, though the police said it was too early to speculate.
The blast occurred at 9pm on Sunday during a religious ceremony on the outskirts of Mandalay.
Mr Ashin Wirathu — a monk accused of inciting violence with hate-filled speeches targeting the country’s minority Muslim community — seemed unfazed as he carried on with his sermon, said Ma Sandar, a witness.
“It was not a loud explosion … But it caused some commotion,” the 35-year-old said.
The monk told the Associated Press the blast was the “work of Islamic extremists”.
“Ordinary Muslims wouldn’t have done this,” he said.
Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million people, has been gripped by religious violence between Buddhists and Muslims since emerging from a half-century of military rule just two years ago.
A police officer, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorised to speak to the media, said it was unclear who was behind Sunday’s bombing.
A small device was placed under a car, he said, about 18 metres from where Mr Wirathu was speaking.
Mr Wirathu, is the leader of 969, a fundamentalist Buddhist movement that boasts supporters nationwide. He has called for a boycott of all Muslim-owned shops and is pushing for a law that would restrict marriages between Buddhist women and Muslim men. AP
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France urges Myanmar leader to probe anti-Muslim violence
PARIS — French President Francois Hollande has pressed Myanmar’s President to investigate violence against the country’s Muslim minority in depth, and said a pledge to release political prisoners must be followed by action.
Mr Hollande met Mr Thein Sein on Wednesday in Paris, two days after the former military leader visited British Prime Minister David Cameron in London as part of a tour aimed at securing Western aid to help Myanmar emerge from decades of military dictatorship.
“The President of the Republic underscored the necessity of seeing that all prisoners of conscience are released without condition, and that recent intercommunal violence is fully investigated,” Mr Hollande’s statement said.
Elsewhere in Paris, rights groups greeted the meeting with protests against attacks on Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims.
Mr Hollande welcomed the opening of Myanmar’s political process to opposition parties and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and said France was willing to provide aid to develop healthcare and education.
However, he echoed calls by United States President Barack Obama — whom Mr Thein Sein met earlier this year — and Mr Cameron to press ahead with democratic reforms and efforts to resolve decades of inter-ethnic fighting.
On Sunday, Mr Thein Sein said he had disbanded a security force accused of rights violations against Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, the scene of deadly violence between Muslims and majority Buddhists in the past year. He also said he was close to brokering a nationwide ceasefire to end long-running ethnic conflicts.
Mr Hollande also urged that rights groups be allowed to operate more freely in Myanmar — a nod to the groups that urged him to adopt a tougher stance towards the government in the days before the visit.
“France cannot remain silent before these crimes against humanity,” said Mr Julien Bayou, a spokesman for the online activist network Avaaz.
Last week, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon warned Myanmar that it must end Buddhist attacks on minority Muslims if it wants to be seen as a credible nation.
Myanmar’s transition to democracy last year prompted the US and European Union to ease sanctions. French oil company Total is among investors in the country. Agencies
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Fresh religious unrest breaks out in Myanmar
About 1,000 anti-Muslim rioters burned shops and homes in a fresh outbreak of communal unrest in Myanmar, officials said Sunday, as the former army-ruled nation grapples with spreading religious violence.
A fireman clears up a burnt down market after riots in Lashio, eastern Myanmar, on May 30, 2013. About 1,000 anti-Muslim rioters burned shops and homes in a fresh outbreak of communal unrest in Myanmar, officials said Sunday, as the former army-ruled nation grapples with spreading religious violence.
Police fired warning shots on three occasions as a mob tried to set property ablaze and attacked fire engines that were attempting to put out fires in a village at Kanbalu, in the central region of Sagaing, according to a statement on the Ministry of Information website.
"The local security forces stepped in to stop a group of approximately 1,000 people as they tried to torch a house. But the crowd kept shooting with slingshots and the situation became uncontrollable," the statement said.
The unrest erupted after a Muslim man was arrested on suspicion of attempting to rape a Buddhist woman on Saturday evening, it said.
A crowd of about 150 people and three Buddhist monks gathered at the police station demanding that the accused be handed over to them.
When the authorities refused, the mob attacked Muslim property in the area and the crowd grew in size and ferocity as the night went on.
Attacks against Muslims -- who make up at least four percent of the population -- have exposed deep rifts in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, casting a shadow over widely praised political reforms since military rule ended in 2011.
The latest violence is the first anti-Muslim incident reported in Sagaing amid signs that the unrest is continuing to widen.
It began in the far west of Myanmar last year and has erupted in areas across the country since bloody riots in the central town of Meiktila killed dozens in March.
Last week watchdog Physicians for Human Rights said Myanmar risked "catastrophic" levels of conflict with "potential crimes against humanity and/or genocide" if authorities failed to stem anti-Muslim hate speech and a culture of impunity around the clashes.
Rights groups have accused authorities of being unable or unwilling to contain the unrest, which has left about 250 people dead and more than 140,000 homeless. Myanmar has rejected the claims.
Many of the incidents have featured retaliatory violence against Muslim communities in response to accusations of seemingly isolated criminal acts.
A regional police official, who asked not to be named, said the latest conflict broke out after the Muslim suspect allegedly approached a 25-year-old woman, "grabbed her hand and attempted to rape her".
No injuries have been reported in the violence, but the ministry statement said at least 20 homes were destroyed as well as over a dozen shops and a local rice mill.
Ten fire engines battled the blazes and the ministry said security had been stepped up since early Sunday "to restore peace there".
Radical Buddhist monk Wirathu, who has been accused of stoking the unrest with anti-Muslim and nationalist speeches, posted a message about the incident on his Facebook page.
Using the term "kalar" -- a highly derogatory word -- he blamed Muslims in general for the unrest.
"Kalars are troublemakers. When a kalar is there, the problem will be there. If every time a kalar made trouble and people responded with violence, both Buddhists and Buddhism will be harmed," he said.
Two outbreaks of conflict in the western state of Rakhine in June and October last year left about 200 people dead, mainly Rohingya Muslims who are seen by many in Myanmar as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
In March sectarian strife in Meiktila killed at least 44 people -- although many observers fear the toll was much higher -- and thousands of homes were set ablaze.
The UN's rights envoy on Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, last week slammed the government for allowing an angry crowd to surround his car and beat on the windows during a visit to Meiktila.
He said the incident gave him an "insight into the fear residents would have felt when being chased down by violent mobs". Myanmar has said the envoy was not in danger.
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The way I see it...
The question we should ask ourselves: IS THIS A CASE OF BUDDHISTS TERRORIZING THE MUSLIMS OR ONE WHERE THE MUSLIMS AS A MINORITY IN THESE PLACES WERE PUNISHED BY THE MAJORITY BUDDHISTS FOR BEING SIA LAN?
Please also NOTE that countless innocent buddhists and other non-muslims had been (and continue to be) victims of violence by muslims in islamic and muslim-majority countries, even when they have not done anything wrong or provocative.
The lesson is don't be sia lan, don't rape and kill around when you are a minority.
The world is FAIR,
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ANYWAY.....
Muslims have killed millions yet it is now the fastest growing religion which will soon overtake Christian as the biggest religion......
What impact do you people think such incidents will have on the growth (or rather the survival) of Buddhism...........
heheheheh.......kekkkeekke...
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Grisly image of a buddhist victim brutally raped by Muslims in Myanmar.....
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May I ask: What will happen to a buddhist if the same act of brutality is done in a muslim country, say Pakistan, Saudi or Indonesia?
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Violence cannot solve any problems. This entire conflict in the very beginning should not even mix with religions or ethnic groups.
The government should have already stepped in early to curb all unrest and arrest the perpetrators, regardless of muslims and buddhists.
Seems like this will continue for quite some time... The Times Magazine made matters worse when they published monk Wirathu's face on the cover page.
