Why did Reddit really ban this Buddhist?
The Zennist March 02, 2015
How does one manage to get banned, supposedly, from a very liberal Buddhist chat room on reddit? It is not for the usual things such as the obvious TOS rule violations. In my case, just recently, I was banned for defending Buddhist monks against pro-Muslim propaganda.
It seems that /r/buddhism is the special goto place if you have anything negative to say about Buddhist monks in Thailand, Burma (Myanmar), Sri Lanka and elsewhere. A person with a bias can easily turn Buddhist monks into bad guys, and Muslims into the good guys, by posting news articles which only show one's side of the story. This contributes to the misapprehension that Buddhist monks in Myanmar decided one day to hate Muslims for no apparent reason!
But it takes a lot to provoke the average peaceful Buddhist monk who finally says it’s time to tell the Muslims to stop attacking innocent people and raping Buddhist women; who also, unlike Westerners, is aware of the history of Islam and its tradition of violence against non-Muslims especially women. We should not forget that Buddhists have, historically, always lived in harmony with Hindus and Christians. But with Muslims it is a much different story.
From the 7th century onwards Muslims, who believed in one god, came to conquer India which had a million gods. For the Muslim, India symbolized total evil with its polytheistic religion. Historically—and it is true—Muslims committed genocide against the people of India; conquering much of the land of India. Their brutal actions wiped out Buddhism which had its birth in India. We should not think for a minute that this fact is not on the minds of every Buddhist in Burma (Myanmar).
Don’t get me wrong, this is not a diatribe against Islam. Secular Muslims are cool but devout Muslims—that is a different story. Ask any secular Muslim (they drink beer with me and like a good pulled pork sandwich). The same fanaticism that drives ISIS drives many non-secular Muslims in Thailand and Burma and other countries where Buddhism and Islam live side by side.
Getting back to /r/buddhism’s actions let's remember what Voltaire once said: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." In my case, I was not allowed to criticize Muslims who attacked Buddhists. No, the door doesn’t swing both ways around here. /r/buddhism does not tolerate free speech or academic freedom. Like most Buddhist chat rooms, it is filled with pretentious non-Buddhists. Instead of one dog in the manger, there are many dogs.