Why buddhists are killing muslims

An example of this was seen in the Saffron Revolution of September When the protesters were violently suppressed, the monks joined the protest by overturning their begging bowls on their alms round, disallowing government officials from earning merit by giving alms.

The protest was a seriously embarrassing gesture, and the military government violently cracked down on the protests, beating and arresting thousands of monks. The year connection between the monarchy and the sangha was severed in , when the British invaded Upper Burma and incorporated it into its Indian colony. Dissolving the border between the countries, Indian Hindus and Muslims moved en masse — voluntarily or forcefully — into Burma, permanently altering the demographics of Rangoon in particular, where many found success in trade.

With the loss of a Buddhist king and the loss of favor of the Buddhist education system, due to the British promotion of Christianity, saw the emergence of the first Buddhist nationalist movements. The modern movement of Vipassana meditation arose out of this anti-colonial movement , with monk Ledi Sayadaw spreading the idea that it was the duty of every Buddhist to protect and preserve Buddhism by meditating and studying Buddhist scripture, both of which were previously only practiced by a small portion of monastics.

This narrative — that the Burmese people need to protect Buddhism from enemy foreign invaders — has persisted for over a century, though the perceived enemy has changed from British to Muslim. The protests resulted in attacks on Muslim communities across the city. In addition to anti-Muslim movements, the s and s also saw the rise of anti-Christian and anti-Hindu sentiments, the latter culminating in a series of anti-Indian riots.

All of these incidences arose as part of anti-colonial movements and strengthened the idea that one must be Buddhist in order to be truly Burmese. Under Japanese occupation, Buddhists in Rakhine then called Arakan were recruited to fight as proxies for the Japanese. Local Muslims, in contrast, were armed and mobilized by the British as independent militias who performed guerilla-attacks on Japanese forces.

We can trace the history of the current crisis in Rakhine State to the military takeover of the country in Burma achieved independence in , but after fourteen years of constitutional rule, the military junta took over in The junta systematically stoked fears of the demise of Buddhism and the break-up of the nation to cultivate loyalty among a resentful population.

But they also held a monopoly on violence and prevented citizens and monks like Wirathu from encouraging social disturbance. In , Wirathu was arrested along with forty-four other monks for using hate-speech to promote attacks on Muslims and a mosque, and spent eight years in prison.

Ironically, it was only with the ostensible transition to democracy that began in that public religious tension between Buddhists and Muslims surfaced again.

The list excluded the Rohingya, cementing their stateless status. Suu Kyi has received widespread criticism for her silence on the Rohingya issue — especially in light of her earlier writing and speeches.

The latest upsurges of violence are also aided by globalization. With the internet, Islamaphobic fanatics can connect the old Burmese narratives about Islam with the contemporary narrative of global jihad. In The Venerable W. He knows he is tapping into a larger global vilification of Islam — a world vs.

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Thus, it would stand to reason that a group of people who call themselves Buddhists would never support racist rhetoric and violent persecution of another cultural or religious group.

But that is exactly what has been taking place in Myanmar formerly Burma , where the Buddhist Bamar majority has been carrying out a genocidal campaign against Rohingya Muslims as well as persecuting other minorities.

Triggered in part by hate-filled posts spread by nationalistic Sinhala Buddhist Facebook groups , these riots resulted in the death of one Muslim and the destruction of many buildings. To many non-Buddhists outside Asia, this sort of violence can seem surprising. Westerners think of Buddhism as a peaceful religion , folding Buddhist terms and practices into stress relief practices such as mindfulness.

But like any religion, Buddhism has a far more complicated story than that — and Sri Lanka has seen many disturbing and violent episodes that attest to that fact. The Buddhist Protestantism of the 19th century, the monks who invoked Buddhist texts to justify the Sri Lankan civil war, and the extremist movements surging today all have one thing in common: a belief that Sri Lanka is a Buddhist nation that must be protected from foreign elements, violently if necessary.

The Sri Lankan case shows that nationalism and extremism can be filtered through anything. Known as the father of Buddhist Protestantism in Sri Lanka, Dharmapala had an anti-imperialist and nationalist agenda. In , police changed the original route of a Buddhist festival procession in order to prevent them from passing a mosque.