[Vision2020] Religious Violence in Burma

[Nicholas Gier]

Dear Visionaries:

As I finish up my book "Religious Violence in Asia" over the next couple of
months, I will posts some columns from the most recently finished chapters.

I refuse to use the new name "Myanmar" for Burma, because it designates
only the areas where the Buddhist majority lives, and leaves out 32 percent
of the population.

I was hoping I could put the new material on Burma at the end of my chapter
on Sri Lanka, but that's a poor solution.  I'm expanding this as a new and
separate chapter.  The scholarly version is attached.

The main lesson from my book is simple: Don't fuse national and religious
identity.  You are bound to have big troubles.

Nick

*Buddhist Nationalism and Religious Violence in Burma*


I am putting the finishing touches on a book entitled “Religious Violence
in Asia,” and I have been surprised and disappointed at my discoveries over
20 years of research.

I sometimes call myself a Buddhist-Unitarian, so I was shocked to conclude
that it is Buddhism that has caused the most religiously motivated violence
in Asia. Over the centuries and up to this day, these unfortunate events
have happened in Sri Lanka, Tibet, Japan, and Burma.

The Venerable (=Reverend) Ashin Wirathu, abbot of one of Burma’s largest
monasteries, calls himself the “Burmese bin Laden.” He has been preaching
incendiary sermons against the nation’s Muslims, whose ancestors have been
in the country for at least 1,100 years.

Wirathu is calling for a boycott of Muslim businesses, a ban on interfaith
marriages to preserve “racial purity,” and the prosecution of forced
conversions to Islam, for which there is little evidence.

Wirathu accuses Muslims of being “crude and savage” and having raped
Buddhist women and girls. In a recent interview he declared: “Muslims are
like the African carp. They breed quickly and they are very violent and
they eat their own kind.” Incredibly enough, Wirathu has a strong following
among students and university professors.

Wirathu has inspired armed Buddhists to kill Muslims and burn their
businesses and mosques. Pogroms against Muslims have been happening
consistently since 2001, but earlier the army launched its own attack on
Muslims in 1978, and, according to the *Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence
*, “scores of people were killed, raped, looted, and arrested.”

The targets then and now are Muslims in Rakhine state, adjacent to Muslim
Bangladesh, where 1.1 million essentially stateless Rohingya Muslims live.
The Burmese government has denied citizenship to any Muslim who is unable
to offer the nearly impossible proof that their ancestors were in the
country before 1823.

The current round of sectarian violence has claimed the lives of at least
240 and left 140,000 homeless. Even though his government issued a report
condemning “ethnic hatred” against Muslims, Burmese President Thein Sein
has defended Reverend Wirathu.

The response of Noble Prize Peace recipient Aung San Suu Kyi has been
disappointing, but mostly to her international admirers. She has revealed
an implicit nationalist bias when she admitted that she “can only talk
about the Burmese majority. I’ve not studied the culture of the other
peoples of Burma deeply enough to connect to them.”

Suu Kyi has laid blame on both Muslims and Buddhists, and has, incredibly
enough, praised the good work of the security forces. One international
observer, however, has witnessed government authorities “standing by while
atrocities have been committed before their very eyes.”

Maung Zarni, a Burma expert and visiting fellow at the London School of
Economics, says that Suu Kyi “is no longer a political dissident trying to
stick to her principles. She’s a politician and her eyes are fixed on the
prize, which is the 2015 majority Buddhist vote.”

It is sadly ironic that the Rev. Wirathu has chosen to associate himself
with Osama bin Laden, because Muslim jihadis—Burmese, Bangladeshis,
Indonesians, and Pakistanis—have now arrived in Burma. The *Long War
Journal *has released unconfirmed reports that in July of 2013*, *this* *group
“claims it killed 17 Burmese soldiers in its first ambush of a military
convoy, and “a few days ago they slaughtered three men including a Buddhist
monk.”

This jihadist group was founded by a Burmese Muslim who has been associated
with Al Qaeda since the early 1980s. Radical Muslims from around the world
are rallying to the *jihad* in Burma, and what they call the “genocide” of
Muslims there. The future of religious harmony in Burma, where at one time
all major religions lived in peace, does not bode well.

Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31
years. A longer version can be read at www.NickGier.com/Burma.pdf.
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