{"id":64967,"date":"2019-07-12T20:52:35","date_gmt":"2019-07-13T00:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=64967"},"modified":"2019-07-12T20:52:35","modified_gmt":"2019-07-13T00:52:35","slug":"the-rise-of-militant-buddhism-in-sri-lanka-and-myanmar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=64967","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of Militant Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Hannah Beech<\/strong><\/p>\n

GINTOTA, Sri Lanka<\/strong><\/em> \u2014 The Buddhist abbot was sitting cross-legged in his monastery, fulminating against the evils of Islam, when the petrol bomb exploded within earshot.<\/p>\n

But the abbot, the Venerable Ambalangoda Sumedhananda Thero, barely
\nregistered the blast. Waving away the mosquitoes swarming the night air in
\nthe southern Sri Lankan town of Gintota, he continued his tirade: Muslims
\nwere violent, he said, Muslims were rapacious.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe aim of Muslims is to take over all our land and everything we value,\u201d
\nhe said. \u201cThink of what used to be Buddhist lands: Afghanistan, Pakistan,
\nKashmir, Indonesia. They have all been destroyed by Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minutes later, a monastic aide rushed in and confirmed that someone had
\nthrown a Molotov cocktail at a nearby mosque. The abbot flicked his fingers
\nin the air and shrugged.<\/p>\n

His responsibility was to his flock, the Buddhist majority of Sri Lanka.
\nMuslims, who make up less than 10 percent of Sri Lanka\u2019s population, were
\nnot his concern.<\/p>\n

Incited by a politically powerful network of charismatic monks like
\nSumedhananda Thero, Buddhists have entered the era of militant tribalism,
\ncasting themselves as spiritual warriors who must defend their faith against
\nan outside force.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Their sense of grievance might seem unlikely: In Sri Lanka and Myanmar, two
\ncountries that are on the forefront of a radical religious-nationalist
\nmovement, Buddhists constitute overwhelming majorities of the population.
\nYet some Buddhists, especially those who subscribe to the purist Theravada
\nstrain of the faith, are increasingly convinced that they are under
\nexistential threat, particularly from an Islam struggling with its own
\nviolent fringe.<\/p>\n

As the tectonic plates of Buddhism and Islam collide, a portion of Buddhists
\nare abandoning the peaceful tenets of their religion. Over the past few
\nyears, Buddhist mobs have waged deadly attacks against minority Muslim
\npopulations. Buddhist nationalist ideologues are using the spiritual
\nauthority of extremist monks to bolster their support.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Buddhists never used to hate us so much,\u201d said Mohammed Naseer, the
\nimam of the Hillur Mosque in Gintota, Sri Lanka, which was attacked by
\nBuddhist mobs in 2017. \u201cNow their monks spread a message that we don\u2019t
\nbelong in this country and should leave. But where will we go? This is our
\nhome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month in Sri Lanka, a powerful Buddhist monk went on a hunger strike
\nthat resulted in the resignation of all nine Muslim ministers in the
\ncabinet. The monk had suggested that Muslim politicians were complicit in
\nthe Easter Sunday attacks by Islamic State-linked militants on churches and
\nhotels in Sri Lanka, which killed more than 250 people.<\/p>\n

In Myanmar, where a campaign of ethnic cleansing has forced an exodus of
\nmost of the country\u2019s Muslims, Buddhist monks still warn of an Islamic
\ninvasion, even though less than 5 percent of the national population is
\nMuslim. During Ramadan celebrations in May, Buddhist mobs besieged Islamic
\nprayer halls, causing Muslim worshipers to flee.<\/p>\n

Because of Buddhism\u2019s pacifist image \u2014 swirls of calming incense and
\nbeatific smiles \u2014 the faith is not often associated with sectarian
\naggression. Yet no religion holds a monopoly on peace. Buddhists go to war,
\ntoo.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuddhist monks will say that they would never condone violence,\u201d said
\nMikael Gravers, an anthropologist at Aarhus University in Denmark who has
\nstudied the intersection of Buddhism and nationalism. \u201cBut at the same time,
\nthey will also say that Buddhism or Buddhist states have to be defended by
\nany means.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given that Theravada Buddhists constitute overwhelming majorities in the
\nfive countries where their faith is practiced \u2014 Sri Lanka, Myanmar,
\nCambodia, Laos and Thailand \u2014 it might seem strange that they feel so
\nbesieged. But Buddhism, whose adherents make up only 7 percent of the global
\nfaithful, is the only major religion whose population is not expected to
\ngrow in absolute numbers over the next few decades, according to the Pew
\nResearch Center.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the number of Muslims, who make up just under one-quarter of the
\nworld\u2019s population, is growing quickly, buoyed by youthful demographics and
\nhigh fertility rates. By 2050, Pew projects that there will be nearly as
\nmany Muslims in the world as there are Christians.<\/p>\n

Buddhist monks have made much of that trend in their rhetoric, portraying
\ntheir faith to be under existential threat.<\/p>\n

Sitting in his walled temple compound in Gintota, Sumedhananda Thero gave a
\nbleak prophecy. \u201cIf a man dies, it is acceptable,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if a race
\nor religion dies, you can never get it back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The military-monastic complex<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thousands of people gathered in Yangon, Myanmar\u2019s largest city, in May as
\nAshin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk who was once jailed for his hate speech,
\npraised the nation\u2019s army.<\/p>\n

Since August 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar for
\nBangladesh. Behind it all was a campaign of ethnic cleansing by the army and
\nits allies, with Buddhist mobs and the country\u2019s security forces subjecting
\nRohingya Muslims to slaughter, rape and the complete erasure of hundreds of
\ntheir villages.<\/p>\n

Ashin Wirathu has rejected the nonviolent teachings of his faith.
\nMilitary-linked lawmakers deserved to be glorified like Buddha, he said at
\nthe rally. \u201cOnly the military,\u201d he continued, \u201cprotects both our country and
\nour religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

At another protest last October, Ashin Wirathu slammed the decision by the
\nInternational Criminal Court, or I.C.C., to pursue a case against Myanmar\u2019s
\nmilitary for its persecution of the Rohingya.<\/p>\n

Then the monk made a startling call to arms. \u201cThe day that the I.C.C. comes
\nhere is the day I hold a gun,\u201d Ashin Wirathu said in an interview with The
\nNew York Times.<\/p>\n

Experts at the United Nations say top Myanmar generals should be tried for
\ngenocide. Yet few members of Myanmar\u2019s Buddhist clergy, who have long served
\nas the nation\u2019s moral conscience, have condemned the bloodshed. Instead,
\nthey refer to the Rohingya as subhuman invaders despoiling a golden Buddhist
\nland.<\/p>\n

In late May, the civilian government of Myanmar, which shares power with the
\nmilitary, issued an arrest warrant for Ashin Wirathu. The charges were not
\nfor hate speech against a minority religion. Instead, the monk is being
\naccused of seditious comments against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel
\nlaureate who is the nation\u2019s de facto civilian leader.<\/p>\n

Even though Ashin Wirathu has not made much of an effort to hide, and
\ncontinues to post videos on social media, the police say they cannot find
\nhim and will try him in absentia.<\/p>\n

Monks like Ashin Wirathu inhabit the extremist fringe of Buddhist
\nnationalism. But more respected clerics are involved as well.<\/p>\n

At 82 years old, the Venerable Ashin Nyanissara, known more commonly as
\nSitagu Sayadaw, is Myanmar\u2019s most influential monk. In 1988, Sitagu Sayadaw
\nwas one of a coterie of monks who blessed the nation\u2019s democracy movement,
\nwhich sent hundreds of thousands of people to the streets in peaceful
\nprotest. Myanmar\u2019s military rulers responded by massacring hundreds.<\/p>\n

That act of violence stained the junta. Another round of crushed
\npro-democracy protests led by the country\u2019s monks, in 2007, hastened a
\npolitical transition in which some power is now shared with Ms. Aung San Suu
\nKyi\u2019s civilian government.<\/p>\n

After the 1988 crackdown, Sitagu Sayadaw slipped into exile in Tennessee
\nbefore returning home to open Buddhist academies and a monastic university.
\nPresident Obama and Pope Francis have met with him. Sitagu Sayadaw sits on
\ninterfaith councils, and his missionary society runs meditation centers in
\nTexas, Florida and Minnesota.<\/p>\n

But just as hundreds of thousands of Rohingya were fleeing their torched
\nvillages, Sitagu Sayadaw sat in front of an audience of army officers and
\nsaid that \u201cMuslims have almost bought the United Nations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The army and monkhood, he continued, \u201ccould not be separated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitagu Sayadaw was pictured in May on a Facebook page linked to the Myanmar
\nmilitary, grinning among soldiers. He has offered up his faith\u2019s greatest
\nsacrifice: an army of spiritual soldiers for the national cause.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are over 400,000 monks in Myanmar,\u201d he told the commander of Myanmar\u2019s
\narmed forces. \u201cIf you need them, I will tell them to begin. It\u2019s easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen someone as respected as Sitagu Sayadaw says something, even if it is
\nstrongly dismissive of a certain group, people listen,\u201d said Daw Khin Mar
\nMar Kyi, a Myanmar-born social anthropologist at the University of Oxford.
\n\u201cHis words justify hatred.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are some monks, albeit a minority, who are countering the monastic
\nhate speech.<\/p>\n

In Yangon in recent weeks, peace advocates handed out white roses to Muslims
\nin order to promote interfaith harmony.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe extremists are only a small part of Buddhism in Myanmar, but they have
\nloud voices,\u201d said Ashin Sein Di Ta, the abbot of the Asia Light monastery.
\n\u201cWe should say clearly that if any monk, even respected ones like Sitagu
\nSayadaw, advocate killing, they should be defrocked.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in a country where senior monks are so respected, it remains hard to
\nquestion their authority.<\/p>\n

Prevailing anti-Muslim sentiment worldwide has heightened prejudice, with
\nsocial media playing a corrosive role. During the height of the junta\u2019s
\npower, unauthorized fax machines were illegal in Myanmar, and the media was
\ncensored. Today, much of the population is on Facebook, ill-equipped to sift
\nhyperbole from fact.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been interviewing so many monks, and it is clear that Facebook is what
\nhas been driving their hate,\u201d said Ms. Khin Mar Mar Kyi of the University of
\nOxford. \u201cMonks learned that Islamophobia existed in the West, and they felt
\nlike it justified their feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n

One nation, under Buddha<\/strong><\/p>\n

Spread on social media, this is how the tale goes: Once, great Buddhist
\nempires dominated Asia. Then, beginning in the 7th century, Muslim invaders
\nbegan tearing across the continent. Buddhist rulers in present-day Pakistan,
\nAfghanistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia succumbed to Islam.<\/p>\n

The indignities continued into this century when, in 2001, the Taliban blew
\nup the giant Buddha statuesat Bamiyan in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

It is not just monks who feel the need to guard their faith. This is a time
\nof profound social change in Myanmar, and some women, in particular, are
\nyearning for a moral force to counter what they see as a rising materialism
\namong the nation\u2019s youth. Monasteries, they fear, are no longer as alluring
\nas malls.<\/p>\n

One group that has harnessed this anxiety is the Committee for the
\nProtection of Nationality and Religion, or Ma Ba Tha, which runs Sunday
\nschools and other community events popular across Myanmar. Formed in 2014
\nwith the aim of protecting Buddhism, Ma Ba Tha has pushed successfully for
\nlaws that make it hard for Buddhist women to marry outside their faith.<\/p>\n

In Myanmar, as in Sri Lanka \u2014 where Muslims have been accused of
\nmanufacturing underwear that makes Buddhist women infertile or of sprinkling
\nbirth control pills into curry consumed by Buddhists \u2014 Buddhist figures have
\noften expressed their hatred of Muslims in sexual terms.<\/p>\n

In 2012, reports that a Buddhist woman had been raped by Muslim men
\ntriggered fatal communal clashes in Myanmar. Buddhists in both countries
\nclaim that Muslims are waging a \u201creproductive jihad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is this idea of a hyperfertile Muslim man with his many wives,\u201d said
\nIselin Frydenlund, an associate professor of religious studies at the
\nNorwegian School of Theology. \u201cMa Ba Tha tapped into this trope, and pure
\nBuddhist women were held up as the symbols of the nation who were in danger
\nof rape by Muslim men.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, it is Myanmar\u2019s armed forces that have used rape as a weapon of war
\nin its battles against various ethnic insurgencies. The United Nations has
\nblamed the Myanmar military for \u201csexual atrocities reportedly committed in
\ncold blood out of a lethal hatred for the Rohingya.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ma Ba Tha monks reject such findings, and they have been able to continue
\ntheir hate-mongering even though the group was technically outlawed in 2017.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t think anyone would rape Bengali women because they are ugly and
\ndisgusting,\u201d said one Ma Ba Tha monk, U Rarza, referring to the Rohingya by
\na pejorative term.<\/p>\n

The Buddhist right returns<\/strong><\/p>\n

When suicide bombers linked to the Islamic State blew up churches and hotels
\nin Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, Buddhist nationalists felt vindicated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been warning for years that Muslim extremists are a danger to
\nnational security,\u201d said Dilanthe Withanage, a senior administrator for Bodu
\nBala Sena, the largest of Sri Lanka\u2019s Buddhist nationalist groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlood is on the government\u2019s hands for ignoring the radicalization of
\nIslam,\u201d Mr. Withanage said.<\/p>\n

After a few years of moderate coalition governance, a fusion of faith and
\ntribalism is again on the ascendant in Sri Lanka. The movement\u2019s champion is
\nGotabaya Rajapaksa, a former defense chief who is the leading candidate for
\npresident in elections due this year.<\/p>\n

Mr. Rajapaksa has pledged to protect religion in the country with the
\nlongest continuous Buddhist lineage. He is determined to reconstruct Sri
\nLanka\u2019s security state, which was built during the country\u2019s nearly
\nthree-decade-long civil war with an ethnic Tamil minority.<\/p>\n

From 2005 to 2015, Sri Lanka was led by Mr. Rajapaksa\u2019s brother, Mahinda
\nRajapaksa, an unabashed nationalist who justified the brutal end to the
\ncivil war by portraying himself as the nation\u2019s spiritual savior.<\/p>\n

Temples decorated their walls with pictures of the Rajapaksa brothers. Money
\nflowed for radical Buddhist groups that cheered on sectarian rioting in
\nwhich Muslims died. One of the founders of Bodu Bala Sena, or the Buddhist
\nPower Army, was given prime land in Colombo, the capital, for a high-rise
\nBuddhist cultural center. The national telecom service added Bodu Bala Sena\u2019s
\ntheme song to its collection of ringtones.<\/p>\n

Last year, Bodu Bala Sena\u2019s leader, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero, was
\nsentenced to six years in prison. But in late May, amid a changing political
\nclimate, he received a presidential pardon. On Sunday, he presided over a
\nmeeting of thousands of monks intent on making their political presence felt
\nin the upcoming elections.<\/p>\n

Before his imprisonment last year, Gnanasara Thero placed his campaign in a
\nhistorical context. \u201cWe have been the guardians of Buddhism for 2,500
\n years,\u201d he said in an interview with The Times. \u201cNow, it is our duty, just
\nas it is the duty of monks in Myanmar to fight to protect our peaceful
\nisland from Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n

(This Article appeared in the “New York Times” of July 8th 2019 and is reproduced here with due acknowledgement. Dharisha Bastians contributed reporting from Colombo, Sri Lanka and Saw Nangfrom Yangon, Myanmar)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Hannah Beech GINTOTA, Sri Lanka \u2014 The Buddhist abbot was sitting cross-legged in his monastery, fulminating against the evils of Islam, when the petrol bomb exploded within earshot. But the abbot, the Venerable Ambalangoda Sumedhananda Thero, barely registered the blast. Waving away the mosquitoes swarming the night air in the southern Sri Lankan town …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘The Rise of Militant Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Myanmar.’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64967"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64975,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64967\/revisions\/64975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}