The Face of Buddhist Terror
It's a faith famous for its pacifism and tolerance. But in several of Asia's Buddhist-majority nations, monks are inciting bigotry and violence — mostly against Muslims
By Hannah Beech / Meikhtila, Burma, And Pattani, Thailand
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ADAM DEAN / PANOS FOR TIMEU Wirathu, the spiritual leader of the 969 Buddhist Nationalist movement, and his entourage leave after giving a sermon, at a monastery in Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma) on May 22, 2013. U Wirathu is an abbot in the New Maesoeyin Monastery where he leads about 60 monks and has influence over more than 2,500 residing there. He travels the country giving sermons to religious and laypeople encouraging Buddhists to shun Muslim business and communities.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2146000,00.htmlThursday, June 20, 2013 | By Hannah Beech
When Buddhists Go Bad: Photographs by Adam DeanAdam Dean—Panos for TIME
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A Wirathu supporter bows at his feet outside his quarters at the New Maesoeyin Monastery in Mandalay.
People drive past a burnt-out vehicle and damaged buildings, including a mosque, in the Mingalar Zayyone Muslim quarter, which was razed by Buddhists in ethnic violence in March, in Meikhtila, Burma.
Students of Wirathu study at the New Maesoeyin Monastery in Mandalay
Monks wash at the New Maesoeyin Monastery.
A supporters of Wirathu looks at photos of him on the wall of his quarters at the New Maesoeyin Monastery.
A monk is reflected in the Wirathu's silhouette as he drives out of the New Maesoeyin Monastery.
Villagers from Kyaw Min drive ahead of Wirathu's vehicle as he arrives to give a sermon at the Shwe Areleain Monastery in Kyaw Min Village, Myiamu Township, Burma.
A skull on the ground near a Buddhist graveyard, which appears to have been recently desecrated in Meikhtila, Burma.
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A teacher (second from left) who used to be protected by Chanchote Phetpong looks at his body in the Mass Casualty Zone of Yarang Hospital.urned trees and damaged buildings are seen through the window of a destroyed house in the Mingalar Zayyone Muslim quarter, which was razed by Buddhists in ethnic violence in March, in Meikhtila, Burma.
Villagers from Kyaw Min chant and pray as they wait for Wirathu's sermon at the Shwe Areleain Monastery.
The Imam of Talanburee Mosque, which was attacked by Buddhist nationalists in 1997, prays in Mandalay, Burma.
A soldier from the 23rd Pattani Battalion of the Thai Army closes the door of an armored troop carrier during a patrol in Pattani, Southern Thailand.
A Thai Army soldier provides security as monks from the Nopawong Saram Temple collect alms on their morning rounds in Pattani, Southern Thailand.
Lieutenant Sawai Kongsit (center) talks to military trainers from the 23rd Battalion of the Thai Army (left) and Buddhist volunteer defense militia (right) during a training session at the Lak Muang Temple in Pattani.
Soldiers from the 23rd Battalion of the Thai Army provide security as monks from the Lak Muang Temple collect alms in Pattani.
Thai Army Rangers look at the body of recently deceased Chanchote Phetpong, 28, in the Mass Casualty Zone of Yarang Hospital, in Southern Thailand. He was killed by a bomb while on patrol for a peace meeting in Kradoh Village near Pattani. Two other Rangers were also wounded.
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Sumoh Makeh, 51, the mother of Subri Dotaeset, 24, weeps during an interview in her home in Talok Hala Village near Yala, Southern Thailand. Subri, a suspected insurgent, was shot and killed in an ambush while attacking a Marine base.
The photographs were taken in May and June 2013.
Wirathu, the spiritual leader of the 969 Buddhist Nationalist movement, and his entourage leave after giving a sermon at a monastery in Mandalay, Burma.The spectacle of faith makes for luminous photography. Buddhism, in particular, lends itself to the lens: those shaven heads and richly hued monastic robes; the swirls of incense; the pure expressions of devotees to a religion whose first precept is “do not kill.” But as photographer Adam Dean and I discovered when traveling through Burma and Thailand from May to June, Buddhism’s pacifist image is being challenged by a radical strain that marries spirituality with ethnic chauvinism. In Buddhist-majority Burma, where communal clashes have proliferated over the past year, scores of Muslims have been killed by Buddhist mobs, while in Thailand and Sri Lanka the fabric binding temple and state is being stitched ever tighter.
The godfather of radical Buddhism is a monk named Wirathu, a slight presence with an outsized message of hate. Adam followed Wirathu, who has taken the title of “Burmese bin Laden,” around Mandalay in central Burma, as he preached his loathing of the country’s Muslim minority to schoolchildren and housewives alike. In March, tensions detonated in the town of Meikhtila, where communal violence ended dozens of lives, mostly Muslim. Entire Muslim quarters were razed by Buddhists hordes. Even today, anxiety churns. One late afternoon as Adam walked near Wirathu’s monastic compound, a monk hurled a brick at him. Burgundy robes cannot camouflage inborn hostility.
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Adam Dean for TIME
The cover of this week's TIME International.In Southern Thailand, which was once united as a Muslim Malay sultanate, monks count on soldiers to shield them from harm. A separatist insurgency has claimed around 5,000 lives since 2004, and while more Muslims have died, it is Buddhists who feel particularly vulnerable as targets of shadowy militants. The Thai military now stations its troops in Buddhist temple compounds, further cleaving a pair of religions whose followers once shared each other’s feast days. One morning in mid-June, a bomb exploded in Kradoh, Pattani province, as Thai rangers patrolled a street where a peace and reconciliation meeting was taking place. Chanchote Phetpong, 28, who was clutching a bag of rose apples as he strolled, endured the brunt of the explosion; his orphaned fruit lay scattered in a pool of his blood.
At the nearby Yarang hospital, Adam photographed as teachers, mostly Buddhist, came to pay their respects to the dead ranger, who normally protected them as they walked to school each day. A Muslim nurse with a head covering quietly plucked shrapnel out of Chanchote’s face, cleaning him up for his funeral, while another tended to one of his wounded comrades. A clutch of Buddhist rangers looked on. The nurses’ veils felt like a reproach, a symbol of the divide between faiths in this nervous land. “They are scared of all of us,” whispered one Muslim hospital worker. “We used to have trust but that’s gone.”
Hannah Beech is TIME’s China bureau chief and East Asia correspondent.
Straying From the Middle Way: Extremist Buddhist Monks Target Religious Minorities
The fault lines of conflict are often spiritual, one religion chafing against another and kindling bloodletting contrary to the values girding each faith. Over the past year in parts of Asia, it is friction between Buddhism and Islam that has killed hundreds, mostly Muslims. The violence is being fanned by extremist Buddhist monks, who preach a dangerous form of religious chauvinism to their followers.
“In the reckoning of religious extremism — Hindu nationalists, Muslim militants, fundamentalist Christians, ultra-Orthodox Jews — Buddhism has largely escaped trial. To much of the world, it is synonymous with nonviolence and loving kindness, concepts propagated by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, 2,500 years ago. But like adherents of any religion, Buddhists and their holy men are not immune to politics and, on occasion, the lure of sectarian chauvinism.
When Asia rose up against empire and oppression, Buddhist monks, with their moral command and plentiful numbers, led anticolonial movements. Some starved themselves for their cause, their sunken flesh and protruding ribs underlining their sacrifice for the laity. Perhaps most iconic is the image of Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese monk sitting in the lotus position, wrapped in flames, as he burned to death in Saigon while protesting the repressive South Vietnamese regime 50 years ago. In 2007, Buddhist monks led a foiled democratic uprising in Burma: images of columns of clerics bearing upturned alms bowls, marching peacefully in protest against the junta, earned sympathy around the world, if not from the soldiers who slaughtered them. But where does social activism end and political militancy begin? Every religion can be twisted into a destructive force poisoned by ideas that are antithetical to its foundations. Now it’s Buddhism’s turn.”
Over the past year in Buddhist-majority Burma, scores, if not hundreds, have been killed in communal clashes, with Muslims suffering the most casualties. Burmese monks were seen goading on Buddhist mobs, while some suspect the authorities of having stoked the violence — a charge the country’s new quasi-civilian government denies. In Sri Lanka, where a conservative, pro-Buddhist government reigns, Buddhist nationalist groups are operating with apparent impunity, looting Muslim and Christian establishments and calling for restrictions to be placed on the 9% of the country that is Muslim. Meanwhile in Thailand’s deep south, where a Muslim insurgency has claimed some 5,000 lives since 2004, desperate Buddhist clerics are retreating into their temples with Thai soldiers at their side. Their fear is understandable. But the close relationship between temple and state is further dividing this already anxious region.
As the violence mounts, will Buddhists draw inspiration from their faith’s sutras of compassion and peace to counter religious chauvinism? Or will they succumb to the hate speech of radical monks like Burma’s Wirathu, who goads his followers to “rise up” against Islam? The world’s judgment awaits.
http://world.time.com/2013/06/20/extremist-buddhist-monks-fight-oppression-with-violence/The Face of Buddhist Terror
by FNG on June 22, 2013
His face as still and serene as a statue’s, the
Buddhist monk who has taken the title “the Burmese bin Laden” begins his
sermon. Hundreds of worshippers sit before him, palms pressed together, sweat trickling silently down their sticky backs. On cue, the crowd chants with the man in burgundy robes, the mantras drifting through the sultry air of a temple in
Mandalay, Burma’s second biggest city after Rangoon. It seems a peaceful scene, but Wirathu’s message crackles with hate. “Now is not the time for calm,” the 46-year-old monk intones, as he spends 90 minutes describing the many ways in which he detests the minority Muslims in this Buddhist-majority land. “Now is the time to rise up, to make your blood boil.”
Buddhist blood is boiling in Burma, also known as Myanmar — and plenty of Muslim blood is being spilled. Over the past year, Buddhist mobs have targeted members of the minority faith. The authorities say scores of Muslims have been killed; international human-rights workers put the number in the hundreds. Much of the violence was directed against the Rohingya, a largely stateless Muslim group in Burma’s far west that the U.N. calls one of the world’s most persecuted people. The communal bloodshed then spread to central Burma, where Wirathu lives and preaches his virulent sermons. The radical monk sees Muslims, who make up at least 5% of Burma’s estimated 60 million people, as a threat to the country and its culture. “[Muslims] are breeding so fast and they are stealing our women, raping them,” he tells me. “They would like to occupy our country, but I won’t let them. We must keep Myanmar Buddhist.”
Such hate speech threatens the delicate political ecosystem in a country peopled by at least 135 ethnic groups that has only recently been unshackled from nearly half a century of military rule. Already some government officials are calling for implementation of a ban, rarely enforced during the military era, on Rohingya women’s bearing more than two children. And many Christians in the country’s north say recent fighting between the Burmese military and ethnic Kachin insurgents, who are mostly Christian, was exacerbated by the religious divides.
Radical Buddhism is also thriving in other parts of Asia. This year in Sri Lanka, Buddhist nationalist groups with links to high-ranking officialdom have gained prominence, and monks have helped orchestrate the destruction of Muslim and Christian property. And in Thailand’s deep south, where a Muslim insurgency has claimed some 5,000 lives since 2004, the Thai army trains civilian militias and often accompanies Buddhist monks when they leave their temples to collect alms, as their faith asks of them. The commingling of soldiers and monks — some of whom have armed themselves — only heightens the alienation felt by Thailand’s minority Muslims.
Although each nation’s history dictates the course radical Buddhism has taken within its borders, growing access to the Internet means that prejudice and rumors are instantly inflamed with each Facebook post or tweet. Violence can easily spill across borders. In June in Malaysia, where hundreds of thousands of Burmese migrants work, several Buddhist Burmese were killed — likely in retribution, Malaysian authorities say, for the deaths of Muslims back in Burma.
In the reckoning of religious extremism — Hindu nationalists, Muslim militants, fundamentalist Christians,
ultra-Orthodox Jews — Buddhism has largely escaped trial. To much of the world, it is synonymous with nonviolence and loving kindness, concepts propagated by
Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, 2,500 years ago. But like adherents of any religion, Buddhists and their holy men are not immune to politics and, on occasion, the lure of sectarian chauvinism.
When Asia rose up against empire and oppression, Buddhist monks, with their moral command and plentiful numbers, led anticolonial movements. Some starved themselves for their cause, their sunken flesh and protruding ribs underlining their sacrifice for the laity. Perhaps most iconic is the image of
Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese monk sitting in the lotus position, wrapped in flames, as he burned to death in Saigon while protesting the repressive South Vietnamese regime 50 years ago. In 2007, Buddhist monks led a foiled democratic uprising in Burma: images of columns of clerics bearing upturned alms bowls, marching peacefully in protest against the junta, earned sympathy around the world, if not from the soldiers who slaughtered them. But where does social activism end and political militancy begin? Every religion can be twisted into a destructive force poisoned by ideas that are antithetical to its foundations. Now it’s Buddhism’s turn.
Mantra of Hate
Sitting cross-legged on a raised platform at the New Masoeyein monastery in Mandalay, next to a wall covered by life-size portraits of himself, Wirathu expounds on his worldview.
U.S. President Barack Obamahas “been tainted by black Muslim blood.” Arabs have hijacked the U.N., he believes, although he sees no irony in linking his name to that of an Arab terrorist. Around 90% of Muslims in Burma are “radical bad people,” says Wirathu, who was jailed for seven years for his role in inciting anti-Muslim pogroms in 2003. He now leads a movement called 969 — the figure represents various attributes of the Buddha — which calls on Buddhists to fraternize only among themselves. “Taking care of our religion and race is more important than democracy,” says Wirathu.
It would be easy to dismiss Wirathu as an uneducated outlier with little doctrinal basis for his bigotry, one of eight children who ended up in a monastery because his parents wanted one less mouth to feed. But Wirathu is charismatic and powerful, and his message resonates. Among the country’s majority Bamar — or Burman — ethnic group, as well as across Buddhist parts of Asia, there’s a vague sense that their religion is under siege, that Islam has already conquered Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Afghanistan — all these formerly Buddhist lands — and that other dominoes could fall. Even without proof, Buddhist nationalists fear that local Muslim populations are increasing faster than their own, and they worry about Middle Eastern money pouring in to build new mosques.
Since Burma began its reforms in 2011, with the junta giving way to a quasi-civilian government, surprisingly few people have called for holding the army accountable for its repressive rule. This equanimity has been ascribed to the Buddhist spirit of forgiveness. But Burma’s democratization has also allowed extremist voices to proliferate and unleashed something akin to ethnic cleansing. The trouble began last year in the far west, where clashes between local Buddhists and Muslims claimed a disproportionate number of Muslim lives. Machete-wielding Buddhist hordes attacked
Rohingya villages; 70 Muslims were slaughtered in a daylong massacre in one hamlet, according to Human Rights Watch. The communal violence, which the government has done little to check, has since migrated to other parts of the country. In March, dozens were killed and tens of thousands left homeless as homes and mosques were razed. Children were hacked apart and women torched. In several instances, monks were seen goading on frenzied Buddhists.
In late March, the transport hub of Meikhtila burned for days, with entire Muslim quarters razed by Buddhist mobs after a monk was killed by Muslims. (The official death toll: two Buddhists and at least 40 Muslims.) Thousands of Muslims are still crammed into refugee camps where journalists are forbidden to enter. I was able to meet the family of 15-year-old Abdul Razak Shahban, one of at least 20 students at a local madrasah who were killed. Razak’s own life ended when a nail-studded plank was slammed against his skull. “My son was killed because he was Muslim, nothing else,” Razak’s mother Rahamabi told me, in the shadow of a burned-out mosque.
Temple and State
Dreams of repelling Islam and ensuring the dominance of Buddhism animate the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), Sri Lanka’s most powerful Buddhist organization whose name means Buddhist Strength Army. At the group’s annual convention in February in a suburb of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, more than 100 monks led the proceedings, as followers clutched Buddhist flags, clasped their right hand to their chest and pledged to defend their religion. Founded just a year ago, the BBS insists that Sri Lanka, the world’s oldest continually Buddhist nation, needs to robustly reclaim its spiritual roots. It wants monks to teach history in government schools and has called for religious headscarves to be banned, even though 9% of the population is Muslim. Said BBS general secretary and monk Galaboda Aththe Gnanasara Thero at the group’s annual meeting: “This is a Buddhist government. This is a Buddhist country.”
Hard-line monks, like those in the BBS, have turned on minority Muslims and Christians, especially since the 26-year war against the largely Hindu Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam insurgency ended four years ago. After President Mahinda Rajapaksa, a conservative, was elected in 2005, Buddhist supremacist groups became more powerful. In recent months, their campaign of intimidation has included attacks on a Muslim-owned clothing store, a Christian pastor’s house and a Muslim-linked slaughterhouse. Despite monks’ being captured on video leading some of the marauding, none have been charged. Indeed, temple and state are growing ever closer in Sri Lanka, with a monk-dominated party serving as a coalition member of the government. In March, the guest of honor at the opening ceremony for the BBS-founded Buddhist Leadership Academy was Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the President’s brother, who said, “It is the monks who protect our country, religion and race.”
Alms in Arms
In Thailand’s deep south, it’s the monks who need help — and in their desperation some have resorted to methods contrary to Buddhism’s pacifist dogma. The southern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat used to be part of a Malay sultanate before staunchly Buddhist Thailand annexed the region early last century. Muslims make up at least 80% of the area’s population. Since a separatist insurgency intensified in 2004, many Buddhists have been targeted because their positions — such as teachers, soldiers or government workers — are linked to the Thai state. Dozens of monks have been attacked too. Now the Thai military and other security forces have moved into the wat, as Thai Buddhist temples are known, and soldiers go out each morning with monks as they collect alms. “There’s no other choice,” says Lieutenant Sawai Kongsit. “We cannot separate Buddhism from guns anymore.”
Wat Lak Muang, in the town of Pattani, is home to 10 Buddhist monks and around 100 soldiers. The sprawling compound’s main stupa has been taken over as an operational command center for the Thai army’s 23rd battalion, with camouflage netting wrapped around the central base of the holy structure. Each year, thousands of Buddhist volunteers receive training at this wat to join armed civilian militias charged with guarding their villages. Prapaladsuthipong Purassaro, who was a monk for 16 years and now tends the temple, admits that when he wore monastic robes, he owned three pistols. “Maybe I felt a little bit guilty as a Buddhist,” he says. “But we have to protect ourselves.”
If Buddhists feel more protected by the presence of soldiers in their temples, it sends quite another signal to the Muslim population. “By inviting soldiers into the wat, the state is wedding religion to the military,” says Michael Jerryson, an assistant professor of religious studies at Youngstown State University in Ohio and author of a book about Buddhism’s role in the southern Thailand conflict. “Buddhists will never think we’re Thai people,” says Sumoh Makeh, the mother of a suspected insurgent who, with 15 others, was killed by Thai marines in February after they tried to raid a naval base. “This is our land but we are the outsiders.” After all, Muslims too are running scared in the deep south. More of them have perished in the violence than Buddhists, felled by indiscriminate bombings or whispers that they were somehow connected to the state. (By proportion of population, however, more Buddhists have died.) Yet monk after monk tells me that Muslims are using mosques to store weapons, or that every imam carries a gun. “Islam is a religion of violence,” says Phratong Jiratamo, a marine turned monk. “Everyone knows this.”
It’s a sentiment the Burmese bin Laden would endorse. I wonder how Wirathu reconciles the peaceful sutras of his faith with the anti-Muslim violence spreading across his Bamar-majority homeland. “In Buddhism, we are not allowed to go on the offensive,” he tells me. “But we have every right to defend our community.” Later, as he preaches to an evening crowd, I listen to him compel smiling housewives, students, teachers, grandmothers and others to repeat after him: “I will sacrifice myself for the Bamar race.”
The Buddhist spirit of forgiveness, though, still exists in the unlikeliest of places. In 2011, Watcharapong Suttha, a monk at Wat Lak Muang, was doing his morning alms, guarded by soldiers, when a bomb detonated. The lower half of his body is covered in shrapnel scars. Now 29 and disrobed, Watcharapong is still traumatized, his eyes darting, his body beset by twitches. But he does not blame an entire faith for his attack. “Islam is a peaceful religion, like Buddhism, like all religions,” he says. “If we blame Muslims, they will blame us. Then this violence will never end.”
Myanmar Bans TIME Magazine Issue Over ‘Buddhist Terror’ Cover
By Shibani Mahtani
YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar’s government has banned this week’s international issue of TIME after widespread outrage in the country over the magazine’s cover story featuring a controversial monk known as the Venerable Wirathu with the title “The Face of Buddhist Terror.”
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- Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
- Myanmar has banned this issue of Time magazine carrying the words, “The Face of Buddhist Terror,” with a photo of a controversial Buddhist monk.
Ye Htut, spokesperson for President Thein Sein, said on his official Facebook FB +1.24% page Tuesday evening that copies of the magazine “would not be sold and distributed to prevent the recurrence of racial and religious conflict.” TIME profiles the Venerable Wirathu, leader of the Buddhist 969 movement that advocates the social exclusion of the country’s minority Muslim population. The movement has been accused of stirring up deadly clashes between Buddhists and Muslims that have spread across the country over the past year, leaving more than 140,000 people displaced and more than 200 dead, most of whom were Muslims. Buddhist mobs have attacked mosques and Muslim businesses, and stickers and pamphlets of the 969 movement have often appeared during and after the violence.
The monk denies responsibility for the violence. But in countless media interviews, he has expressed pride in being a radical Buddhist and has called for boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses. This Thursday, he will hold a forum in order to garner support for a law he has proposed to restrict marriages between Buddhist women and anyone outside their religion, which he hopes would carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
Tuesday’s ban on the publication is the first time that Myanmar’s government has put any blatant restrictions on Western media since it embarked on a series of sweeping political and economic reforms two years ago. Explaining its decision, the government said on state television Tuesday evening that the article could damage reconciliation between the two groups. It remains unclear how the Myanmar government would block access of the article online for internet users in Myanmar.
On Sunday, the president’s office issued a rare statement condemning the magazine piece and labeling the 969 movement “peaceful.” The statement defended the Venerable Wirathu, calling him a “son of Buddha,” and said the article could negatively affect the perception of Buddhists in the country. The statement followed calls for the boycott of TIME magazine on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, and vociferous statements from angry Buddhists attacking the Western media and the author behind the piece personally. Analysts say, though, that this rare condemnation from the Myanmar government could serve to embolden more radical elements within the Buddhist community, and spur further attacks on the country’s minority Muslims. Some have also criticized the TIME magazine piece for being overly provocative and for implicating the Buddhist religion rather than specific actors for violence against the country’s Muslims.
The government’s response and tacit support for the Venerable Wirathu and the 969 movement is a “really bad sign of things to come for Myanmar Muslims,” said Maung Zarni, a Burmese academic at the London School of Economics, because it allows radical elements in society to operate with impunity. Mr. Maung Zarni also criticized the TIME magazine piece for reporting that he says can have a “heavy societal cost” on the Myanmar people by whipping up tensions between the two communities.
The Venerable Wirathu, who also has spoken out against the piece, says that he won’t sue TIME magazine for defamation, what he believes is keeping true to Buddhist principles of acceptance.
Myo Myo contributed to this article.
Jun-24-2013 13:39![print]()
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Time Magazine Exposes Buddhist Terrorists in Myanmar
Tim King & Mohamed Ibrahim Salem-News.com
Mainstream magazine takes Burma's president by surprise, exposing the actions of an anti-Muslim monk named Wirathu who operates with near impunity.
Time Magazine outs murderous Buddhist monk Wirathu this month, everywhere except America, that is.
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(SACRAMENTO / FRANKFURT) - Time Magazine has outed the murderous Buddhist monk called Wirathu in this month's edition, he's the Nazi-like leader of the government sanctioned '969' movement in Burma and the ringleader in the ethnic cleansing of Muslim people there.
Of course Americans will see a different edition of the magazine.
This is the country after all, that is allowing the mass murder of Muslims to take place by turning a blind eye, so the yanks get a different version of the magazine than the rest of the world, as you can see below.
We have to wonder how many Americans realize that Time Magazine publishes several different regional versions of its publication each month. The Americans get the version that doesn't piss off corporate interests, the rest are more honest. Americans receive a "dumbed down" version. It is more in keeping with the ambitions of a country that murdered 1.5 million Iraqi people over bad intelligence. Of course many of America's victims in Iraq were also Christian.
We have written a great deal about the nature of mob oriented Buddhists in Sri Lanka and Burma in recent years.
The only two Genocides of the new century have been committed by Buddhists, while most Americans live under the false illusion that Buddhists have only peaceful tendencies, it could not be any farther from the truth.
Most Buddhists are fine, just as most Christians, Muslims and Jews are moral people, but Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka mass murdered 160,000 Hindus and Christians in 2009, and over the last year, Rakhine Buddhists in Burma, now called Myanmar, have been targeting and ruthlessly killing Muslims. Rohingya Muslims are the most endangered.
The Buddhists terrorists target people for being of the "wrong" religion, and don't think Buddhism isn't a religion, that is far from true. The excuse often given, that Buddhism is simply a faith, loses meaning when they slaughter people with machetes for being of the wrong culture. In fact it flies in the face of peaceful Buddhism the same way the Taliban fail to truly represent Islam, or the warring militant state of Israel fails to represent the Jews.
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Myanmar President Thein Sein |
Myanmar’s President has lashed out against Time magazine’s cover story on “Buddhist terror” for undermining government efforts to ease sectarian tensions in the country.
In a statement issued Sunday night, President Thein Sein said the Time lead article, The Face of Buddhist Terror, featuring Myanmar’s extremist monk Wirathu, could be "detrimental to the trust building between religions in Myanmar, and damage the image of Buddhism which has been the main religion of Myanmar for thousands of years." The President defended Wirathu as a member of the Sangha, the equivalent of the Buddhist clergy.
“Buddhist monks, also known as Sanghas, are noble people who keep the 277 precepts or moral rules, and strive peacefully for the prosperity of Buddhism,” his statement said.
But the notorious Wirathu stands accused of stoking anti-Muslim sentiments with his 969 movement, launched in February, that calls on Buddhists to boycott Muslim shops and businesses.
More recently he launched a campaign to pass legislation on marriages between Buddhist women and Muslim men that would require the women to receive prior permission from their parents and authorities and the men to convert to Buddhism. This is a stark violation of international law.
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You can't make this stuff up, Buddhist '969' members celebrate their
anti-Muslim violence by wearing Nazi t-shirts. They all follow Wirathu. |
The draft law was criticized by on again off again democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi as being discriminatory and a violation of human rights.
One thing is certain, Wirathu, based in Mandalay, is no stranger to controversy. He received a 25 year sentence in 2003 for inciting anti-Muslim hatred, but was released last year under a general amnesty, far before his release date.
Rising sectarian violence has been among the greatest challenges to Thein Sein, who came to power in March 2011, and has since pushed through political and economic reforms.
In June 2012, Buddhist communities in the Rakhine State attacked Rohingya Muslims, leaving 167 people dead and 125,000 people homeless. That was the beginning of months of mayhem and nightmares, with Rohingya Muslims killed and abused, even tortured to death,
There have been at least three anti-Muslim riots this year in central and northern Myanmar, leaving thousands homeless.
Thein Sein, Myanmar’s first elected President in decades, insisted that his Government does not discriminate against Muslims.
"Although the majority of Myanmar people are Buddhists, the Government has recognized in Section 362 of the constitution that Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Animism as are the existing religions in the country," he said in his statement.
He called for mutual trust building among the religions to avoid undesirable conflicts in the country’s fledgling democracy.
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/june242013/buddhist-terror-tk-mi.phpSri Lanka bans Time magazine over Buddhist terror cover story
Associated Press Posted online: Wed Jul 03 2013, 16:38 hrs
Colombo : Sri Lanka has banned the current issue of Time magazine over a cover story on violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar because it could affect religious sentiments on this Buddhist-majority island, a customs official said Wednesday.Customs department spokesman Leslie Gamini said it has seized 4,000 copies of Time's July 1 edition, which bears a photo of Wirathu, a radical Myanmar monk, with the headline ``The Face of Buddhist Terror.''``We have decided not to release this edition'' because it could hurt religious feelings in Sri Lanka, he said. Buddhism is Sri Lanka's state religion.Myanmar's government has also banned the issue of the magazine ``to prevent the recurrence of racial and religious riots.'' Wirathu is a leader of a movement of monks that preaches that Myanmar's small Muslim minority threatens racial purity and national security. He has called for restrictions on marriages between Buddhists and Muslims, and for boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses. Nearly 250 people have died and tens of thousands, mostly Muslims, have fled their homes in religious violence in Myanmar in the past year.
Religious tension has also been on the rise in Sri Lanka. Hate speech, vilification and attacks on Muslim-owned businesses and places of worship by Sinhalese-Buddhist groups have occurred in recent months. Inaction by police and other officials has spurred allegations that the government supports the campaign, which it denies.Groups led by Buddhist monks have spread allegations that Muslims are dominating businesses and trying to take over the country demographically by increasing their birthrate and secretly sterilizing Sinhalese-Buddhists. Muslims make up 9 percent of Sri Lanka's 20 million people, while Sinhalese-Buddhists account for almost 75 percent.
International concerns have also been expressed over Sri Lankan religious tension. A U.S.-sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka at the U.N. Human Rights Council in March expressed concern over religious discrimination. U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka Michele J. Sison expressed alarm in April over rising hate speech and attacks against Muslims.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/sri-lanka-bans-time-magazine-over-buddhist-terror-cover-story/1137202/On Banned Time Magazine’s “Buddhist Terror” Issue
http://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/on-banned-time-magazines-buddhist-terror-issue/Full Text Of The Banned Time Story – “The Face Of Buddhist Terror”
Sri Lanka on Tuesday banned the sale of the latest issue of Time magazine because of the newsweekly’s feature article on terrorism, describing recent clashes between Buddhists and Muslims.
We publish below the Full text of the cover story “The Face of Buddhist Terror” in July 01, 2013 TIME magazine;
The Face of Buddhist Terror
It’s a faith famous for its pacifism and tolerance. But in several of Asia’s Buddhist-majority nations, monks are inciting bigotry and violence — mostly against Muslims
By Hannah Beech / Meikhtila, Burma, And Pattani, Thailand
His face as still and serene as a statue’s, the Buddhist monk who has taken the title “the Burmese bin Laden” begins his sermon. Hundreds of worshippers sit before him, palms pressed together, sweat trickling down their sticky backs. On cue, the crowd chants with the man in burgundy robes, the mantras drifting through the sultry air of a temple in Mandalay, Burma’s second biggest city after Rangoon. It seems a peaceful scene, but Wirathu’s message crackles with hate. “Now is not the time for calm,” the monk intones, as he spends 90 minutes describing the many ways in which he detests the minority Muslims in this Buddhist-majority land. “Now is the time to rise up, to make your blood boil.”
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Such hate speech threatens the delicate political ecosystem in a country peopled by at least 135 ethnic groups that has only recently been unshackled from nearly half a century of military rule. Already some government officials are calling for implementation of a ban, rarely enforced during the military era, on Rohingya women’s bearing more than two children. And many Christians in the country’s north say recent fighting between the Burmese military and Kachin insurgents, who are mostly Christian, was exacerbated by the widening religious divide.
Radical Buddhism is thriving in other parts of Asia too. This year in Sri Lanka, Buddhist nationalist groups with links to high-ranking officialdom have gained prominence, with monks helping orchestrate the destruction of Muslim and Christian property. And in Thailand’s deep south, where a Muslim insurgency has claimed some 5,000 lives since 2004, the Thai army trains civilian militias and often accompanies Buddhist monks when they leave their temples. The commingling of soldiers and monks–some of whom have armed themselves–only heightens the alienation felt by Thailand’s minority Muslims.
Although each nation’s history dictates the course radical Buddhism has taken within its borders, growing access to the Internet means that prejudice and rumors are instantly inflamed with each Facebook post or tweet. Violence can easily spill across borders. In Malaysia, where hundreds of thousands of Burmese migrants work, several Buddhist Burmese were killed in June–likely in retribution, Malaysian authorities say, for the deaths of Muslims back in Burma.
In the reckoning of religious extremism–Hindu nationalists, Muslim militants, fundamentalist Christians, ultra-Orthodox Jews–Buddhism has largely escaped trial. To much of the world, it is synonymous with nonviolence and loving kindness, concepts propagated by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, 2,500 years ago. But like adherents of any other religion, Buddhists and their holy men are not immune to politics and, on occasion, the lure of sectarian chauvinism. When Asia rose up against empire and oppression, Buddhist monks, with their moral command and plentiful numbers, led anticolonial movements. Some starved themselves for their cause, their sunken flesh and protruding ribs underlining their sacrifice for the laity. Perhaps most iconic is the image of Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese monk sitting in the lotus position, wrapped in flames, as he burned to death in Saigon while protesting the repressive South Vietnamese regime 50 years ago. In 2007, Buddhist monks led a foiled democratic uprising in Burma: images of columns of clerics bearing upturned alms bowls, marching peacefully in protest against the junta, earned sympathy around the world, if not from the soldiers who slaughtered them. But where does political activism end and political militancy begin? Every religion can be twisted into a destructive force poisoned by ideas that are antithetical to its foundations. Now it’s Buddhism’s turn.
Mantra of Hate
Sitting cross-legged on a raised platform at the New Masoeyein monastery in Mandalay, next to a wall covered by life-size portraits of himself, the Burmese bin Laden expounds on his worldview. U.S. President Barack Obama has “been tainted by black Muslim blood.” Arabs have hijacked the U.N., he believes, although he sees no irony in linking his name to that of an Arab terrorist. About 90% of Muslims in Burma are “radical, bad people,” says Wirathu, who was jailed for seven years for his role in inciting anti-Muslim pogroms in 2003. He now leads a movement called 969–the figure represents various attributes of the Buddha–which calls on Buddhists to fraternize only among themselves and shun people of other faiths. “Taking care of our own religion and race is more important than democracy,” says Wirathu.
It would be easy to dismiss Wirathu as an outlier with little doctrinal basis for his bigotry. But he is charismatic and powerful, and his message resonates. Among the country’s majority Bamar ethnic group, as well as across Buddhist parts of Asia, there’s a vague sense that their religion is under siege–that Islam, having centuries ago conquered the Buddhist lands of Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, now seeks new territory. Even without proof, Buddhist nationalists stoke fears that local Muslim populations are increasing faster than their own, and they worry about Middle Eastern money pouring in to build new mosques.
In Burma, the democratization process that began in 2011 with the junta’s giving way to a quasi-civilian government has also allowed extremist voices to proliferate. The trouble began last year in the far west, where machete-wielding Buddhist hordes attacked Rohingya villages; 70 Muslims were slaughtered in a daylong massacre in one hamlet, according to Human Rights Watch. The government has done little to check the violence, which has since migrated to other parts of the country. In late March, the central town of Meikhtila burned for days, with entire Muslim quarters razed by Buddhist mobs after a monk was killed by Muslims. (The official death toll: two Buddhists and at least 40 Muslims.) Thousands of Muslims are still crammed into refugee camps that journalists are forbidden to enter. In the shadow of a burned-down mosque, I was able to meet the family of Abdul Razak Shahban, one of at least 20 students at a local Islamic school who were killed. “My son was killed because he was Muslim, nothing else,” Razak’s mother Rahamabi told me.
Temple and State
In the deep south of Burma’s neighbor Thailand, it is the Buddhists who complain of being targeted for their faith. This part of the country used to be part of a Malay sultanate before staunchly Buddhist Thailand annexed it early last century, and Muslims make up at least 80% of the population. Since a separatist insurgency intensified in 2004, many Buddhists have been targeted because their positions–such as teachers, soldiers and government workers–are linked with the Thai state. Dozens of monks have been attacked too. Now the Buddhists have overwhelming superiority in arms: the Thai military and other security forces have moved into the wat, as Thai Buddhist temples are known.
If Buddhists feel more protected by the presence of soldiers in their temples, it sends quite another signal to the Muslim population. “[The] state is wedding religion to the military,” says Michael Jerryson, an assistant professor of religious studies at Youngstown State University in Ohio and author of a book about Buddhism’s role in the southern-Thailand conflict. Muslims too are scared: more of them have perished in the violence than Buddhists. (By proportion of population, more Buddhists have died, however.) Yet Buddhists are the ones who receive the greater state protection, and I listen to monk after monk heighten tensions by telling me that Muslims are using mosques to store weapons or that every imam carries a gun. “Islam is a religion of violence,” says Phratong Jiratamo, a former marine turned monk in the town of Pattani. “Everyone knows this.”
It’s a sentiment the Burmese bin Laden would endorse. I ask Wirathu how he reconciles the peaceful sutras of his faith with the anti-Muslim violence spreading across his Bamar-majority homeland. “In Buddhism, we are not allowed to go on the offensive,” he tells me, as if he is lecturing a child. “But we have every right to protect and defend our community.” Later, as he preaches to an evening crowd, I listen to him compel smiling housewives, students, teachers, grandmothers and others to repeat after him, “I will sacrifice myself for the Bamar race.” It’s hard to imagine that the Buddha would have approved.
- Time-
The Face Of Buddhist Terror: Sri Lanka To Ban Time Magazine
The Sri Lankan Government is likely to ban the latest edition of the Time Magazine after political Buddhist groups have taken offence at an article appearing on the news magazine’s cover, Colombo Telegraph learns.
The
Bodu Bala Sena Group has lobbied the Media Ministry and Secretary to the Ministry of Defence
Gotabhaya Rajapaksato ensure the offending issue never reaches the news stands in Sri Lanka, Media Ministry sources said.
The cover story on the July 1 issue of Time Magazine is entitled ‘The Face of Buddhist Terror and features Myanmar’s extremist monk
Wirathu, who has been accused of stoking anti-Muslim sentiments with his 969 movement, launched in February, which calls on Buddhists to boycott Muslim shops and businesses. There have been at least three anti-Muslim riots this year in central and northern Myanmar, leaving thousands homeless. In June 2012, Buddhist communities in the Rakhine State attacked Rohingya Muslims, leaving 167 people dead and 125,000 people homeless.
Media Ministry Secretary
Charitha Herath is reportedly consulting with Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella about how to approach the issue.
According to Ministry sources, the BBS is demanding that Herath consult with the Defence Secretary to tear off the cover story in the magazine before it is allowed on the newsstands in Sri Lanka. If the ban goes ahead, this will be the first time an international magazine is banned in Sri Lanka for a story that has nothing to do with Sri Lanka directly. Sources said the Government is planning to ban the online version of the story as well. The Colombo Telegraph has been unable to reach Charitha Herath for comment.
The Myanmar government has already banned the issue. ”The article entitled ‘The Face of Buddhist Terror’ in Time magazine July 1 issue is prohibited from being produced, sold or and distributed in original copy or photocopy in order to prevent further racial and religious conflicts,” Myanmar government spokesman Ye Htut posted on his Facebook page.
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