A Worth reading article by Malik kenan, who supports right to offend in a plural society , fierce advocate of freedom of speech and staunch supporter of human rights. ( F.Sheikh)
Excerpts;
There is perhaps no religion that Western liberals find more amenable than Buddhism. Politicians fawn over the Dalai Lama, celebrities seek out Buddhist meditation, many scientists and philosophers insist that Buddhism has much to teach us about human nature and human psychology. Even many of the so-called New Atheists have fallen for Buddhism’s allure, albeit as a philosophy rather than as a faith. For most of its Western sympathisers, Buddhism is a deeply humanist outlook, less a religion than a philosophy, a way of life to create peace and harmony.
Myanmar’s Rohingya have a different view of Buddhism. The Rohingya are Muslims who live mostly in Rakhine, in the north west of the country, bordering Bangladesh. Early Muslim settlements date back to the 7th century. Today, in a nation that is 90 per cent Buddhist, there are some 8 million Muslims of which probably a quarter are Rohingya. Many feel they are fighting for their very existence.
The military junta that came to power in Myanmar in 1962 (or Burma as it was then) has, over the past half century, sought to build popular support for its rule by fomenting hatred against minority groups. The Rohingya have been stripped of citizenship and officially declared foreigners in their native land. Restriction have been placed on the Rohingya owning land, travelling outside their villages, receiving an education and having children.
The recent successes of the democracy movement has paradoxically only worsened the problems of the Rohingya. The junta, still clinging to power, has sharpened its anti-Rohingya rhetoric in an attempt to bolster its position. The democracy movement has refused to support the Rohingya for fear of alienating its largely Buddhist constituency. The leader of the democracy movement, the Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has been shamefully silent. When asked to condemn violence against the Rohingya, the furthest she has been willing to go is to condemn violence in general. Many members of her National League for Democracy are openly involved in extremist anti-Rohingya organizations.
http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/buddhist-pogroms-and-religious-conflict/
Aung San Suu Kyi, a western educated, highly groomed, sophisticated and profoundly principled activist, was ranked among the twentieth century Greats like Mahatama Gandhi, Dr.Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Her sacrifices during that phase of her life are acknowledged by the world and helped her win the Nobel prize for peace in 1991. But that was her past life; she has moved on. She’s not in that noble pursuit any more. Now Aung San Suu Kyi is a typical Politician whose major concern is to solidify and retain the public support for the coming elections of 2015, which are likely to win her the crown jewel in the leadership of Myanmar. She has compromised her principles and opted for exigency of winning the election instead. If the Nobel Prize Committee decided to withdraw the prize she was given, it would justly exalt the stature of Prize committee and diminish the image of Aung San Suu kyi as a ‘has been’.
Rohingyas are decendents of Arab traders who used to sail along the costs of Persia, and Indian Sub-continent to reach the southern tip of what is now the Chittagong Hill Tracts district of Bangladesh. After landing at south of Chittagong, those traders in the 7th and 8th century would continue to travel to China via Eastern Burma, Assam of India, crossing over to China through Himachal Pardesh. That was an old trading route. Even the uncle of the Prophet Mohammed used to trade through that route and is buried in China. The Bengali dialect of Chitagonians and Rohingyas is quite similar and distinct from mainland Burmese. The closest parallel I can think of is the community living in Kafiristan, Pakistan. Their language is a primitive Greek dialect and their culture is also primitive Greek Paganism. The Kafiristanis are very much Pakistani even though are linguistically and culturally quite different, self-contained, and totally unlike rest of Pakistanis.
The reasons for why the Burmese Buddhists are so vehemently opposed to Rohingyas, is not known in detail. Surely one isolated incident of 3 Rohingya men raping a Buddist woman can not lead to opposition resulting in ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas.
The events in Myanmar are eerily similar to those in several Muslim countries. Religion is being used to fan the flames of hatred and divisions and the politicians are too intimidated to confront the extremists and their violence. It was easier for the military junta to impose its will but when the reins are loosened the forces of evil come out of the woodworks. Civil society in all such countries have to come together to confront and challenge the dark forces to develop national consensus and code of conduct. It is a monumental task indeed.
This is very strange. From what I know, attacking innocent people is very much against the character of the Gentle Burmese people. These ardent followers of the Tathagatha would not even dream of assaulting an innocent community. There is more to this story than meets the eye. There is something the media is hiding from us as they have done so often in the past. The media has no credibility in my eye and in the eye of all logical, rational, earnest and right thinking people.
Humans, non-believers or believers of any religion, are capable of consciously organizing themselves so as to express and display greatest virtues of goodness, such as love and compassion, and also to inflict the greatest possible evil upon their fellow human beings. In fact the transcendence of human ‘consciousness’—here consciousness meaning ‘subjective and phenomenal’ experiences—and ‘will’ over natural programming and his capability and dimension for excess or deviation, is strikingly unique in the phenomenon of good and evil. Human beings are capable of dumbfounding kindness and at the same time slaughter their own fellow being, sometimes ruthlessly.When it comes to the evil of torture, the element of malice, which is a unique characteristic of the humans, surpasses all moral and ethical values of a religion or an ideology. Humans can commit evil knowingly, making a conscious choice to do evil and on occasions enjoy it. So far so, sometimes, man tortures man for no reason.
Just like other ideologies and religions, Buddhism is a belief and the believers are humans about whom Thomas Hobbes argued that humans are instinctively ruthless and selfish, with everyone struggling for his own sustenance and preservation. In Myanmar, the Arabization of the Muslims by the Saudi ‘Wahhabi Creed’ is posing a danger to the survival of Buddhism and thus they are out to fight for their preservation. For many centuries Muslims have been living there peacefully. But the Wahhabi Creed sponsored and funded by the Saudi Arabs is teaching the Muslims of Myanmar to awaken and spread the message of Islam to the non-believers who are evidently Buddhists.
Mirza Ashraf
I respectfully disagree with Mirza Sahib that it is due to Wahhabism. I have not read any report from Burma which mentions it. During the 19th century many Muslims from India, now Bangladesh, and China migrated to Burma and has flourished there. These are mostly Rohingya people who has been declared non citizens by the government even though they are living there for decades. Dr, Nasik has sent an e mail but has not posted it on website. I think his comments portray a fair picture.
Comments by Nasik.
“Believe it. Communal hatred is a contagion that knows no religious or ethnic bounds. The ideas of violent Buddhists is as hard to accept as Muslim suicide bombers. But we live In an age where a small hateful minority can devastate entire communities. The violence in Myanmar is led by a small as network of militant Buddhist monks according to human rights watch and UN agencies. The government is reluctant to face the militants just as in Pakistan and many other countries without continuous pressure from both outside and within”
Fayyaz
Part of the answer lies in Dr. Fayyaz Sahib’s own comment. For two centuries the Rohingya people have been there without any problem. What happened in this century that they are being attacked by the Buddhists? Maybe they are being feared in anticipation of the Muslim’s Jihadi trend. There is a wave of awakening within Muslim community to follow pristine Islam not only in Myanmar but also in Thailand.
In a very recent article, ‘Arabization of Muslim Communities in UK and North America,’ the author Samuel Westrop explains how the Saudi money is supporting Madaris from Marrakesh to Indonesia and how the Muslims of the sub-Continent of India are changing from liberal Islam to ‘Wahhabi Creed’ even in UK and USA. Half the population of Saudi Arabia (that is of women) is grounded and they are preaching same throughout the Islamic regions.
Mirza Ashraf