Washington, D.C. 25 June (Asiantribune.com):
During its isolation this South East Asian nation's social organizations and the Buddhist Order maintained a rapport and contacts only with Sri Lanka. The result was that the Buddhist monks spearheading campaigns on pressing Sri Lankan issues have undoubtedly affected the Buddhists and their leadership, the monks.
It is in Sri Lanka that an organization called the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) spearheaded a nationwide campaign to alert the nation of alleged Muslim expansionism with well attended successful mass rallies. It was alleged that the BBS was instrumental in attacking business ventures owned by Muslims in the out skirt
Similar movement has taken momentum in Myanmar against the minority Muslim population who are non-citizens popularly known as the Rohingya. The clashes between the Buddhists and the Rohingya last year and early this year has been very brutal.
The Sri Lanka influence was highlighted by The New York Times in its June 21 edition in this manner: “Myanmar monks are quite isolated and have a thin relationship with Buddhists in other parts of the world,” Phra Paisal a Buddhist scholar and prominent monk in neighboring Thailand said. One exception is Sri Lanka, another country historically bedeviled by ethnic strife. Burmese monks have been inspired by the assertive political role played by monks from Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority.
Of the 55 million population in Myanmar 85% is Buddhist unlike in Sri Lanka it is 67%. Both nations have equal number of Muslims 8%. The difference is that the vast Muslim population in Myanmar are non citizens in contrast to Sri Lanka. In Myanmar the livelihood of the Rohingyas, the non citizens, are disrupted but in Sri Lanka the Muslim minority excel in business and other social affairs.
Nevertheless, in the West there is a belief that Buddhist radicalism aimed at the Muslims is purely on social and economic reasons.
The destruction of the World's tallest Buddhist statue in the Province of Bamiyan in Afghanistan 12 years ago by the Taliban Islamists too has been used by radical Buddhist prelates to mobilize the Buddhist population.
The NEWSWEEK in its September 24, 2012 edition highlighted the growing Buddhist radicalism in Sri Lanka and how it has affected in Myanmar.
The New York Times wrote: After a ritual prayer atoning for past sins, Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk with a rock-star following in Myanmar, sat before an overflowing crowd of thousands of devotees and launched into a rant against what he called “the enemy” — the country’s Muslim minority.
“You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,” Ashin Wirathu said, referring to Muslims.
“I call them troublemakers, because they are troublemakers,” Ashin Wirathu told a reporter after his two-hour sermon. “I am proud to be called a radical Buddhist.”
But over the past year, images of rampaging Burmese Buddhists carrying swords and the vituperative sermons of monks like Ashin Wirathu have underlined the rise of extreme Buddhism in Myanmar — and revealed a darker side of the country’s greater freedoms after decades of military rule. Buddhist lynch mobs have killed more than 200 Muslims and forced more than 150,000 people, mostly Muslims, from their homes.
Ashin Wirathu denies any role in the riots. But his critics say that at the very least his anti-Muslim preaching is helping to inspire the violence, writes The New York Times.
What began last year on the fringes of Burmese society has grown into a nationwide movement whose agenda now includes boycotts of Muslim-made goods. Its message is spreading through regular sermons across the country that draw thousands of people and through widely distributed DVDs of those talks.
The Times opined: Ashin Wirathu, the spiritual leader of the radical movement, skates a thin line between free speech and incitement, taking advantage of loosened restrictions on expression during a fragile time of transition. He was himself jailed for eight years by the now-defunct military junta for inciting hatred. Last year, as part of a release of hundreds of political prisoners, he was freed.
Ashin Wirathu's theme is: “If we are weak our land will become Muslim.”
But Ashin Wirathu, who describes himself as a nationalist, says Buddhism is under siege by Muslims who are having more children than Buddhists and buying up Buddhist-owned land. In part, he is tapping into historical grievances that date from British colonial days when Indians, many of them Muslims, were brought into the country as civil servants and soldiers.
The muscular and nationalist messages he has spread have alarmed Buddhists in other countries.
Definitely not in Sri Lankan, according to The New York Times, as this South Asian nation's radical Buddhist prelates have different grievances but somewhat similar to what one sees in Myanmar.
Ashin Wirathu has tapped into that anxiety, which some describe as the “demographic pressures” coming from neighboring Bangladesh. There is wide disdain in Myanmar for a group of about one million stateless Muslims, who call themselves Rohingya, some of whom migrated from Bangladesh. Clashes between the Rohingya and Buddhists last year in western Myanmar roiled the Buddhist community and appear to have played a role in later outbreaks of violence throughout the country reports NYT.
Daya Gamage - Asian Tribune US National Correspondent
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