Ashin Wirathu, the 46-year-old radical Buddhist monk, is the man behind the Buddhist extremism in Myanmar, also known as Burma. He dropped out of school at a very early stage of his childhood and started practicing Buddhism. In 2001, when he initially joined the 969 Movement in Burma, violence broke out against the Muslim minority of the country; he was accused of being responsible for the violence and was sent to jail the same year. In 2003, he was proved guilty of a series of unpalatable events against Muslims and so, consequently, he was sentenced to 25 years in jail by a Burmese court. However, in 2010, he was released by order of the Burmese government and since then he is at the beck and call of the government.
2010 was the year in which Burma experienced a general election after decades of direct military rule. However, the election was contained by the military and a civilian-cum-military government was the announced winner. Thein Sein, an ex military general, was appointed as the bigot of Burma. Since then, the military and the government have been involved in large-scale drug smuggling, human trafficking, minorities’ suppression and many other human rights violations. The economy of Burma is also among that of the least developed countries, despite the large oil and gas deposits in the country.
2010 was the same year in which Ashin Wirathu was released from jail on the demand of the newly elected government. Currently, he is the leader of the 969 Movement, which is fueling ethnic cleansing in Burma. He is using fictional theories to propagate hatred against the Muslims of Burma. He argues that the Rohingya Muslims, who are four percent of the total 60 million population of Burma, have a secret plan to take Burma from the Buddhist community (who constitute 90 percent of the total population) and then impose sharia laws. He goes on to argue that the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) is also backing them economically and morally. In addition, he rationalises the genocide of the ethnic minority by rehashing that the Rohingya Muslims are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. As they are Muslims, they could also help the “secret plan” of Muslims and therefore they must be slaughtered. In a statement to the Global Post, Ashin Wirathu said, “Muslims are like the African carp; they breed quickly, they are very violent and they eat their own kind. Even though they are minorities here, we are suffering under the burden they bring us.”
In addition, his sentiments for the ethnic minority of Muslims can also be depicted from another statement. When he was asked whether Buddhism allows for violence as it is going on in Burma, he said, “You can be full of kindness and love but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog.” He considers Muslims to be mad dogs and the universal course of action against a mad dog is to kill it. That is what Wirathu has been doing in Burma with the Muslim minority. “The face of Buddhist terror” is the tittle Wirathu recently coined for himself on the front page of Time magazine. He also calls himself the “Burmese bin Laden”, in reference to the Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden. Time magazine further tells that a large gathering of monks was in front of him; it all seemed very peaceful and calm but then Wirathu’s message crackled with hate: “Now is not the time for calm,” the monk intoned, as he spent 90 minutes describing the many ways in which he detests the Muslims in this Buddhist majority land, “Now is the time to rise up, to make your blood boil.” However, the government in Burma responded to the allegation by saying that Wirathu is a “noble man”, who is the “son of Buddha” and is committed to peace.
Buddhism is inherently is a very peaceful religion and there is no place for extremism in it. Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) was a prince. Some soothsayers of that time gave the prophecy that the prince would either become a universal humanitarian or a universal king; the king wanted his son to be the latter so he tried to confine his son within the boundaries of the palace and provided him with all the facilities that one could wish for at that time. However, time proved him unfortunate and the prince escaped the palace and saw death, disease, pain, suffering, old age, etc. All these brutal realities of life forced him to think about the true essence and purpose of human life. So he went out on an expedition, joined a group of monks and then, later on, after a very rigorous series of meditations, he became enlightened under the “tree of enlightenment”. He was given the name Buddha, which means the enlightened one, and he started to preach the reality of life and his understanding of human life. He gathered mass support in Asia and his teachings were given the form of a separate religion, i.e. Buddhism. He preached to his followers about the attainment of nirvana, which means to blow out or to extinguish. In Buddhism it means to kill one’s desires and hopes of worldly affairs. The personality who laid down the foundation of Buddhism detested worldly affairs; violence and genocide are extreme examples. There is no place for violence and extremism as far as Buddhism is concerned. This claim is also supported by a Sir Lankan monk scholar in 1959 who said, “Violence in any form, under any pretext whatsoever, is absolutely against the teachings of Buddha.”
In conclusion, Burma is facing state-sponsored violence; the Burmese government gained the title of pariah state for its country and the UN has ranked the Burmese minorities as the most persecuted minorities in the world. International actors should understand the gravity of the situation and should come forward to solve the issue. Apart from international actors, the Burmese state should also understand the damage being caused to their country by supporting the extremist group for the attainment of their extremist goals. They should learn from the example of Pakistan, in which the state used religious extremism to manipulate national interests for their personal interests during Zia’s regime. It caused Pakistan the menace of terrorism. The Burmese government should refrain from using religion as a tool for their political and personal interests if they want Burma to survive.
The writer is a freelance columnist and
a LUMS graduate