Rise of violent Buddhist rhetoric in Asia defies stereotypes

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In Thailand, anti-Muslim hardliners have had less success. 

Thai columnist Sanitsuda Ekachai says years of corruption scandals have undermined faith in the clergy. 

“Subsequently, local monks’ ethnic prejudices carry far less weight with the public and state authorities than their counterparts in Myanmar and Sri Lanka,” she told AFP. 

But there have been flashes of tension such as in the country’s Malay Muslim-majority south, where a brutal insurgency has killed more than 6,500 civilians in the last decade. 

Most of the dead are Muslim civilians, but Buddhist monks have also been targeted by militants, fuelling animosity towards Islam. 

Maha Apichat, a young and influential ex-monk, used Facebook to call on followers to burn down a mosque for every monk. He was later defrocked. 

 ‘Kill communists’ 

Experts say Buddhist clergy can trigger violence without directly participating. 

“With a couple of very rare exceptions, Buddhist monastic groups don’t carry out the violence themselves,” explains Iselin Frydenlund, from the Norwegian School of Theology, who has written extensively about what she dubs “Buddhist protectionist” movements in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. “But what they will do is provide the justification for the use of violence carried out by others, be they vigilante groups, civilians, police or soldiers.” It is not just global Islamophobia fuelling these groups, she adds - colonial history, globalisation and the advance of secularism play their part. “People feel they are losing their traditions.” 

Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok) politics expert Puangthong Pawakapan points to an earlier threat to monks from the recent past - communism. During the height of the Cold War in the 1970s, one of Thailand’s most prominent right-wing monks - Kittiwuttho - famously told followers it was “no sin to kill communists.” 

Jerryson says he fears the recent religious communalism could spread to vulnerable minorities, such as Buddhists in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts. “By labelling Muslims as adversaries to Buddhism, which historically has not been true, it solidifies the perception that the relationship is adversarial,” he warns. “The damage is being done, there is a breakdown of trust, a building of fears. “