Why does this Buddhist-majority nation hate these Muslims so much?

Ye Myint Aung, the Burmese envoy in Hong Kong, hoped to dissuade others from feeling sympathy for the Rohingya. His method for doing this was by revealing his shocking racism. The Rohingya, he said, "are as ugly as ogres," and do not share the "fair and soft" skin of other Burmese ethnic groups.
Therefore, the Burmese consul general concluded, "Rohingya are neither Myanmar people nor Myanmar’s ethnic group," using the other name for Burma while trotting out his government's long-standing contention that the Rohingya are interlopers in Burma and don't deserve citizenship rights.
More than half a decade has past since then and the situation in Burma has changed for the better. The country has opened up. The secretive, dictatorial military junta that once held sway has allowed the advent of a fledgling, albeit heavily curtailed democracy. Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was freed from decades of house arrest and is now a main leader of the opposition.
But the miserable condition of the Rohingya, a forgotten, stateless people, persists. The U.N. deems them "one of the most persecuted minorities in the world." There are some 1.3 million Rohingya, the majority of whom live in Burma's Rakhine state, on the western border with Bangladesh and India, and struggle to access basic state services. As WorldViews reported last year, around 140,000 Rohinigya eke out a squalid existence in ramshackle camps, displaced by ethnic and sectarian strife in 2013 and neglected by the Burmese government.
Recent U.N. calls on the Burmese government to grant the Rohingya full citizenship rights, including a General Assembly resolution passed in December, have been received with hostility. Angry anti-Rohingya marches this week persuaded the government to scrap tentative plans to give Rohingya carrying temporary documents the right to vote in an upcoming referendum.
Much of the ire is fanned by a hard-core of nationalist Buddhist monks. Certain groups play an outsize role in fanning sentiment against the Rohingya, whom they like to characterize as "Bengali" illegal immigrants rather than a distinct Burmese ethnic group. (Never mind that many generations of Rohingya have lived on what's Burmese soil.

Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist cleric notorious for his xenophobic rhetoric, even earned a spot on the cover of TIME magazine's International edition, with the cover line: "The Face of Buddhist Terror." The saffron-clad Wirathu dubs himself the "Burmese Bin Laden," and indulges in frenzied, un-monk-like speeches calling for tough action on Muslims. He raises the fear of forced conversions and terrorism. Last year, he addressed a gathering of nationalist monks in Sri Lanka, another nation with a Buddhist majority, warning of "a jihad against Buddhist monks."
But critics say Wirathu and his ilk, more often than not, are the ones inciting mob violence against Burma's Muslims, including non-Rohingya Muslims. Hundreds have died in recent years amid riots and tit-for-tat attacks.

Ye Myint Aung, the Burmese envoy in Hong Kong, hoped to dissuade others from feeling sympathy for the Rohingya. His method for doing this was by revealing his shocking racism. The Rohingya, he said, "are as ugly as ogres," and do not share the "fair and soft" skin of other Burmese ethnic groups.

Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:

confuzzled dude wrote:

Ye Myint Aung, the Burmese envoy in Hong Kong, hoped to dissuade others from feeling sympathy for the Rohingya. His method for doing this was by revealing his shocking racism. The Rohingya, he said, "are as ugly as ogres," and do not share the "fair and soft" skin of other Burmese ethnic groups.

Why do the Peaceful Muslims in all iSlamic countries want to drive out and destroy the non- mislims in their own countries AND cross over and occupy their much hated non-muslim countries?

nevada wrote:Burmese seem to have a history of discrimination. They kicked out the prosperous Indian community with nothing but the clothes on their back. Our Gujarati neighbors in Hyd were originally from Burma. They had a flourishing business, big house and vehicles etc. Then the Burmese government told them all to get out, leaving behind fixed assets, everything. They sold all that they could, changed their wealth to gold and precious stones. They bribed an immigration/emigration agent to let them through. But the day they departed, he didn't even report for duty and all their wealth was confiscated at the exit point.

At the same event I also met, very briefly, Dr. Krishnan Gurumurthy, who told me that he had read ‘The Glass Palace’ and that he was himself a survivor of the exodus from Burma that figures in the book. I have often urged people to record the memories of those who lived through that epic trek over the mountains of the India-Burma border. The last survivors are now in their seventies and eighties and their memories constitute an invaluable living archive. Very few published accounts of the march exist and most were written by Europeans; Asian accounts are exceedingly rare (this is one of the reasons why the historian Hugh Tinker described it as ‘The Forgotten Long March’[1]).

 First a few elements of the background: In 1941, when the 2nd World War spread to Asia, Rangoon was predominantly an ‘Indian’ city in that the majority of its population consisted of people of subcontinental origin or descent. According to the 1931 census, there were slightly more than a million Indians in Burma at the time; of these some sixty per cent (617,521) were born in India. The consequences of Indian migration into Burma were too complex to go into here. Suffice it to say that the through the 1920s and 30s, there were some powerful currents of hostility to the Indian presence in Burma. In 1930 bloody anti-Indian riots broke out in Rangoon and many thousands were killed. As a result of these developments, there was an increasing nervousness within the Indian population in Burma. 

Japan entered the 2nd World War with simultaneous attacks on Pearl Harbour and northern Malaya. On December 23 came the first Japanese air attacks on Rangoon. 

This attack created absolute panic in the city. It is important to remember perhaps that generally speaking, very few civilians had expected the war to spread to Asia. The survivors I spoke to were almost unanimous on this. The attitude is hard to account for because in military circles, Indian as well as British, it was well-known that the Japanese were preparing for war. Similarly, the British municipal authorities had made preparations for air-raids: trenches had been dug, an Air Raid Precautions authority was set up in Rangoon and other cities, on the model of similar bodies in London. Yet, psychologically, the civilian population of the British territories in Asia appear to have been completely unprepared for the coming war (Dr. Gurumurthy’s father was by no means unusual in this). 

The first Japanese air raid on Rangoon, was on December 23, 1941. The air raid of Dec 23 was followed by another on Dec 25. The air raids created chaos in the city. There was a general breakdown of law and order and the Indians, already wary after the riots of the past decade, began to panic.The perception was that the British were about to withdraw from Burma, and that in their absence, Burmese mobs would have free reign to terrorise the Indian population. Suddenly, the Indians began to move northwards. But without the Indians the city simply could not function: they made up almost the entire working class of Rangoon. The dockworkers were the first to abandon their jobs. This meant that essential supplies could not be unloaded from the ships in the Rangoon docks. Many of these vessels became sitting targets for Japanese bombers. 

A definite regional and linguistic pattern could be observed in the emigration of south Indian labourers to southeast Asian countries in the 19-20th centuries. Migration to Burma was basically a Telugu/circars phenomenon. The mainstream of emigration to Burma was from the northern coastal districts of Ganjam, Vizagapatam, Godavari and Kistna: together they contributed 70 percent of labour migrants from the Madras Presidency in 1921, the rest came from the extreme south viz., the Tamil districts.

Available data also show that the immigrants from the Telugu districts were by far the largest group among unskilled labourers of Rangoon which was primarily a city of immigrants. The share of Indian population in Rangoon increased from 26.5 in 1872 to 51 percent in 190118. Also, in Rangoon 75 percent of unskilled and 70 percent of skilled labour was Indian. Burma was certainly an important factor/feature in the ordinary life of the labouring classes of northern coastal districts. It was noted that among all the Telugu districts, Ganjam sent the largest number of labourers in any given year and thus provided more immigrants in Burma than any other Indian district, except Chittagang in 1921.

The Burma Census figures of 1921 on migration indicate that approximately 5 percent of the population of Ganjam, 3 percent each for Vizagapatam and Godavari districts were in Burma19. The only district of coastal Andhra in which the population decreased was Ganjam, where it had fallen by nearly 2 percent during the decade 1911-21, mainly due to emigration. Burmese developments had a profound influence on the coastal Andhra region and the presence of about three lakh Madrasis in Burma in the 1930’s was an indication of the importance of migration movements. In fact, the largest number of Telugu-speaking communities outside the coastal Andhra districts lived in Burma during the pre-1947 period. According to the Burma Census Report of 1931, the total Indian population was 5.22 lakhs, of whom Telugu were 1.32  lakhs or about 25 percent20. Despite the unfavourable conditions in the 1930’s, the lack of employment due to depression and anti-Indian troubles and riots, the Madras-born enumerated in Burma was 25,000 more numerous than in 1921, which indicated the hold that it had upon Madrasi labour. The difference between Burmese born found in Madras and Madras-born in Burma in 1931 was 2,94,000 in favour of the latter as  against 2,71,000 in 1921: the percentage of increase in this difference was 8.521.  

Whereas emigration to Malaysia was essentially a Tamil phenomenon, though not so pronounced as in the case of Ceylon, for few Telugu districts like Ganjam, Vizagapatam, Godavari, Chittoor etc., also contributed their labourers regularly. Hence, the Telugus constituted the second-largest ethnic group among the Indian immigrants in Malaya in the 1920’s. For instance, in 1921 they accounted for 8.5 percent of Indian population and 9 percent of the total south Indians living in Malay Peninsula22. In Malaysia, the Telugu coolies were conspicuous by their overwhelming presence in the rubber plantations of West Coast, viz., the lower Perak region. However, the great majority i.e. nearly 90 percent in Malaysia was from the southern districts of Madras province. The Madras-born persons in Malaya were 3.66 lakh in 1921, but by 1931 it increased to 5.83 lakhs. Thus, the Census Commissioner remarked: “Madrasis found abroad in Census time were more numerous in 1931 than in 1921”23. Trichinopoly, Tanjore, Salem, south and north Arcots districts made up the bulk of emigration to Malaysia. Available census figures show that the number of persons born or associated with Trichinopoly, who at Census time were removed from their district was 19 percent of the 1921 district population, for Pudukkottai it was 13 percent, and 7 percent each for Tanjore, Ramnad and Tinnevelly. Although, if looked at in terms of the whole of Madras Presidency the volume of migration might look insignificant, but for the specific districts and groups of people it was indeed very important. The three costal Andhra and the Kaveri valley/delta districts in the south accounted for the greater incidences of migration. Similarly, for the lower castes viz., Adi-Dravidas and AdiAndhras migration abroad was central to their economy and life-conditions. In fact, from an economic point of view the most important streams of emigration from Madras  province were those to Ceylon, Burma and Malaya, which acted as a “safety valve”. It must also be said that south Indian migration to southeast Asia was not a new phenomenon, for it goes back to centuries; yet its labour had heavily contributed to industrial prosperity of Malaysia and Burma particularly since the late nineteenth century.

confuzzled dude wrote:

nevada wrote:Burmese seem to have a history of discrimination. They kicked out the prosperous Indian community with nothing but the clothes on their back. Our Gujarati neighbors in Hyd were originally from Burma. They had a flourishing business, big house and vehicles etc. Then the Burmese government told them all to get out, leaving behind fixed assets, everything. They sold all that they could, changed their wealth to gold and precious stones. They bribed an immigration/emigration agent to let them through. But the day they departed, he didn't even report for duty and all their wealth was confiscated at the exit point.

That's quite an interesting analogy Nevada. Here is a piece on exodus from Burma

At the same event I also met, very briefly, Dr. Krishnan Gurumurthy, who told me that he had read ‘The Glass Palace’ and that he was himself a survivor of the exodus from Burma that figures in the book. I have often urged people to record the memories of those who lived through that epic trek over the mountains of the India-Burma border. The last survivors are now in their seventies and eighties and their memories constitute an invaluable living archive. Very few published accounts of the march exist and most were written by Europeans; Asian accounts are exceedingly rare (this is one of the reasons why the historian Hugh Tinker described it as ‘The Forgotten Long March’[1]).

 First a few elements of the background: In 1941, when the 2nd World War spread to Asia, Rangoon was predominantly an ‘Indian’ city in that the majority of its population consisted of people of subcontinental origin or descent. According to the 1931 census, there were slightly more than a million Indians in Burma at the time; of these some sixty per cent (617,521) were born in India. The consequences of Indian migration into Burma were too complex to go into here. Suffice it to say that the through the 1920s and 30s, there were some powerful currents of hostility to the Indian presence in Burma. In 1930 bloody anti-Indian riots broke out in Rangoon and many thousands were killed. As a result of these developments, there was an increasing nervousness within the Indian population in Burma. 

Japan entered the 2nd World War with simultaneous attacks on Pearl Harbour and northern Malaya. On December 23 came the first Japanese air attacks on Rangoon. 

This attack created absolute panic in the city. It is important to remember perhaps that generally speaking, very few civilians had expected the war to spread to Asia. The survivors I spoke to were almost unanimous on this. The attitude is hard to account for because in military circles, Indian as well as British, it was well-known that the Japanese were preparing for war. Similarly, the British municipal authorities had made preparations for air-raids: trenches had been dug, an Air Raid Precautions authority was set up in Rangoon and other cities, on the model of similar bodies in London. Yet, psychologically, the civilian population of the British territories in Asia appear to have been completely unprepared for the coming war (Dr. Gurumurthy’s father was by no means unusual in this). 

The first Japanese air raid on Rangoon, was on December 23, 1941. The air raid of Dec 23 was followed by another on Dec 25. The air raids created chaos in the city. There was a general breakdown of law and order and the Indians, already wary after the riots of the past decade, began to panic.The perception was that the British were about to withdraw from Burma, and that in their absence, Burmese mobs would have free reign to terrorise the Indian population. Suddenly, the Indians began to move northwards. But without the Indians the city simply could not function: they made up almost the entire working class of Rangoon. The dockworkers were the first to abandon their jobs. This meant that essential supplies could not be unloaded from the ships in the Rangoon docks. Many of these vessels became sitting targets for Japanese bombers. 

http://amitavghosh.com/blog/?p=432

Kris wrote:
 i didn't know about the fear of the British withdrawing. I thought it was just the Japanese raids. My mother's uncle and aunt were part of the exodus. The narrative in our family circles was that they had to walk much of the way and eventually ended up in Calcutta. The exodus included people who had to abandon all they had and had to leave in a hurry. My great uncle had been in the rice business or married into a family that had done well because of it. I remember him living as a widower next door to my grandparents, but don't remember him talking much. He was a philosophical sort and later moved to Kalakshetra colony. So, much of what I know is based on others' narratives.

bw wrote:

Kris wrote:
 i didn't know about the fear of the British withdrawing. I thought it was just the Japanese raids. My mother's uncle and aunt were part of the exodus. The narrative in our family circles was that they had to walk much of the way and eventually ended up in Calcutta. The exodus included people who had to abandon all they had and had to leave in a hurry. My great uncle had been in the rice business or married into a family that had done well because of it. I remember him living as a widower next door to my grandparents, but don't remember him talking much. He was a philosophical sort and later moved to Kalakshetra colony. So, much of what I know is based on others' narratives.

oh, so did my grandfather. he did the walk too, leaving everything behind. the family left earlier. it was during the japanese raids.

Hellsangel wrote:I have witnessed a few Karachi reunions. Maybe someone should organize a Rangoon reunion.

nevada wrote:Also, SL is another shining example of a Budhist nation that went apeshit against its minorities.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:looks like this burma thing was ubiquitous amongst tamilians. we too had a rangoon thatha in the extended family.

Seva Lamberdar wrote:

nevada wrote:Also, SL is another shining example of a Budhist nation that went apeshit against its minorities.

It seems nothing more than a media complaint funded probably by some oil-sheikdom or someone similar to look Muslims (including the Muslim countries) good and non-Muslims (including the majority non-Muslim countries) in bad light  ... just look at the headline of the article "Why does this Buddhist-majority nation hate these Muslims so much?"

confuzzled dude wrote:

Seva Lamberdar wrote:

nevada wrote:Also, SL is another shining example of a Budhist nation that went apeshit against its minorities.

It seems nothing more than a media complaint funded probably by some oil-sheikdom or someone similar to look Muslims (including the Muslim countries) good and non-Muslims (including the majority non-Muslim countries) in bad light  ... just look at the headline of the article "Why does this Buddhist-majority nation hate these Muslims so much?"

Thats' right! nothing ever can be Hindus & Buddhists fault. What would you like the title to be?

confuzzled dude wrote:

Seva Lamberdar wrote:

nevada wrote:Also, SL is another shining example of a Budhist nation that went apeshit against its minorities.

It seems nothing more than a media complaint funded probably by some oil-sheikdom or someone similar to look Muslims (including the Muslim countries) good and non-Muslims (including the majority non-Muslim countries) in bad light  ... just look at the headline of the article "Why does this Buddhist-majority nation hate these Muslims so much?"

Thats' right! nothing ever can be Hindus & Buddhists fault. What would you like the title to be?

confuzzled dude wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:looks like this burma thing was ubiquitous amongst tamilians. we too had a rangoon thatha in the extended family.

You guys are disproving Prof. Adapa's theory that Telugu's were majority in Rangoon but again most of the telugus in Rangoon were laborer. There was a telugu movie by name Rangoon Rowdy part of which was filmed in Rangoon.

nevada wrote:

confuzzled dude wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:looks like this burma thing was ubiquitous amongst tamilians. we too had a rangoon thatha in the extended family.

You guys are disproving Prof. Adapa's theory that Telugu's were majority in Rangoon but again most of the telugus in Rangoon were laborer. There was a telugu movie by name Rangoon Rowdy part of which was filmed in Rangoon.

Hindians also have a strong Burmese connection. Yesteryear vamp Helen is half or a quarter Burmese. And there is an old black and white Hindi song which goes "Mere piya gaye Rangoon, wahan se kiya hai telephoon" (my love went to Rangoon, called me from there on a telephone).

nevada wrote:

confuzzled dude wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:looks like this burma thing was ubiquitous amongst tamilians. we too had a rangoon thatha in the extended family.

You guys are disproving Prof. Adapa's theory that Telugu's were majority in Rangoon but again most of the telugus in Rangoon were laborer. There was a telugu movie by name Rangoon Rowdy part of which was filmed in Rangoon.

Hindians also have a strong Burmese connection. Yesteryear vamp Helen is half or a quarter Burmese. And there is an old black and white Hindi song which goes "Mere piya gaye Rangoon, wahan se kiya hai telephoon" (my love went to Rangoon, called me from there on a telephone).

Mohammed Roshid, a rice farmer, heard the gunfire and fled with his wife and children, but his 80-year-old father, who walks with a stick, wasn’t as nimble. Roshid said he saw a soldier grab Yusuf Ali and slit his throat with such ferocity that the old man was nearly decapitated.

“I wanted to go back and save him, but some relatives stopped me because there was so many military,” Roshid, 55, said. “It’s the saddest thing in my life that I could not do anything for my father.”

“They said, ‘You Bengalis come out from the house. You can go anywhere you want, but you can’t live here,’ ” Showife recalled.

He and his family members scattered, and he stopped to help his neighbor Mohammed Rafique, 17, whose right hip had been run clean through by a bullet, back to front. They ran through a mob looting homes and soldiers setting fire to other dwellings with shoulder-fired rocket launchers.

They walked for eight days with few provisions, eating banana leaves and drinking water from streams. The children whimpered. Showife carried Rafique on his back, the teen drifting in and out of consciousness. After a while, their legs began to swell.

Finally, they reached a crossing high on a hill marked by a simple pillar that they understood meant they had arrived in Bangladesh. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. It was raining. Before them was a new city of refugees, thousands of temporary tents made from bamboo poles covered in black plastic sheeting.

confuzzled dude wrote:

Mohammed Roshid, a rice farmer, heard the gunfire and fled with his wife and children, but his 80-year-old father, who walks with a stick, wasn’t as nimble. Roshid said he saw a soldier grab Yusuf Ali and slit his throat with such ferocity that the old man was nearly decapitated.

“I wanted to go back and save him, but some relatives stopped me because there was so many military,” Roshid, 55, said. “It’s the saddest thing in my life that I could not do anything for my father.”

“They said, ‘You Bengalis come out from the house. You can go anywhere you want, but you can’t live here,’ ” Showife recalled.

He and his family members scattered, and he stopped to help his neighbor Mohammed Rafique, 17, whose right hip had been run clean through by a bullet, back to front. They ran through a mob looting homes and soldiers setting fire to other dwellings with shoulder-fired rocket launchers.

They walked for eight days with few provisions, eating banana leaves and drinking water from streams. The children whimpered. Showife carried Rafique on his back, the teen drifting in and out of consciousness. After a while, their legs began to swell.

Finally, they reached a crossing high on a hill marked by a simple pillar that they understood meant they had arrived in Bangladesh. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. It was raining. Before them was a new city of refugees, thousands of temporary tents made from bamboo poles covered in black plastic sheeting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/blood-flowed-in-the-streets-refugees-from-one-rohingya-village-recount-days-of-horror/2017/09/15/34059ecc-9735-11e7-af6a-6555caaeb8dc_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_bangladeshcamp-950pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.170f1c5abbd8

Vakavaka Pakapaka wrote:
It is "us vs. them" that creates problems - history is full of such episodes. 

You are, perhaps, raising the question because you think Buddhists should be passive. You forget that Semitic religions rhetorically vomit the word peace (salaam, shalom, etc.) but indulge in unthinkable, barbaric violence against humanity. Buddhism essentially asks people to think rationally and solve problems with an informed mind. They don't look to the sky and ask an external agency to solve their individual problems.

confuzzled dude wrote:

Vakavaka Pakapaka wrote:
It is "us vs. them" that creates problems - history is full of such episodes. 

You are, perhaps, raising the question because you think Buddhists should be passive. You forget that Semitic religions rhetorically vomit the word peace (salaam, shalom, etc.) but indulge in unthinkable, barbaric violence against humanity. Buddhism essentially asks people to think rationally and solve problems with an informed mind. They don't look to the sky and ask an external agency to solve their individual problems.

So, what's happening in Myanmar is fully justified because Muslims elsewhere were/are violent.

The coast of what is now Burma’s Rakhine state was the center of what was once called the Kingdom of Arakan. The name Arakan has since been morphed into Rakhine and Rohingya over the years to describe both the indigenous and Muslim populations of the region.

Muslims lived in Arakan both as traders and as slaves captured by the king’s army from nearby Bengal. Over time, they developed a unique language that is not mutually intelligible with Bengali. Rakhine Buddhist and Muslim populations had been interacting for centuries by the time the Bamar, a larger ethnic group from the inland, took control of the coast in 1785. (The Bamar give their name to Burma, the modern country also known as Myanmar.)

Of a total of 1.1 million Rohingya that remained in Burma despite repeated waves of violence since the late 1970s, more than 400,000 have fled to neighboring Bangladesh in just the past month.

confuzzled dude wrote:

Ye Myint Aung, the Burmese envoy in Hong Kong, hoped to dissuade others from feeling sympathy for the Rohingya. His method for doing this was by revealing his shocking racism. The Rohingya, he said, "are as ugly as ogres," and do not share the "fair and soft" skin of other Burmese ethnic groups.
Therefore, the Burmese consul general concluded, "Rohingya are neither Myanmar people nor Myanmar’s ethnic group," using the other name for Burma while trotting out his government's long-standing contention that the Rohingya are interlopers in Burma and don't deserve citizenship rights.
More than half a decade has past since then and the situation in Burma has changed for the better. The country has opened up. The secretive, dictatorial military junta that once held sway has allowed the advent of a fledgling, albeit heavily curtailed democracy. Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was freed from decades of house arrest and is now a main leader of the opposition.
But the miserable condition of the Rohingya, a forgotten, stateless people, persists. The U.N. deems them "one of the most persecuted minorities in the world." There are some 1.3 million Rohingya, the majority of whom live in Burma's Rakhine state, on the western border with Bangladesh and India, and struggle to access basic state services. As WorldViews reported last year, around 140,000 Rohinigya eke out a squalid existence in ramshackle camps, displaced by ethnic and sectarian strife in 2013 and neglected by the Burmese government.
Recent U.N. calls on the Burmese government to grant the Rohingya full citizenship rights, including a General Assembly resolution passed in December, have been received with hostility. Angry anti-Rohingya marches this week persuaded the government to scrap tentative plans to give Rohingya carrying temporary documents the right to vote in an upcoming referendum.
Much of the ire is fanned by a hard-core of nationalist Buddhist monks. Certain groups play an outsize role in fanning sentiment against the Rohingya, whom they like to characterize as "Bengali" illegal immigrants rather than a distinct Burmese ethnic group. (Never mind that many generations of Rohingya have lived on what's Burmese soil.

Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist cleric notorious for his xenophobic rhetoric, even earned a spot on the cover of TIME magazine's International edition, with the cover line: "The Face of Buddhist Terror." The saffron-clad Wirathu dubs himself the "Burmese Bin Laden," and indulges in frenzied, un-monk-like speeches calling for tough action on Muslims. He raises the fear of forced conversions and terrorism. Last year, he addressed a gathering of nationalist monks in Sri Lanka, another nation with a Buddhist majority, warning of "a jihad against Buddhist monks."
But critics say Wirathu and his ilk, more often than not, are the ones inciting mob violence against Burma's Muslims, including non-Rohingya Muslims. Hundreds have died in recent years amid riots and tit-for-tat attacks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/02/13/why-does-this-buddhist-majority-nation-hate-these-muslims-so-much/

Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:

confuzzled dude wrote:

Seva Lamberdar wrote:

nevada wrote:Also, SL is another shining example of a Budhist nation that went apeshit against its minorities.

It seems nothing more than a media complaint funded probably by some oil-sheikdom or someone similar to look Muslims (including the Muslim countries) good and non-Muslims (including the majority non-Muslim countries) in bad light  ... just look at the headline of the article "Why does this Buddhist-majority nation hate these Muslims so much?"

Thats' right! nothing ever can be Hindus & Buddhists fault. What would you like the title to be?

Of course...Muslims are god's chosen people and offending them is offending God and any offense by them is like punishment by God - and everyone should accept it by reading Koran.

confuzzled dude wrote:

Vakavaka Pakapaka wrote:
It is "us vs. them" that creates problems - history is full of such episodes. 

You are, perhaps, raising the question because you think Buddhists should be passive. You forget that Semitic religions rhetorically vomit the word peace (salaam, shalom, etc.) but indulge in unthinkable, barbaric violence against humanity. Buddhism essentially asks people to think rationally and solve problems with an informed mind. They don't look to the sky and ask an external agency to solve their individual problems.

So, what's happening in Myanmar is fully justified because Muslims elsewhere were/are violent.