Buddhists attacking Muslims

harleysportster
atheist
harleysportster's picture
Posts: 3359
Joined: 2010-10-17
User is offlineOffline
Buddhists attacking Muslims

 It looks like religious conflicts extend beyond the simple Christian/Muslim dichotomy :

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/17/myanmar-mob-killsmorethanadozenmuslims.html

 

Myanmar: Buddhist group attacks Muslims

January 17, 2014 8:45AM ET

 

NGO says dozens may have been killed, while government denies attacks on religious minority in remote part of country

More than a dozen people may have been killed after a Buddhist group rampaged through a town in an isolated corner of Myanmar, hacking Muslim women and children with knives, a rights group reported Friday.

A government official said the situation was tense but denied any deaths.

Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million people, has been grappling with sectarian violence for nearly two years. More than 240 people have been killed and another 250,000, mostly Muslims, forced to flee their homes.

Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, an advocacy group that documents abuses against members of the Rohingya Muslim minority, told The Associated Press that details about the violence that occurred early Tuesday morning in northern Rakhine state were still emerging, with many conflicting reports.

It is one of the most isolated regions in the country, both politically and geographically, and access to foreigners is denied or severely restricted. The death toll could range anywhere between 10 and 60, said Lewa, whose sources range from a village administrator to witnesses.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which runs a nearby clinic, said it was concerned that residents who fled the area may need medical care.

"MSF confirms that on Wednesday it saw two wounded people suffering from injuries inflicted as a result of violence — one from a gunshot wound and the other exhibiting injuries consistent with a beating,"  Peter-Paul de Groote, head of MSF's Myanmar mission, told Reuters.

Religious minority

Tensions have been building in the region since last month, when monks from a Buddhist extremist movement known as 969 toured the area and gave sermons by loudspeaker advocating the expulsion of all Rohingya, who make up 90 percent of the population in northern Rakhine. It's the only place where the religious minority is in the majority.

A volunteer English teacher who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals said an initial flare-up followed the discovery of three bodies in a ditch near Du Char Yar Tan village.

Villagers alerted the friends and neighbors of a group of eight Rohingya who went missing after being detained by authorities days earlier, and a group returned to the bodies with cell phones to take pictures, the teacher said.

When police went to the village to confiscate the phones and check family lists, a crowd turned on the officers, beating and chasing them off, the English teacher said. The police returned at 2 a.m., saying one of their men had gone missing, he said, which triggered a security crackdown.

Soldiers and police surrounded the village, breaking down doors and looting livestock and other valuables. Almost all the men fled, leaving the women, children and elderly behind, he said.

Lewa said her sources reported that Rohingya women and children had been hacked to death, but the numbers varied widely. Some put the death toll as low as five or 10, but one source who works for the administration in Maungdaw town said it is widely believed 40 died, mostly women and children.

That some of the victims appeared to have been stabbed with knives, not shot or beaten, "would clearly indicate the massacre was committed by (Buddhist) Rakhine villagers, rather than the police or army," the Arakan Project wrote in a briefing Thursday.

 

 

 

 

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno


iwbiek
atheistSuperfan
iwbiek's picture
Posts: 4298
Joined: 2008-03-23
User is offlineOffline
this is nothing new.


this is nothing new. especially in theravada countries like burma and sri lanka, "buddhist" is basically a national identifier. i'm not terribly knowledgable about burma (myanmar), but it is one of the major theravada buddhist countries in the world. the others are sri lanka and thailand. in sri lanka, "buddhist" is basically the way the majority sinhalese identify themselves against the "hindu" tamils.

theravada buddhism, unlike its mahayana cousin, especially in japan, is strictly monk-centered. if lay people are religious in theravada counties, it's usually in the sense of native, pre-buddhist polytheism. in sri lanka, they have a saying that one is a buddhist at one's wedding, one's death, and other momentous events. the rest of the time, one worships the gods and doesn't give buddhism much thought, because the practice of buddhism is the prerogative of the monks, and the most a layman can hope for in progressing as a buddhist is to be reborn as a monk.

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


digitalbeachbum
atheistRational VIP!
digitalbeachbum's picture
Posts: 4895
Joined: 2007-10-15
User is offlineOffline
iwbiek wrote: this is

iwbiek wrote:

this is nothing new. especially in theravada countries like burma and sri lanka, "buddhist" is basically a national identifier. i'm not terribly knowledgable about burma (myanmar), but it is one of the major theravada buddhist countries in the world. the others are sri lanka and thailand. in sri lanka, "buddhist" is basically the way the majority sinhalese identify themselves against the "hindu" tamils.

theravada buddhism, unlike its mahayana cousin, especially in japan, is strictly monk-centered. if lay people are religious in theravada counties, it's usually in the sense of native, pre-buddhist polytheism. in sri lanka, they have a saying that one is a buddhist at one's wedding, one's death, and other momentous events. the rest of the time, one worships the gods and doesn't give buddhism much thought, because the practice of buddhism is the prerogative of the monks, and the most a layman can hope for in progressing as a buddhist is to be reborn as a monk.

An awesome response.


Brian37
atheistSuperfan
Brian37's picture
Posts: 16422
Joined: 2006-02-14
User is offlineOffline
"But the majority of

"But the majority of religious people don't do this"

That is the argument some here have made, missing the point as to why I call religion a poison.

It is a DESTRACTION that allows humans to ignore that we are not different in that we have always been capable of BOTH cruelty and compassion.

Religion sets up the stupid idea that a label invented human morality, rather than the reality that morality is outside our human concocted clubs.

It is also why I warn atheists not to go arround saying "When we become a majority we will treat you better".

Evolution doesnt care if your success is made by cruelty or compassion. The sooner we face reality the more managable our divisions can be, even though they will never completely go away.

 

Buddhists attacked Muslims, is not a shocker to me, they've also attacked each other in the history of that religion.

 

We use labels as excuses to treat other human beings as sub human, it allows us to harm them.

 

Ricky Gervais made the analogy and I agree, to the affect of "Accusing the atheist of hating religious people is like accusing someone for hating cancer" You don't hate the person with cancer, you simply hate the cancer.

I hate what religion does to people, and this is yet another example.

 

 

 

 

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog


iwbiek
atheistSuperfan
iwbiek's picture
Posts: 4298
Joined: 2008-03-23
User is offlineOffline
Brian37 wrote:That is the

Brian37 wrote:
That is the argument some here have made, missing the point as to why I call religion a poison.



nobody made that argument here. go back and read the thread again. my "argument" (and i wasn't making an argument really, only commenting) was that theravada buddhists (which practically all burmese buddhists are) are especially prone to violent outbreaks like this, compared to other buddhists, because for them "buddhist" is more a question of nationality than belief. they don't kill because buddhism tells them to kill (quite the opposite)--they kill because they're xenophobic.


a similar example to burma is the age-old conflict between the buddhist sinhalese and the shaivite tamils in sri lanka. to try to argue hypotheticals is usually pointless, but if there were ever a situation where i would say with certainty that a conflict between two peoples would be inevitable, regardless of the presence or absence of cultural superstructures like religion, it's there. were there no buddhism and no shaivism, the sinhalese and tamils would fight regardless, as long as they both occupied lanka. religion is purely accidental in that conflict and even to attempt to argue otherwise shows gross ignorance. i'm sure that won't stop you, however; it hasn't yet.


and i keep telling you, i haven't miss your point. i don't think anyone has. i understand it completely. a toddler could understand it. it's just a shitty point. it's equally shitty when hitchens et al. make it, though they couch it in (slightly) more sophisticated language.


Brian37 wrote:

Buddhists attacked Muslims, is not a shocker to me, they've also attacked each other in the history of that religion.



a history you're suddenly familiar with? please give us a few examples of intra-religious violent conflict among buddhists.


Brian37 wrote:

You don't hate the person with cancer, you simply hate the cancer.



"love the sinner, hate the sin," in other words. that's not the first time you've coopted a jesus camp cliche in the service of atheism.

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


Vastet
atheistBloggerSuperfan
Vastet's picture
Posts: 13234
Joined: 2006-12-25
User is offlineOffline
Brian37 wrote: rather than

Brian37 wrote:
rather than the reality that morality is outside our human concocted clubs.

Ridiculous. It is in fact when groups of people who share morals come together when the morality of a society is born. It most certainly does not come from outside those 'clubs', it comes from inside them.

We all know why you call religion a poison, and we also all know you are dead wrong.

Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.