Contesting Buddhist Narratives

Contesting Buddhist Narratives PDF Author: Matthew J. Walton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780866382533
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 65

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Book Description
Myanmar's transition to democracy has been marred by violence between Buddhists and Muslims. While the violence originally broke out between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, it subsequently emerged throughout the country, impacting Buddhists and Muslims of many ethnic backgrounds. This article offers background on these so-called "communal conflicts" and the rise and evolution of Buddhist nationalist groups led by monks that have spearheaded anti-Muslim campaigns. The authors describe how current monastic political mobilization can be understood as an extension of past monastic activism, and is rooted in traditional understandings of the monastic community's responsibility to defend the religion, respond to community needs, and guide political decision-makers. The authors propose a counter-argument rooted in Theravada Buddhism to address the underlying anxieties motivating Buddhist nationalists while directing them toward peaceful actions promoting coexistence. Additionally, given that these conflicts derive from wider political, economic, and social dilemmas, the authors offer a prescription of complementary policy initiatives.--Résumé de l'éditeur.

Contesting Buddhist Narratives

Contesting Buddhist Narratives PDF Author: Matthew J. Walton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780866382533
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 65

Get Book Here

Book Description
Myanmar's transition to democracy has been marred by violence between Buddhists and Muslims. While the violence originally broke out between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, it subsequently emerged throughout the country, impacting Buddhists and Muslims of many ethnic backgrounds. This article offers background on these so-called "communal conflicts" and the rise and evolution of Buddhist nationalist groups led by monks that have spearheaded anti-Muslim campaigns. The authors describe how current monastic political mobilization can be understood as an extension of past monastic activism, and is rooted in traditional understandings of the monastic community's responsibility to defend the religion, respond to community needs, and guide political decision-makers. The authors propose a counter-argument rooted in Theravada Buddhism to address the underlying anxieties motivating Buddhist nationalists while directing them toward peaceful actions promoting coexistence. Additionally, given that these conflicts derive from wider political, economic, and social dilemmas, the authors offer a prescription of complementary policy initiatives.--Résumé de l'éditeur.

Myanmar’s Buddhist-Muslim Crisis

Myanmar’s Buddhist-Muslim Crisis PDF Author: John Clifford Holt
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824881877
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Myanmar’s Buddhist-Muslim Crisis is a probing search into the reasons and rationalizations behind the violence occurring in Myanmar, especially the oppressive military campaigns waged against Rohingya Muslims by the army in 2016 and 2017. Over more than three years John Holt traveled around Myanmar engaging in sustained conversations with prominent and articulate participants and observers. What emerges from his peregrinations is a series of compelling portraits revealing both deep insights and entrenched misunderstandings. To understand the conflict, Holt must first accurately capture the viewpoints of his different conversation partners, who include Buddhists and Muslims, men and women, monks and laypeople, activists and scholars. Conversations range widely over issues such as the rise of Buddhist nationalism; the sometimes enigmatic and unexpected positions taken by Aung San Suu Kyii; use of the controversial term “Rohingya”; the impact of state-sponsored propaganda on the Burmese public; resistance to narratives emanating from international media, the United Nations, and the international diplomatic community; the frustrations of local political leaders who have felt left out of the policy-making process in the Rakhine State; and the constructive hopes and efforts still being made by forward-looking activists in Yangon. Three main perspectives emerge from the voices he listens to, those of Arakanese Buddhists who are native to Rakhine (once called Arakan), where much of the conflict has taken place; Burmese Buddhists (or Bamars), who make up the vast majority of Myanmar’s population; and the Rohingya Muslims, whose tragic story has been widely disseminated by the international media. What surfaces in conversation after conversation among all three groups is a narrative of siege: all see themselves as the aggrieved party, and all recount a history of being under siege. John Holt gives voice to these different perspectives as an engaged and concerned participant, offering both a critical and empathetic account of Myanmar’s tragic predicament. Readers follow the hopes and dismay of this seasoned scholar of Theravada Buddhism as he seeks his own understanding of the variously impassioned forces in play in this still unfolding drama.

Myanmar's Enemy Within

Myanmar's Enemy Within PDF Author: Francis Wade
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1783605308
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
For decades Myanmar has been portrayed as a case of good citizen versus bad regime – men in jackboots maintaining a suffocating rule over a majority Buddhist population beholden to the ideals of non-violence and tolerance. But in recent years this narrative has been upended. In June 2012, violence between Buddhists and Muslims erupted in western Myanmar, pointing to a growing divide between religious communities that before had received little attention from the outside world. Attacks on Muslims soon spread across the country, leaving hundreds dead, entire neighbourhoods turned to rubble, and tens of thousands of Muslims confined to internment camps. This violence, breaking out amid the passage to democracy, was spurred on by monks, pro-democracy activists and even politicians. In this gripping and deeply reported account, Francis Wade explores how the manipulation of identities by an anxious ruling elite has laid the foundations for mass violence, and how, in Myanmar’s case, some of the most respected and articulate voices for democracy have turned on the Muslim population at a time when the majority of citizens are beginning to experience freedoms unseen for half a century.

The Minority Muslim Experience in Mainland Southeast Asia

The Minority Muslim Experience in Mainland Southeast Asia PDF Author: John Goodman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000415341
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
This book examines the lives of the Malay and Cham Muslims in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and examines how they co-exist and live in societies that are dominated by an alternative consensus and are illiberal and non-democratic in nature. Focusing on two major Muslim communities in Southeast Asia, both of whom live as minorities in societies that are not democratic and have a history of hostility and repression towards non-conforming ideas, the book explains their circumstances, the choices and life decisions they have to make, and how minorities can thrive in an unfriendly, monocultural environment. Based on original field work and research, the author analyses how people live, and how they adapt to societies which are not motivated by Western liberal ideals of multiculturalism. The book also offers a unique perspective on how Islam develops in an environment where it is seen as alien and disloyal. A useful contribution analyzing historical and post-colonial experiences of Muslim minorities and how they survive and evolve over the course of state monopoly in mainland Southeast Asia, this book will be of interest to academics working on Muslim minorities, Asian Religion and Southeast Asian Studies.

Myanmar's 'Rohingya' Conflict

Myanmar's 'Rohingya' Conflict PDF Author: Anthony Ware
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190928867
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Offers new analysis of the complexities of the conflict and new insights into what is preventing a peaceful resolution to this intractable

The Rohingyas

The Rohingyas PDF Author: Azeem Ibrahim
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849049734
Category : Burma
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
The Rohingya are a Muslim group who live in Rakhine state (formerly Arakan state) in western Myanmar (Burma), a majority Buddhist country. According to the United Nations, they are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. They suffer routine discrimination at the hands of neighboring Buddhist Rakhine groups, but international human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) have also accused Myanmar's authorities of being complicit in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya Muslims. The Rohingya face regular violence, arbitrary arrest and detention, extortion, and other abuses, a situation that has been particularly acute since 2012 in the wake of a serious wave of sectarian violence. Islam is practiced by around 4% of the population of Myanmar, and most Muslims also identify as Rohingya. Yet the authorities refuse to recognize this group as one of the 135 ethnic groups or 'national races' making up Myanmar's population. On this basis, Rohingya individuals are denied citizenship rights in the country of their birth, and face severe limitations on many aspects of an ordinary life, such as marriage or movement around the country. This expose of the attempt to erase the Rohingyas from the face of Myanmar is sure to gain widespread attention.

Memories of Burmese Rohingya Refugees

Memories of Burmese Rohingya Refugees PDF Author: Kazi Fahmida Farzana
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137583606
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
This book provides a critical analysis of the Rohingya refugees’ identity building processes and how this is closely linked to the state-building process of Myanmar as well as issues of marginalization, statelessness, forced migration, exile life, and resistance of an ethnic minority. With a focus on the ethnic minority’s life at the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, the author demonstrates how the state itself is involved in the construction of identity, which it manipulates for its own political purposes. The study is based on original research, largely drawn from fieldwork data. It presents an alternative and endogenous interpretation of the problem in contrast to the exogenous narrative espoused by state institutions, non-governmental organizations, and the media.

The Muslims of Burma

The Muslims of Burma PDF Author: Moshe Yegar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Muslims
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description


Arakan (Rakhine State)

Arakan (Rakhine State) PDF Author: Martin Smith
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789070563691
Category : Communalism
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description


Identity and Ethnic Relations in Southeast Asia

Identity and Ethnic Relations in Southeast Asia PDF Author: Chee Kiong Tong
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048189098
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Modern nation states do not constitute closed entities. This is true especially in Southeast Asia, where Chinese migrants have continued to make their new homes over a long period of time, resulting in many different ethnic groups co-existing in new nation states. Focusing on the consequences of migration, and cultural contact between the various ethnic groups, this book describes and analyses the nature of ethnic identity and state of ethnic relations, both historically and in the present day, in multi-ethnic, pluralistic nation states in Southeast Asia. Drawing on extensive primary fieldwork in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Burma, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, the book examines the mediations, and transformation of ethnic identity and the social incorporation, tensions and conflicts and the construction of new social worlds resulting from cultural contact among different ethnic groups.