One prisoner's path from racism to Buddhism

I try not to post news stories verbatim without some commentary, but the following story (by AP writer Maria Sudekum Fisher) speaks for itself.

From The Wichita Eagle, Kansas:

Tony Farnan's back tells a story.

"White Trash" is tattooed across the lower portion. A handcuffed, clenched fist with lightning bolts and a swastika takes up much of the middle. Farnan got the tattoos when he was younger, doing drugs, picking fights and living up to his identity as a pretty rough racist.

Picture of Tony Farnan showing back his tattoo.
From this article in the Lansing State Journal.
But now "White Trash" is covered up with another tattoo, a large purple lotus blossom. The clenched fist has been turned into a great big foo dog, the mythical Chinese protector of sacred places. If you look hard enough, you can make out the fist. But you have to know it's there.

Farnan, 41, has spent hours and thousands of dollars having his tattoos covered up; at $300 a square inch, the cost of removing them was too high. But he's made other, more important changes too.

He now takes care of his 95-year-old grandfather at their farmhouse outside Newton. He has sworn off drugs, violence and anything else that helped land him in jail. He's no longer racist.

Farnan owes this new life to a discovery he made in prison.

"Buddhism has basically saved my life," Farnan says.

Farnan is one of a growing number of people who have discovered Buddhism while behind bars, thanks in part to the popularity of the religion nationwide and to the scores of Buddhist volunteers heading into prisons to tend to inmates, male and female, who were raised Buddhist or those who discovered the ancient religion later.

[...]

Several organizations nationwide now serve Buddhist inmates. The Prison Dharma Network in Boulder, Colo., gives yoga and meditation classes to inmates and also sends books and correspondence to prisoners across the country. The Buddhist Peace Fellowship in Berkeley, Calif., has meditation, yoga, and journal writing programs in several California prisons. The National Buddhist Prison Sangha in Mt. Tremper, N.Y., has been supporting prison inmates with visits and letters since 1984.

Farnan's route to Buddhism started on his third trip back to prison in 1999.

"I was known as a mighty whitey," he says. "In the '80s, in prison you had to pick sides, so I picked the white guys. You could say I was an extremist."

Farnan picked a fight with a young inmate at the Sedgwick County jail, where he was serving time for possession of drugs and burglary. Farnan roughed up the other guy badly.

When Farnan returned to his cell, he was overcome with something unfamiliar.

"I had the feeling like I had just beat up my little brother," he says. "I thought, `I have to do something.'

"Two hours later I was sitting on the cell floor crying because I had no idea what to do. I thought, `What I want to do is I want to be a man of honor and integrity, most of all.'"

[...]

He had learned about meditation from studying martial arts. So he started meditating. That helped some. Then Farnan started studying philosophy, ordering books from the outside. Immanuel Kant was appealing.

"I knew what not to do, and eventually things started becoming more clear to me about what was right and what was wrong."

He got books on Buddhism, which gave him some guidelines. But months later after he had been sent to the Norton Correctional Facility, Farnan needed a teacher. He looked for a Buddhist session - or callout as it is referred to in prison. Norton didn't have one, so Farnan got by with his books and meditation.

Then he was moved to the Lansing Correctional Facility, where a Buddhist group had been meeting regularly.

"I wasn't looking for a religion. I was looking for some direction and something that could help guide me."

The callouts helped. But for the most part Farnan did "a lot of deep meditation and thinking," trying to keep things simple.

"I don't know, it was probably 2002, early 2003, when I really understood that compassion was kind of the answer.

"So here I am with the realization that I had to be nice. How am I going to do that in prison? I was little concerned about acceptance. More so than I had ever been."

In prison, where hierarchy and pecking orders are a way of life, child molesters are on a bottom rung. But Farnan, armed with a need to show kindness, sought them out. The child molesters ate alone, so Farnan joined them for meals.

Other inmates told him he was nuts to be sitting with them. Farnan told them they were all capable of horrible things. Some might not act out, but they were capable.

He started curbing his impulses, too. If another inmate was playing music too loud, the old Farnan would have gone over, picked up the radio and smashed it.

"Now I realized that everyone is suffering, and he's probably playing the music loud to ease his suffering. I still might ask him to lower the volume. But I wouldn't smash it."

Farnan, who was released from custody in February 2006, makes a living doing foundation repair. He also tutors people in math and meditates daily. His friends and family notice the change, and ask him what's different.

He doesn't give long explanations. But if they ask about the lotus blossom and the foo dog tattoos, he might tell them how they relate to life as a Buddhist.

"I don't take my shirt off a lot," Farnan says. "But if I do, I don't want to offend anyone.

"I used to be proud to wear those tattoos, but this time in prison, I was ashamed. I decided if I really believe what I'm doing, then I have to change everything, including that."

So he is.

The Lansing State Journal has another article by the same writer containing more information about Buddhist prison ministry.

南無阿彌陀佛

The fire of hatred

Update: Flopping Aces questions the authenticity of reports of burnings from Iraq, noting that they might contain fabrications or exaggerations by those wishing to exacerbate the situation there. See also The Lede (a New York Times blog).

---

Fire is one of the most destructive and fearsome processes in nature. In Buddhist teachings, fire is often used as a metaphor for anger and hatred, due to its ability to spread quickly and burn out of control, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.

Two horrific stories today illustrate the close relationship between fire and hatred.

In Thailand, the Islamist terrorists continue to target civilians. From The Nation:

Nont Chaisuwan, 51, the director of Bang Kao School in Pattani, was shot while driving home after school. His car crashed into the roadside after the attack. The gunmen then set fire to the car and burned him alive, police said.

Four men and a woman were injured in a bomb blast at a grocery shop in Yala's Yaha district at 2pm. Police said the bomb was hidden under a stall in front of the shop, which is at the mouth of a lane leading to the Yaha Pracharam Buddhist temple.

Shop owner Apinan Yothinkamchornchai was severely injured, along with his customers.

Insurgents burned down a Provincial Electricity Authority office in Yala, causing a Bt15-million loss.

Security guard Manwan Ismail said at least 10 hooded insurgents wearing black arrived at the authority's office in Bannang Sata district at around 3am.

One forced him to crouch at gunpoint. The others destroyed the closed-circuit-camera control room and then other rooms before setting fire to the building. They also used burning motorcycle tyres to set fire to five cranes and trucks.

Police suspect the attackers were the same group that burned down the district's Land Office on Monday. Their faces were captured by closed-circuit cameras during that attack.

In Narathiwat, a building at Ban Bo Thong School in Rangae district was set on fire just after 1am.

School director Banyat Tannu said the 10-year-old building with five classrooms was for 261 students in kindergarten and first and second grades. It also had a prayer room. He said he would find tents to use as classrooms.

The arson attack occurred despite the best efforts of the village chief and defence volunteers to protect the school, which made people feel discouraged, he said.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, the cycle of revenge continues. From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Revenge-seeking militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left prayers and burned them alive with kerosene in a savage new twist to the brutality shaking Baghdad today.

The attack in the Iraqi capital came a day after suspected Sunni insurgents killed more than 200 people in Baghdad's main Shi'ite district.

Iraqi soldiers at a nearby army post failed to intervene in yesterday's assault by suspected members of the Shi'ite Mehdi Army militia or subsequent attacks that killed at least 19 other Sunnis, including women and children, in the same area, the volatile Hurriyah district in north-west Baghdad, said police Captain Jamil Hussein.

Most of the thousands of dead bodies that have been found dumped across Baghdad and other cities in central Iraq in recent months have been of victims who were tortured and then shot to death, according to police. The suspected militia killers often have used electric drills on their captives' bodies before killing them. The bodies are frequently decapitated.

But burning victims alive introduced a new method of brutality that was likely to be reciprocated by the other sect as the Shi'ites and Sunnis continue killing one another in unprecedented numbers.

The gruesome attack, which came despite a curfew in Baghdad, capped a day in which at least 87 people were killed or found dead in sectarian violence throughout Iraq.

In Hurriyah, the rampaging militiamen also burned and blew up four mosques and torched several homes in the district, Hussein said. [...]

But Imad al-Hasimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriyah, confirmed Hussein's account of the immolations. He told Al-Arabiya television he saw people who were drenched in kerosene and then set afire, burning to death before his eyes.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, the most influential Sunni organisation in Iraq, said even more victims were burned to death in attacks on the four mosques. It claimed a total of 18 people had died in an inferno at the al-Muhaimin mosque. [...]

The insurgents in Thailand and Iraq are in fact contravening an injunction by the prophet of Islam forbidding the use of fire to burn one's enemies. From the hadith collection of Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 84, Number 57:

Narrated 'Ikrima:

Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to 'Ali and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn 'Abbas who said, "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's Apostle forbade it, saying, 'Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire).' I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Apostle, 'Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.'"

See also Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 260.

The insurgents claim that they are fighting for Islam. The least they can do is to refrain from violating the dictates of the religion. (That they murder apostates is abhorrent — but it is not also hypocritical.) But they are so consumed by hatred that they likely won't care about such technicalities.

The Buddha taught that there is only one way to overcome hatred. From the Dhammapada [法句經], Chapter 1, verse 5:

Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is an eternal law.

在這世上，恨絕不能止恨，唯有慈愛方能止恨，這是永恆的真理。

When someone has wronged you, it is extremely difficult to maintain a feeling of loving-kindness [Pali mettâ; Sanskrit maitrî मैत्री; Chinese 慈] towards that person. And yet, this is a lesson that the terrorists must sooner or later learn. Their current habit of acting out in violence not only causes injury and death all about them, but will ultimately visit destruction and ruin upon themselves.

南無阿彌陀佛

South East Asian Muslims to promote "home-grown Islam"

As I have described in this previous post, the kind of Islam that was traditionally practised in South East Asia is mystical, tolerant, and heavily influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism, animism, and other local religions. For the past several decades, this kind of Islam has been gradually replaced by more hardline strains of the religion from the Middle East.

Muslim clerics and scholars from SE Asia plan to fight this trend. From Reuters:

Muslim clerics and scholars from Southeast Asia endorsed on Friday a regional plan to promote and preach home-grown Islam to check the rising influence of radical teachings from the Middle East.

Three days of discussion in Manila on the state of Islamic preaching, education and law in Southeast Asia ended on Friday with a plan to formulate a local method of interpreting Islam, focusing on moderation and development.

[...]

Some Muslim leaders in SE Asia seem to have realised that it is not in the interest of their communities to be turned into pawns of foreign powers from the Middle East. However, their fight to preserve local religious attitudes and traditions against Middle Eastern influence will be an uphill battle, since their adversaries are both well-financed and can lay claim to being from the historic and geographic heart of the Islamic world.

The alternative, however, is to lose their culture, as the following story from The Wall Street Journal (via The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via Dhimmi Watch) illustrates:

Rohimah Zakaria, dressed in a fringed black tunic and matching pants, with a silver dagger tucked into the waist, rocked hypnotically on a wooden stage at the edge of this rural village. [...]

Mrs. Zakaria, who is a Muslim, is one of the last experts in Mak Yong, an endangered form of dance theater rooted in the animist and Hindu religions that held sway in Southeast Asia long before Islam arrived eight centuries ago. In more recent times, the dance has been deemed un-Islamic by Parti Islam, the political party ruling this lush, tropical seaside state of Kelantan on the South China Sea.

Since the local arbiters of taste banned Mak Yong 15 years ago, people like Mrs. Zakaria have performed it in secret. And because interest is waning, her troupe has been able to stage just a handful of shows in the past year.

The version Mrs. Zakaria did this recent night was just a 20-minute sketch, not the traditional three-hour performance. And there was no shaman to put in his traditional healing appearance at the end. The performance was put on mainly to give visitors from Kuala Lumpur a taste of the culture.

"It's not the same," Mrs. Zakaria sighed. "But at least people can see a little of what it's like."

[...]

For centuries, ancient traditions coexisted easily with Islam. In Malaysia, village girls learned dances like the Mak Yong, which is performed by an all-female cast. Village boys learned the Wayang Kulit, a shadow puppet theater that originated in Indonesia and Malaysia to tell Hindu epic tales.

No longer. A handful of senior citizens in Kelantan, the heartland of Malay culture, are the last to practice traditional theater.

"What you have is the gradual emergence of a new generation of Malaysian Muslims who will be completely cut off from their past," says Farish Ahmad Noor, a Malaysian political scientist at the Center for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin. "They're losing their cultural compass."

Many Southeast Asian Muslims now navigate by guideposts from the Arab world. Young men in Indonesia are starting to wear turbans and grow beards. In Malaysia, Malays have adopted the Arab word for prayer, salat, to replace the Malay word, sembahyang, which literally means "offer homage to the primal ancestor."

[...]

Kelantan is also Parti Islam's stronghold. When the party won the state in 1990, its ultraconservative state leader, Nik Aziz Nik Mat, ordered grocery stores to provide separate lines for men and women, and told girls they could no longer take part in Quran reading competitions that are popular in schools. He banned Mak Yong and Wayang Kulit.

"We need to purify our local theater from those alien elements," says Mr. Aziz, a somber-looking man in a flowing white robe who has a thin gray beard on the point of his chin. Mak Yong and Islam co-existed peacefully for so long only because Malay Muslims didn't know any better, he says. [...]

I would like to know just how Mr. Aziz can justify his claim that the indigenous cultural traditions are more "alien" than Islam.

Rituals like this are now performed in secret by a handful of retirees like Mrs. Zakaria and Mek Jah binti Deris, 61, another Mak Yong dancer who grew up in a village in South Kelantan. Mrs. Mek Jah last performed in October for a neighbor who was feeling low. Mrs. Mek Jah knows Mak Yong is illegal, but she doesn't care. "We have to do this to balance nature," she says.

Mrs. Mek Jah's two sons-in-law are having none of that. They have forbidden their children to learn the dance. The two men used to pull Mrs. Mek Jah aside at family dinners and beg her to quit, says her brother, Muhammed Nor, 64. "It's terrible. Nowadays, you have young people who tell their parents 'Don't die and go to hell because of this.'"

"The younger generation is very narrow-minded," sighs Mrs. Mek Jah, a compact, feisty woman dressed in a tunic and a bright yellow Muslim headscarf.

Life is more black and white, argues Mr. Aziz. Things are either Islamic or they aren't. He recently lifted the ban on the Wayang Kulit, provided puppeteers substitute Islamic stories for the traditional Hindu epics. And shamans are out. "That kind of 'healing' is not in line with Islam," he says.

Although many moderate Malays worry that their culture is fading, few speak up. One of the most vocal champions of Malay culture in Kelantan is Eddin Khoo, who is of Chinese-Indian descent. He runs a foundation to keep Malay arts alive and has scrounged up funding to stage a few traditional shows each year and train youngsters in Kelantan in traditional Malay arts. No kids have signed on. [...]

It's noteworthy that even as Malay Muslims discard their indigenous culture, it is preserved by someone who is not of Malay descent. Non-Muslim minorities often become the guardians and preservers of the pre-Islamic cultures in Islamic societies. For example, the art of wine-making and traditional Persian music were safeguarded in Shi`ite Iran by Iranian Jews.

This tension is beginning to worry some in the capital of Kuala Lumpur. "The upsurge in Islamization is part of the process of searching for identity," says Culture Minister Rais Yatim. "If we don't guide that, it could well go off on a tangent, and it could be very difficult to revive culture."

His office staged Mrs. Zakaria's recent performance of a watered-down Mak Yong. Her bit was followed by a five-minute Wayang Kulit show. The event drew a few hundred villagers. At the back of the field, a group of women wearing headscarves sat on the grass, feeding their children rice and coconut curry. It was enough, however, to upset Parti Islam, which later described the show as "a sign of disrespect."

Why can't the Parti Islam respect the indigenous cultural traditions?

南無阿彌陀佛

Cutest. Lama. Ever.

From Buddhism-Online:

Four-year-old Goinbo Dungzhi has been enthroned as the seventh Kungtangcang living Buddha and the reincarnation of the sixth who died in 2000, said officials in a Tibetan community of northwest China's Gansu Province on Thursday.

A grand enthronement was held at the Labrang Lamasery in Xiahe county of the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture on Monday in line with the rituals of Tibetan Buddhism.

[...]

The sixth Kungtangcang Danbawangqu living Buddha, who died aged 75, was enthroned in 1931 when he was six years old. He was a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, China's top political advisory body, and vice president of the Buddhist Association of China.

There are basically two sets of Tibetan Buddhist Lamas — one loyal to the Dalai Lama, and a parallel one loyal to China.

When the tenth Panchen Lama passed away, the Communist government of China kidnapped the child recognised by the Dalai Lama as the eleventh Panchen Lama, and enthroned its own appointee instead. This is significant because the Panchen Lama is responsible for finding the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama.

By asserting control over the process of selecting the next incarnation of Tibetan Lamas, the Communist government is gradually taking over the Tibetan Buddhist religious hierarchy. The seventh "Kungtangcang living Buddha" will undoubtedly be carefully taught by the Communists to toe the Party line.

南無阿彌陀佛

Wishful thinking blinds us to dangers of religious fanaticism

As the situation in Thailand deteriorates (see this post and this post), Buddhists are waking up to the reality and dangers posed by fanatics who wish to impose Islamic rule upon them. But in spite of the situation, many Buddhist leaders, such as the Dalai Lama, continue to insist that Islam is a peaceful religion that has been misappropriated by extremists.

I have already commented in this post on one major reason why it is difficult for some Buddhists to conceive of Islam as a religion that is based on very different values and assumptions about the world than Buddhism, and I want to elaborate on that here.

Up until only a generation or two ago, the Islam practised by most Muslims in East and South East Asia had been heavily syncretic, blending elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, animism, spiritism, and various indigenous religions with a gentle and mystical interpretation of Islamic beliefs. It was only relatively recently, with the return of a generation of young Muslims educated abroad primarily in the Middle East, and the introduction of Islamic schools funded by Muslim organisations from the heartland of the Muslim world, that East and South Easth Asian Islam has taken a more literalist, exclusivist, and puritan turn. From the perspective of the Buddhists who had been living alongside liberal Muslims for generations, it is the syncretic local Islam that is the "true Islam", and the puritanism introduced from elsewhere that is the abberation.

An article which appeared two years ago in the Asia Times (November 2, 2004) described the situation in southern Thailand as follows:

Ethnic-Malay and Thai Muslims traditionally practice Sufism – Sunni Islam with a mystical, moderate edge – which has prevailed in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand since Islam supplanted animism, Buddhism and Hinduism a few hundred years ago.

"There is the traditional kind of Muslim beliefs common in the region and there are the newer beliefs, reformist ideas brought back by those who studied in the Middle East," says Michiko Tsuneda, a University of Wisconsin cultural anthropologist studying Thai-Malay Muslim communities in southern Thailand.

Note that here it is the hardliners who are referred to as the "reformists", while the liberals are the "traditionalists" — which is the reverse of the situation found in Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.

That fundamentalism should appear is not surprising. It is strikingly visible in the men's dress, which is more Afghan or Middle Eastern than Malay, and the face-covering chadors worn by women. Increasingly they can be seen in Tak, Chiang Rai and other parts of the country, not just the south.

[...]

This is yet another example of Islamic imperialism — the replacement of a non-Arab people's culture and history by an Arab-Islamic construction.

Fundamentalism's rise in the Middle East took off early in the 20th century, if not before, but only really started to reach the Malay Peninsula in the 1970s, as cheaper travel allowed more Southeast Asian Muslims to seek higher education in the Middle East. "Usually Islamic schoolteachers, if they've had higher education, they usually studied in the Middle East," says Tsuneda. Some returned preaching fundamentalism. A few became followers while fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

[...]

"If you hear people talking about these things, they are emotional. From the perspective of the traditionalists, what they have believed all their lives is being attacked. The villagers, the traditionalists, don't really have the social capital to back their point of view. The reformists have higher education, they have been to the Middle East, they can claim they know better than the traditionalists, leaving the villagers in a difficult situation," says Tsuneda.

[...]

And this is precisely the problem. In addition to oil wealth, Middle Eastern Muslim nations can also boast of places of religious significance and historical importance to Islam. The Thai Muslim traditionalists simply do not have the resources to compete with them.

From WorldWide Religious News (April 14, 2004):

Each year, 300 Thai Muslims win scholarships from institutions in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries, while another 200 are funded in other Muslim countries, including Brunei, Sudan and Indonesia.

Some families have sent abroad generations of sons who become imams at mosques and directors or teachers at pondoks. These teachers place more emphasis on study of Arabic and the Quran.

The traditionalists for the most part do not use Arabic except for a few formulaic phrases, and place more emphasis on the Qur'an's role as a talisman than as a book to be studied.

The Middle Eastern influences also have spilled over into everyday life.

Islamic practices in southern Thailand used to be mixed with local traditions. These customs are now being branded un-Islamic by clerics.

Until a few years ago, women rarely wore headscarves. But the foreign-returned Muslims are insisting on purer form of Islam such as "hijab" for women and regular attendance at mosques.

The Bangkok Post ran an article earlier this year (no longer online; mirrored at The Buddhist Channel, August 28, 2006) about the decades-long friendship between Ven. Buddhadasa, a renowned Thai Buddhist monk, and a Thai Muslim named Prayoon Vadanyakul. I think it serves very well to illustrate the kind of Islam that was traditionally practised in Thailand and how South East Asian Muslims have historically understood Islam in the context of Buddhism and other religions.

Bangkok, Thailand -- The roar of bombs. The macabre, pervasive scent of death. In the deep South and across the whole globe, strife in the name of religion is steadily growing.

But there was one remarkable friendship that cut across religious boundaries: The friendship between Buddhadasa Bhikkhu and a devout Muslim named Haji Prayoon Vadanyakul.

The title "Haji" denotes a Muslim who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj [حج].

Born to a Muslim family, Haji Prayoon was well-known among his close associates for his seriousness in practising his religion. But his interests were not restricted to Islam. He was sent to a Christian school, and later made friends with several Buddhists. One day he decided to travel to the Suan Mokkh forest monastery to pay a visit to Buddhadasa Bhikkhu. [...]

Note how Haji Prayoon Vadanyakul syncretises Islam and Buddhism in the following passages:

The first meeting between Haji Prayoon and Buddhadasa lasted eight hours.

"The way Than Acharn [Buddhadasa] discussed Buddhism, it sounded as if he was guiding me toward the goal of Islam as well.

"Truth exists in both [religions], but lacking are those who can show that they are one and the same. Most people keep their guard up during [inter-religious] dialogue. That's not true education. They try to discredit others; that's not the path toward mutual understanding."

On that very day, it could be said Haji Prayoon found a guide to lead him toward the same truth. Religious differences did not pose a barrier, but instead served to help him attain the essence of his own faith.

"The kind of Buddhism I learned about was mundane, at the ethical level. Nothing special about it. But having met Than Acharn, read his books and contemplated them, I came to understand the ultimate truth.

"From that day on, I continued to study his books, comparing them to the Koran, and I became more and more enlightened. I didn't come to pay respects to him that often. I only came once in a long while. But there was this deep tie. Every time I visited him, it was like I came to report to him about my spiritual progress. This mutual understanding kept me growing steadily.

"I try to avoid saying that Buddhadasa's views are the right ones. Otherwise some others [schools of thought] might charge me with being presumptuous. They might say, 'How do you know that your teacher is correct?' I'd rather say that his views are sensible and sound. Other people may not agree with me. But his views of Buddhism helped me to understand Islam correctly.

"Being registered as a Muslim, I'm able to expound on the teachings of Islam. But if I didn't grasp the essence of Buddhism through Buddhadasa, I might not be able to grasp the essence of Islam as well. I would have still memorised the teachings that have been passed on by tradition, without discovering any real solution.

It's interesting that he described himself using the words "registered as a Muslim", rather than saying more straightforwardly that he was a Muslim. (In neighbouring Malaysia, a person's religion is printed on his national identity card.)

"The Muslims like to lull their child to sleep by a short phrase - 'La illaha ill-Allah' - the declaration of truth made during prayer. They will keep reciting 'La illaha ill-Allah' on beads - until they achieve a state of mental concentration. Unfortunately, most people do not understand the core meaning; they usually translate it as 'There is no god but Allah.'

And that's because that is the actual meaning of the phrase, in Arabic.

Note the folk practice of using the Islamic profession of faith (the shahâdah [شهادة]) as a lullaby, and the very Buddhist idea that the purpose of the recitation is to "achieve a state of mental concentration".

Haji Prayoon Vadanyakul continues:

"The word 'Allah' consists of three letters: A, L and H. The word 'Araha[t]' consists of the letters: A, R and H. Typically, the L in the West has been transformed to R in the East. Thus 'elephant' becomes 'Erawan'. So does 'Ali' [the Noble] become 'Ariya' as in Ariyasaj [The Noble Truth].

This is just bad linguistics, and would be easily and decisively refuted by someone who had gone abroad to study Arabic.

"I used to discuss these linguistic issues [with others]. Here I repeat it for those who haven't heard about this principle. Allah is in fact Arahat. The meaning of Allah is broader than Illaha, which means 'idols', and La, which means 'no', or 'do not'. Most of the Muslims take Illaha to mean things like sculptures, trees and so on. But I think [the word] refers to the clinging to that very object in their heart. Those statues and trees are in themselves nothing sacred.

"But when people hold on to such things, they become objects of worship. If people do not hold on to them, they cannot be sacred. These things don't have their own power; it's the people who give them power. Therefore, illaha does not refer to those external objects, but to the clinging in human heart. So the sentence La illaha ill-Allah means not to hold on to anything. Such is the state of Allah, or Arahat. How that is literally identical to the heart of Buddhism that professes against any attachment! How couldn't I say then that the heart of Buddhism is one and the same as that of Islam?" [...]

Even if we accept that the Arabic word 'ilah [إله] means an object to which one clings, the formula would still mean "do not hold on to anything except Allah", where, following his interpretation, Allah would mean The One Thing to which one clings.

Haji Prayoon Vadanyakul also leaves out the second half of the shahâdah, which declares that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. I don't see how this can be reconciled with his interpretation of the word 'ilah.

"Than Acharn wants every religion to unite to bring peace to the world. He once told me, 'Khun Prayoon, let's work together to merge religions.' I told him that, on the level of customs and traditions, it might not be possible. For example, at the time of death, some groups want to bury [the body], other groups want to burn [the body]. But at the level of truth, even though we don't merge, they are already one and the same. It is the individual religious teachers who can't arrive at the truth. It is not the case that religions can't reconcile, if we take their purpose as the goal, be it on the mundane or supra-mundane level."

Haji Prayoon was a driving force in propagating Buddhadasa's ideas of inter-religious understanding - through his writing, talks, and donations - to the point that some of his cohorts charged him of being haek khok (literally, "breaking out of the cage; rebellious").

[...]

In the current climate, his coreligionists would undoubtedly have charged him with heresy or apostasy.

"This understanding is not limited to the thing called religion, be it Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Brahmanism, Sikh and so on. It's about understanding dharma that has no other name besides dharma.

Not even the Arabic word deen [دین]?

"The enemy of religion is the absence of dharma. Religions cannot be like men rowing different boats, trying to compete against each other. They must be rowing the same boat and helping each other. We need cooperation to save the world. We have to chip in, not fight and quarrel against one another. But whichever religion one wants to follow depends on one's individual preferences.

"Every time I take part in helping any religion, I just hold to one principle: To spread the rightful dharma among the people, for it's what the world urgently needs - that's all.

"When a monk comes to take up abode in the compound of my house where there are a lot of trees, I only have one request: When asked for some auspicious objects, please give the people Lord Buddha's dharma and not something superstitious like an amulet. Otherwise I have to ask him to leave. Buddhism must be preserved, even in a Muslim house. And we have to do it seriously to shore up Buddhism. [...]

Sadly, with the introduction of more literalist and puritan strains of Islam from the Middle East, the syncretic and liberal Islam of Muslims such as Haji Prayoon Vadanyakul might become a thing of the past. And this trend towards rejecting local traditions in favour of Arab-Islamic imperialism isn't happening only in Thailand, but all across the Muslim world, under the influence of petrodollars.

Many Buddhists continue to believe that Islam is a peaceful, compassionate religion that is being misused by extremists for political ends, because the Muslims that they know are peaceful, compassionate people. But just as Islam should not be judged solely by the actions of some terrorists, it likewise should not be judged solely by the behaviour of some Muslims who practise a syncretic form of the religion. Islam, like any other religion, must be judged based on its own merits and demerits: its teachings, its core texts and how they are interpreted in practice, its history, and so on.

The first component of the Buddha's Eightfold Path (八正道) is Right View (正見). Before anything else, a practitioner of Buddhism must strive to see the world as it is, and not be clouded by wishful thinking such as the desire to think the best of every religion or the assumption that all religions teach the same things.

南無阿彌陀佛

Human Rights Watch tells terrorists in southern Thailand to stop targeting civilians

Human Rights Watch has condemned the actions of the Islamist terrorists in Thailand. From Human Rights News:

Separatist insurgent groups in southern Thailand must stop targeting civilians in their effort to establish an independent state, Human Rights Watch said today. In the past week alone, insurgents have killed and injured more than 30 civilians in targeted attacks in the country’s southern provinces.

What makes Human Rights Watch think that the terrorists will care about what they have to say?

“Insurgent groups are targeting civilians to show their power and highlight the Thai government’s weakness,” said Brad Adams, director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch. “But it’s illegal, and morally indefensible, to attack civilians in pursuit of political goals.”

[...]

I doubt that the terrorists are concerned with either the legality or morality of their actions. The problem is that they believe they have God on their side.

Human Rights Watch expressed deep concern about the enormous and growing numbers of attacks by insurgent groups on civilians since the renewal of violence in southern Thailand in January 2004.

According to a study released by the Thai Journalist Association and Prince of Songkhla University, insurgent groups are responsible for most of the 5,460 violent incidents in the southern border provinces of Thailand between January 2004 and August 2006 which resulted in 1,730 deaths and 2,513 injuries. Civilians – including government employees and local officials – have been the principal targets of daily attacks, totaling 60 percent (or 1,873) of the victims, followed by police (16 percent, or 481), soldiers (12 percent, or 373), and others (12 percent, or 369).

The statistics would have been more useful if they had separated out "government employees and local officials" from regular "civilians". But in any case, many more civilians are affected than are counted by the study, since they have been fleeing to escape the violence and threats of violence.

The study found that the majority of victims were Muslims; 924 Muslims were killed and 718 injured, compared with 697 Buddhists killed and 1,474 injured. The religion of the remaining victims is unknown.

“The insurgents claim to be defenders of the Muslim population against abuses and exploitation at the hands of the mainly Buddhist Thai authorities,” said Adams. “But hundreds of Muslims as well as Buddhists have died in their attacks.”

I appreciate that Human Rights Watch wishes to point out the hypocrisy of terrorists who murder Muslims while claiming to be protecting Muslims. But the numbers don't support the claim that "the majority of victims were Muslims" — they show 1642 Muslims and 2171 Buddhists among the casualties whose religions are known.

It is true that more Muslims have been killed than Buddhists, and that could be because the terrorists are more precise when they target Muslims, i.e., they specifically murder those whom they consider to be traitors.

Common insurgent tactics include drive-by shootings from motorcycles or pickup trucks and the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The use of such devices, apparently emulating tactics used by insurgents in Iraq, has increased the intensity and lethality of attacks on civilians since June 2006. Human Rights Watch has documented disturbing evidence that insurgent groups have engaged in beheadings and in mutilation of corpses as a form of punishment of Buddhist and Muslim civilians suspected of being informants, or of collaborating with Thai authorities.

At least 17 victims have been beheaded, and more than 40 Buddhists and Muslims have been hacked to death with machetes, over the past two years.

I noted the religious significance of beheadings in this previous post on the situation in southern Thailand.

There have been hundreds of insurgent attacks on teachers and schools since January 2004. Some districts have shut down all government schools due to security concerns after attacks. Buddhist monks in Narathiwat decided to stop taking alms after a bomb ripped through a column of monks, along with the soldiers guarding them, on October 22. That was the latest in a series of attacks on Buddhist monks — including shootings, bombings and hacking with machetes. On November 8, the entire Buddhist population from three villages in Yala’s Than To and Bannang Sata districts fled their homes and sought refuge at a Buddhist temple after armed insurgents killed Boon Iamsa-ard, 68, and his daughter Aree Iamnirand, 28, and then burned down their house.

Since the new spate of violence began in 2004, insurgent attacks have become increasingly coordinated and targeted against civilians. On September 16 insurgents targeted department stores and related locations in Hat Yai district of Songkhla province, killing four civilians and injuring 59. Another series of coordinated explosions took place on August 31, targeting commercial banks in Yala. On June 15 and 16, insurgent groups launched a series of bombs attacks in 31 of 33 districts in the southern border provinces.

“Increasingly, insurgent violence is being used to scare away Buddhists and keep Muslims under control,” said Adams. [...]

Human Rights Watch called on the Thai government and insurgent groups to institute concrete measures to protect civilians and immediately cease all attacks that do not discriminate between combatants and civilians. In addition, Thai authorities and insurgent groups should permit independent, impartial and effective investigations of allegations of human rights abuses, and ensure that those found responsible be held accountable.

“Neither side in the conflict in Thailand’s southern border provinces pays enough attention to human rights issues,” said Adams. “The failure to address human rights concerns adds to the growing hostility, making peaceful conflict resolution through dialogue an impossible goal.”

Does Human Rights Watch really believe that the terrorists will "permit independent, impartial and effective investigations of allegations of human rights abuses, and ensure that those found responsible be held accountable"?

I don't understand why human rights organisations always act as though they were under the obligation to treat every side in every conflict as if they were all equally morally culpable. The Thai government has on occasion acted in a heavy-handed and callous manner that did not distinguish between insurgents and civilians, but the insurgents have been deliberately targeting civilians. Surely, there is a world of difference between callousness and premeditation?

The violence has actually gotten worse since a coup in September put a more conciliatory government into power. From Yahoo News:

Since September, the month of [former Thailand prime minister] Thaksin's removal, Dougherty [of Bangkok-based security consultants Hill and Associates] said the daily violence was claiming almost three times as many civilians victims as before, a clear indication of a shift in tactics.

In one week alone, 90 percent of casualties were civilian, the remaining 10 percent being described as "officials" — anything from soldiers and border police to village volunteers and local government bureaucrats.

And where are all the voices who condemn Israel every time a Palestinian civilian is killed, even if the death resulted from terrorists using civilians for cover?

南無阿彌陀佛

US removes Vietnam from religion blacklist

From BBC news:

The United States has removed Vietnam from a list of countries which it says severely violate religious freedom.

The list is published annually by the state department and includes China, North Korea, Iran and Sudan.

Vietnam was removed just days before President George W Bush travels to Hanoi for a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum.

However, a US bill to normalise trade relations with Vietnam failed to get approval in Congress.

Another attempt to pass the bill is expected to be made later this week.

Announcing Vietnam's removal from its countries of concern list, the US state department said there had been "significant improvements toward advancing religious freedom" in the country.

[...]

While the timing of Vietnam's removal from the list was probably motivated by the APEC forum, the situation has actually been improving for religious groups in Vietnam.

There has been a revival of religious feeling in the country. New Buddhist pagodas are springing up and the Catholic Church has ordained new priests.

But there are limits. Only religious organisations that pledge loyalty to the state enjoy freedoms and dissidents, both Buddhist and Christian, face harassment.

The rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide said this week it had evidence of a crackdown on Protestantism among ethnic minorities in the north-west highlands.

The UK-based group said it had acquired an internal government training manual outlining a plan to "to resolutely subdue the abnormally rapid and spontaneous development of the Protestant religion" in that region.

Many Protestant Evangelical groups are extremely active in converting ethnic minorities in Asian countries. Because the minorities are marginalised from the mainstream by language, appearance, or custom, they are especially drawn to the social services offered by the Christian missionaries. Furthermore, by converting to a minor sect of Protestantism, they can also preserve their identity as a distinct group. On the other hand, the totalitarian governments in these countries often see religious conversion as an act of political subversion.

南無阿彌陀佛

Shaolin Football

There was a movie from Hong Kong a few years ago that was quite popular called Shaolin Soccer (IMDB entry). The movie starred Hong Kong comedy legend Stephen Chow [周星馳] as a down-on-his-luck disciple of Shaolin kung fu [少林功夫] who popularises the martial art by combining it with soccer.

In a case of life-imitates-art, Venerable Shi Yongxin [釋永信], the abbot of Shaolin temple [少林寺] (whom we have previously met in this post), plans to develop a football program there. But by "football" I am referring to American football here, not to what is called "soccer" by Americans.

From Buddhism-Online:

In the days following his first experience with American football, Abbot Shi Yongxin, leader of the Shaolin Temple in China, is developing plans to start a football program at the Temple.

In an effort to promote cultural exchange, the Abbot's goal is to develop a series of football teams that would tour the United States and play exhibition games. The names of the teams would mirror current American football teams.

[...]

Thank the gods that the high school team in Pekin, Illinois, long ago changed their name to the Pekin Dragons.

As part of the plan, the [United States Sports Academy] would provide football coaches and administrators to train athletes and build a program at the Shaolin Temple. For over 30 years, the Academy has delivered sports programs in more than 60 countries around the world. [...]

A 10-part certification program to teach Kung Fu and other martial arts is also being developed as a joint effort between the Academy and the Abbot.

The United States Sports Academy is an independent, non-profit, accredited, special mission sports university created to serve the nation and the world with programs in instruction, research and service. The role of the Academy is to prepare men and women for careers in the profession of sports.

In traditional Chinese Buddhism, kung fu is not considered a sport, but is one component of an integrated program of mental, spiritual, and physical training, the aspects of which are inseparable from one another. Of course, the physical training had long ago been separated from the rest, resulting in many schools of martial arts most of which have nothing to do with spirituality. But one would hope that the Shaolin temple of all places would try to maintain the traditional stance.

南無阿彌陀佛

Glenn Beck presents "Exposed: The Extremist Agenda"

I saw this program on CNN Headline News a few days ago:


There's nothing surprising in this program for those who pay attention to world news or who are personally acquainted with people of Muslim background (or with non-Muslims from predominantly Muslim countries). But for many Westerners who assume that all religions share the same humanistic values of the post-Enlightenment era, the contents of this program may be very shocking. There are still, in large swaths of the world, people who hold what is essentially a mediæval view of the world — except that the diatribes of their hatemongering clerics are broadcast over loudspeakers and the Internet, and their armies are equipped with modern weapons of mass destruction.

南無阿彌陀佛

Men excluded from Montreal neonatal clinic to accommodate religious sensibilities

From CBC news:

A Montreal community health clinic has come under fire for excluding men from their neonatal classes to accommodate the sensibilities of Muslim, Sihk and Hindu women.

ADQ Leader Mario Dumont said the prohibition exceeds the limits of common sense. He said it's unreasonable that a Quebec taxpayer is barred from joining his pregnant girlfriend at a health clinic because his presence would offend others.

The article doesn't make it clear how the "sensibilities of Muslim, Sikh and Hindu women" are accommodated by the exclusion of men. Is it because they're non-relatives?

I also find it interesting that the paraphrase of Dumont uses the word "girlfriend" rather than "wife" (or, more inclusively, "wife or girlfriend"). Does no one in Montreal (presumably outside of the Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu communities) get married any more? And is it the presence of unmarried couples (who have obviously had sexual intercourse) that is offensive to religious sensibilities?

And I wonder if it's really the sensibilities of the Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu women that are being accommodated, rather than those of their husbands. (Or should I have written "husbands or boyfriends"?)

Religious and cultural accommodations in light of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms no longer makes sense, Dumont said ahead of a weekend convention of l'Action democratique du Quebec.

He pointed as well to a suggestion by Montreal police that female officers call male colleagues to avoid offending male Hasidic Jews.

And will police completely leave anarchists alone in order to avoid offending their sensibilities?

"We are completely moving to misusing the Charter and that is starting to worry me."

Dumont said it's not racist for a majority of citizens to defend their own values. [...]

That a "it's not racist" defense is needed at all shows just how confused Western societies and politicians are about the distinction between race on the one hand and beliefs and culture (in particular, religion) on the other.

The article has mentioned nothing about race. Now it may very well happen that the majority of the "Muslim, Sikh and Hindu women" at the clinic are of East Indian/South Asian descent, but that's completely beside the point. If the complainants had been white, the response should have been just the same. It's unfair to the other women in the clinic to exclude their husbands or boyfriends on the basis of not offending the religious sensibilities of some of the participants.

People should not be afraid to criticize culture or religion in a free society. Racism is wrong because a person neither chooses his genetics nor is he able to change it. (Some belief systems, such as Tibetan Buddhism, hold that certain people can influence the circumstances of their births, but even then such people are rare exceptions.) However, culture and religion are matters of choice (assuming that one does not believe in strong predestinarianism). A person can always in principle choose to hold values and beliefs contrary to those with which he was raised, even if his society or other circumstances might make it difficult in practice.

Because religion involves choice, it doesn't belong to the same category of things as race, but should rather be classed with other systems of belief such as Capitalism, Communism, Nazism, geocentrism, etc. And in a free society, all systems of belief must be open to critical scrutiny. Irrational or outdated beliefs and practises should not get a free pass merely because they are part of a culture or religion.

南無阿彌陀佛

Balbir K. Punj on the Dalai Lama's characterisation of Islam

I had wanted to write something on the Dalai Lama's characterisation of Islam as a religion of "compassion" which has been twisted by extremists. However, Indian MP Balbir K. Punj has beaten me to it, so I'll comment on his article instead.

The op-ed piece by B.K. Punj appeared in The Pioneer (via The Buddhist Channel) and was written in response to the Dalai Lama's comments at a conference in San Francisco in April earlier this year:

There can be no bitter irony than a Buddhist monk defending Islam as religion of compassion. Except for mountainous pockets like Ladakh, Tibet and the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Buddhism disappeared from India under the sword of Islam. BR Ambedkar, who later embraced Buddhism along with his followers, writes in the essay, 'The Decline and Fall of Buddhism', "There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India was due to the invasions of the Musalmans. Islam came out as the enemy of the 'but'. The word 'but', as everybody knows, is an Arabic word and means an idol. Not many people, however, know what the derivation of the world 'but' is. 'But' is the Arabic corruption of Buddha. Thus the origin of the word indicates that in Moslem mind idol worship had come to be identified with the Religion of Buddha. To the Muslims, they were one and the same thing. The mission to break the idols thus became the mission to destroy Buddhism. Islam destroyed Buddhism not only in India but wherever it went. Before Islam came into being, Buddhism was the religion of Bactria, Parthia, Afghanistan, Gandhar and Chinese Turkestan, as it was of the whole of Asia. In all these countries Islam destroyed Buddhism... (Writings and Speeches, Vol 3, p 230)

"Musalman" is another word for "Muslim".

The word but [بت] meaning idol (which entered the vocabulary of the Islamic world through Persian rather than Arabic) is still used with that meaning in the Islamic world. For example, one of the titles of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was bot-shekan [بت شکن], the "idol-breaker", or more to the point, the "Buddha-breaker". Note that bot-shekast [بت شکست], which is considered meritorious in Islam, corresponds to mie4 fo2 [滅佛], which is rather frowned upon in Buddhism.

B.K. Punj continues the quote by B.R. Ambedkar:

He continues: "The Musalman invaders sacked the Buddhist Universities of Nalanda, Vikramsila, Jagaddala, Odantipur to name a few. They razed to the ground Buddhist monasteries with which the country was studded. The monks fled away in thousands to Nepal, Tibet and other places outside India. Muslim commanders killed a very large number outright. How the Buddhist priesthood perished by the sword of the Muslim invaders has been recorded by the Muslim historians themselves...".

Seen in this light the destruction of Bamiyan Buddha by the Taliban in February 2001 does not seem out of place. Smashing the head of Brahma in Thao Maha Brahma or Phra Phrom Erawan Shrine in Bangkok on March 21, the "mentally disturbed" Muslim youth who did it, proved there is a method in this madness. It reflects the atavistic iconoclastic behaviour of Islam.

While the attacker of the Phra Phrom Erawan shrine, Thanakorn Pakdeepol, was a Muslim, he had a history of mental illness and it isn't clear whether the attack was motivated by religion.

However, the genocide being carried out by Muslims in Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts against non-Muslim religious minorities, which B.K. Punj mentions next, certainly has an air of religious imperialism about it:

The tragedy of Chakmas (Buddhists) in CHT is also on predictable lines. It will be interesting to know whether the Buddhists of Ladakh and CHT too feel Islam as a religion of compassion.

Peace Campaign Group (PCG) is a New Delhi-based organisation run by Chakmas, who are Buddhist monks as well, but who fled Bangladesh due to Islamic persecution in the early 1990s. They later obtained Indian citizenships and now actively focus on human rights violation in CHT. PCG recently demanded a Darfur-like UN intervention in CHT, which has been a victim of Islamic demographic aggression, systematically carried out by Bangladesh. Bhante Bhikkhu Prajnalankar, general secretary of PCG, travels around the world on a shoestring budget, to highlight the plight of his people in Bangladesh. A monk, he has no inclination to teach the world Zen and Nirvana. Pursuing Nirvana, he says, will not help when the ground beneath your feet is taken away.

For more information on the genocide in the CHT, see the following:

• Religious Persecution in the CHT
• Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM)
• (Amnesty International) Human rights in the Chittagong Hill Tracts
• (Amnesty International) Bangladesh Chittagong Hill Tracts: A Call for Justice at Mahalchari

The op-ed piece by B.K. Punj continues:

Buddhist Thailand is more aware. It has a no-nonsense approach towards the Islamic secessionism in the south - Narathiwat, Pattani, Songhkla and Yala. Buddhists civilians are frequent targets of Muslim attacks in Narathiwat province of Thailand. But the Thai Government's approach is as decisive as it could be in a democracy. On October 26, 2004, Thailand police entered a historic mosque in Pattani where recalcitrant elements had made a stronghold, and flushed them out. Seventy-eight detained Muslims perished, many of them crushed and suffocated, after hundreds of detainees were loaded in two trucks. Thailand rejected any UN probe into the massacre of Islamist militants in southern Thailand.

As I wrote about in this post, the new government, which was installed by a military coup in September, has decided to soften their approach, which seems only to have emboldened the terrorists.

P.K. Punj concludes:

Buddhism is a compassionate religion; with its stress on non-violence, it was ill-prepared to meet Islam militarily. The Dalai Lama's comments reminds me of Gandhi, whose message of compassion found no takers amongst Muslims. Speaking about Gandhi's tour of England during Second Round Table Conference, Subhas Chandra Bose said, "During his stay in England, he had to play two roles in one person, the role of a political leader and that of a world-teacher. Sometimes he conducted himself not as a political leader who had come to negotiate with the enemy, but as a master who had come to preach a new faith - that of non-violence and world-peace." (The Indian Struggle 1920-1942, p 252). The Dalai Lama is playing world teacher, more than Tibetan supreme leader, and this time he has gone overboard.

I think the Dalai Lama is well aware of Islam's history of persecution against Buddhists and Buddhism. However, there have also been centuries of mostly peaceful and productive relations between Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists in Tibet and the surrounding areas, and the Dalai's Lama's view of Islam is likely heavily influenced by these historical interactions and his personal acquaintance with Tibetan Muslims.

I have met some Tibetan Muslims and the form of Islam that they practise is very much shaped by Tibetan culture and social traditions. For instance, they referred to the Dalai Lama very respectfully as "His Holiness", something which a Muslim from Saudi Arabia, for example, would never do. For someone who has grown up with liberal Muslims, there does not seem to be any reason, at first blush, why their form of Islam should be considered any less legitimate than that of the textual literalists or extremists.

I don't think that the Dalai Lama is as naïve as he might appear to be. I think rather that his words are chosen very carefully out of political considerations.

南無阿彌陀佛

Dalai Lama claims that secularism is the basis of all religions

From Phayul (also Tibet.net; via The Buddhist Channel):

His Holiness the Dalai Lama said Friday that secularism is the basis of all religions.

This is a very strange comment coming from a man who, in addition to being the spiritual leader of Tibet, is also its temporal leader, at least according to several hundred years of tradition.

Just what does "secularism" mean to the Dalai Lama?

“Secularism does not mean rejection of all religions. It means respect for all religions and human beings including non-believers,” he said speaking to a crowd of 8,000 Japanese and foreigners at Ryogoku-Kokugikan stadium in Tokyo.

If this is what he means by "secularism", then secularism certainly isn't a part of any religion with aspirations to political power.

“I am talking to you not as a Tibetan or a Buddhist but as a human being having a friendly discussion and sharing my experiences on the benefits of cultivating basic human values.”

[...]

If he was talking merely as a human being and not as a leader of Tibetan Buddhism, it is doubtful that eight thousand people would have shown up to hear him speak.

To a request from the audience to hold the next Kalachakra teachings in Japan, the Dalai Lama said it could be organized if there were sufficient interests among the people.

The Kâlachakra Tantra [कालचक्र तन्त्र] and its attendant literature prophesy an apocalyptic war for world domination waged by Muslims, who are defeated by the (Buddhist!) warriors of Shambhala so thoroughly that Islam is completely annihilated. These texts were probably composed during the Islamic invasion of India and reflect the reaction of the Buddhist community to being under constant seige by followers of a hostile religion bent on their destruction.

For more information on this and other controversial aspects of the Kâlachakra teachings, see, for example:

• Critical Forum Kalachakra
• The Berzin Archives: Holy Wars in Buddhism and Islam
• Think Buddha: On Holy Books

The Dalai Lama is certainly aware of the contents of the Kâlachakra teachings, which describe a Buddhist emperor leading a Buddhist army in a war against the followers of another religion. I'm curious to know how he reconciles the Kâlachakra teachings with his claim that "respect for all religions and human beings including non-believers" is "the basis of all religions".

南無阿彌陀佛

Buddhists targeted for genocide by Islamist terrorists in Southern Thailand

Islamist terrorists in southern Thailand are carrying out a campaign of genocide aimed at eliminating Buddhists from the three provinces with Muslim majorities. Buddhist monks are especially targeted for attack due to their symbolic value, and also because they're unarmed and easy to identify by their saffron robes. It has now become too dangerous for monks to continue their tradition of going around for alms.

From AsiaNews (November 13):

As from today, Buddhist monks in Narathiwat province in southern Thailand will no longer ask for alms in the streets as they used to do every morning. The risk is considered too great in the region, where militant separatists have killed several Buddhists in recent years.

Several? Now there's an understatement. Over 1700 people have been killed since January 2004, including both Buddhists and Muslims.

Prakru Papassorn Sirikhun, abbot of Kao Kong Temple, said the decision was made in a meeting of senior monks on 10 November. It is a custom of the monks to go every morning in the streets of cities and villages to ask for alms. But in recent months, the monks have become the target of attacks by the Islamic insurgency, which is demanding the separation of the southern provinces from Bangkok. Recently, soldiers have been escorting monks but still there has been no letup in attacks. In October, militants injured monks who were asking for alms in the morning, killing two soldiers who sought to protect them.

The abbot said army Intelligence had informed them that an increase in attacks against monks was expected in the coming days. [...]

In other words, the army has noticed that the terrorists are deliberately targeting Buddhist monks as a part of their strategy. The goal of the terrorists seems to be to drive out all the non-Muslims so that they can implement and rule by Islamic Shari`ah, and murdering unarmed Buddhist monks is an obvious way to intimidate the Buddhist population.

From Yahoo News (October 22):

A remote-controlled bomb killed a soldier and wounded 11 people in Thailand's Muslim south on Sunday, police said, the latest attack in a separatist insurgency which has killed more than 1,700 since early 2004.

Militants used a mobile phone to detonate a 5-kg (11-lb) bomb hidden in a rubbish bin in the city of Narathiwat as soldiers accompanied five Buddhist monks to protect them as they sought alms, police said.

One soldier died on his way to hospital, while other soldiers, monks and four passers-by were wounded, police said.

The insurgency in the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat — an Islamic sultanate until Bangkok annexed the region a century ago — has shown no sign of abating since a September 19 coup led by a Muslim general overthrew hawkish prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

A gruesome and telling attack occurred late last year. From the Bangkok Post (via The Buddhist Channel, October 17, 2005):

Local southern leaders yesterday appealed for calm and urged authorities not to take rash action after a monk was hacked to death and two temple boys were killed and their bodies burned yesterday in a raid on a Buddhist temple in Pattani. Elsewhere in the ravaged region, five more people, including two soldiers, were also killed.

A Thai monk, center, looks at the ruins of a temple burnt by suspected Muslim separatists in Pattani Province, south of Bangkok, Sunday, Oct. 16, 2005. About 20 suspected Muslim separatists stormed a monastery, hacked an elderly Buddhist monk to death and fatally shot two temple boys Sunday in southern Thailand, police said. Six other people were killed in separate incidents across Thailand's three southernmost provinces, where more than 1,000 people have died in an insurgency that flared early last year. (AP Photo)

Early yesterday, about 15 armed men stormed Wat Phromprasit temple at tambon Ban Nok of Panare district. They attacked four spots in the temple ground. The first was at a single-storey monk's living quarters made of wood.

Two charred bodies belonging to temple boys Harnnarong Kham-on, 17, and Sathaporn Suwanrat, 15, were found inside. Spent shells of automatic rifles were scattered near the bodies.

Police believed the attackers broke into the living quarters and shot the teenagers before setting fire to the bodies. The fire consumed the place.

The second spot was another monk's living quarters where the partially burned body of Phra Phisu Kaew Phanjaphet, 76, was found in a pool of blood.

He had been beaten over the head with a hard object and hacked at with such force that it almost severed his neck.

For the religious significance of the attempted beheading, see below. The article continues:

The monk was a native of Panare district.

The fires took an hour to put out.

The third spot was the chapel. Parts of the door panels were torched by the attackers who also vandalised the altar. A statue guarding the entrance was ravaged.

The description doesn't mention which parts of the door panels were torched, but I suspect, based on the desecrated altar and damaged statue (likely of the genius of the temple), that the door had probably been decorated with images of gods or other religious iconography.

Earlier this year, the terrorists were targeting schoolteachers and students. From AsiaNews (July 25):

At least two men dressed as students yesterday entered a school in southern Thailand and killed a teacher in front of his students. This was revealed by police today. Suspicion has fallen on separatist Islamic militants: police believe the bloody murder of Prasarn Makchu was in revenge for the arrest of four suspected insurgents in Ban Salo on 20 July.

The 46-year-old teacher was shot in the head and in the back while he was teaching at Ban Buerang school in Rueso-Narathiwat road, where he had worked for the past 20 years. [...]

Teachers are among the main targets because they are held to be vehicles of transmission of Buddhist culture. [...]

Besides attacking unarmed monks and shooting teachers in the back in front of their classes, what else have the terrorists been doing to maximize the amount of fear they cause?

For one, they haven't just been targeting the teachers — they're also after their relatives. Again from AsiaNews (May 23):

Islamic militants in southern Thailand have apparently started to target relatives of Buddhist teachers. Police in the province of Narathiwat said Somboon Ratchsuwan, 69, the father of the director of a local school, was killed while driving his motorcycle with his wife riding pillion. The woman was injured. Both were Buddhists. The police said they believed the "murder was the work of Islamic militants".

Meanwhile, yesterday, more than 100 schools in the three Muslim-majority southern provinces closed because of poor security in the zone. On 19 May, still in Narathiwat, masked men kept two teachers hostage for three hours. The kidnappers demanded the release of two Muslims arrested in connection with the killing of two soldiers at the beginning of the year. The authorities did not give in to their request and the women were beaten. One of the two, Juling Ponggunmul, is in a coma.

Tawat Sae-ham, head of a teachers’ union, said there is a drive under way to "do everything possible to eliminate the Buddhist minority" from the provinces in the south. Tawat said "schools will remain closed all week because teachers don't believe they have any security".

Another thing the terrorists have been doing is planting bombs in busy marketplaces. From AsiaNews (May 10):

A bomb hidden in a motorcycle exploded in a busy market in Thailand's restive Muslim south on Wednesday, killing two Buddhist women and a soldier and wounding 13 shoppers, police said.

Both women were teachers and one was three months pregnant, police said. They said the soldier, also Buddhist, died on the way to the hospital.

"The bomb was hidden in a motorcycle that was parked next to a truck bringing soldiers to the market to buy their daily stuff," police Colonel Somporn Meesuk said from the scene in the province of Pattani.

The truck was parked in front of a small restaurant where people were queuing up to buy food, he said.

While the terrorists are specifically targeting monks and teachers, they've also been inflicting indiscriminant damage upon random civilians by planting bombs in places such as markets, banks (August 31), karaoke bars (November 6), and car and motorcycle showrooms (November 9).

The campaign of terror is apparently working. Buddhists are leaving the southern provinces in droves. From AKI (November 10):

The entire Buddhist community in two villages in the majority Muslim province of Yala in southern Thailand have abandoned their homes and have no intention of returning for fear of attacks. According to reports in the local media, 122 people, or 52 families, have taken refuge in a nearby Buddhist temple of Nirotsangkha-ram over the past two days. Many have brought only the bare necessities with them, relying on the generosity of the local population for food. [...]

According to the latest census information gathered in 2000, Muslims represent 69 percent of the 415,000 residents in Yala, while some 88 percent of the 600,000 residents of Pattani are Muslim and in Narathiwat, 82 percent of the 662,000 residents follow the Muslim faith.

At the national level however, Muslims count for only 4.6 percent of the 65 million people living in Thailand.

The families who have fled the Muslim majority areas are from the districts of Than To and Bannang Sata, which are located in Yala. Despite recent overtures by the new Thai prime minister Surayud Chulanont to the Muslims in the south, the number of attacks carried out by pro-Muslim rebels groups in the area have increased. [...]

It's hardly accurate to call the terrorists "pro-Muslim", since Muslims who happen not to share their worldview have also been victims of their violence. But Buddhists, who make up only about one fifth of the population in those provinces, have suffered the majority of the casualties.

From the International Herald Tribune (November 12):

Suspected Muslim insurgents opened fire early Sunday at a tea shop in restive southern Thailand, killing one person, as attackers elsewhere burned down a Buddhist villager's home, police said.

Two hooded gunmen fired from motorcycles at the tea shop in Narathiwat province's Rue So district shortly after midnight, killing a 30-year-old male customer seated at a table with his brother, who was injured, said police Lt. Kuma-aen Sanya. [...]

Many Buddhists have moved out of the troubled area, while those who have remained often live in fear.

Over 120 Buddhist villagers in Yala province have sought refuge since Thursday at a Buddhist temple after some of their family members were killed and their houses were burned down by suspected insurgents.

Arsonists destroyed the home of a Buddhist man Saturday night in the Muang district of Yala province, while he was out guarding a nearby Buddhist temple, police said.

The caretaker government, which was installed following a military coup on September 19, has promised to take a conciliatory approach towards the terrorists. From Yahoo News (November 8):

Thailand's army-installed premier visited the troubled Muslim-majority south, saying he supported the Islamic way of life but ruling out separation from the mainly Buddhist kingdom.

[...]

The premier [Surayud Chulanont], who was appointed after a bloodless September 19 coup, told foreign correspondents late Tuesday that the only condition for peace talks with insurgent leaders in the three restive southern provinces was that they drop any demands for independence.

"There is only one condition. No separation," he said, making it clear that a ceasefire was not a prerequisite for negotiations.

"That is the only condition we have ... we cannot accept separation of our land anywhere, this is the rule of the land, we are not going to be divided."

Surayud however added that granting a certain degree of autonomy could be discussed and stressed that he respected the Muslim way of life.

"They should have the Islamic law in practice, Sharia, because of the way they are dealing with normal practice in their life is completely different from us," he said.

The offer on the table seems to be that Muslims in southern Thailand can be governed by Islamic law in personal matters such as marriage and inheritance, similar to the system in India, if they drop demands for political independence. But these conciliatory gestures by the government seem to have had no effect.

From The Nation (via The Buddhist Channel, November 10):

Violence in the three southernmost provinces have displaced a number of Buddhist residents over the past three years but the Wednesday exodus was the first of its kind in which an entire community packed its belongings and fled.

In September 2005, at least 131 Muslim families from Narathiwat had also fled to northern Malaysia where they are currently residing in a government compound. The incident led to a diplomatic fallout between Thailand and Malaysia, especially after the latter permitted the UN refugee agency to interview the displaced villagers.

Local residents said the violence has restricted their travel and activities, and taken a tremendous toll on their livelihood.

Wednesday night's exodus marks a setback for the government's policy of reconciliation as none of Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont's goodwill gestures have been reciprocated by the militants who have been accused by authorities of being behind the daily violence in the three Malay-speaking southernmost provinces.

Attacks on soldiers, as well as civilian targets, continue unabated and the government is hard pressed to come up with a quick solution for a problem that many analysts say could take a generation to resolve.

As the above article indicates, the government is not without fault in this conflict. They have been indiscriminantly heavy-handed in some instances in the past. They have also not done enough to convince the common Thai Muslims that the terrorists are as much of a threat to them as they are to Buddhists or to the Thai state — if not more so.

However, whatever real grievances the Muslims in southern Thailand may have, the terrorists have essentially lost the sympathies of everyone else in the rest of Thailand. Attacks on police officers, soldiers, government officials, and other symbols of the state are not unexpected in an insurgency. But by murdering monks, teachers, women, children, and other civilians, the terrorists have shown that they consider the conflict to be primarily ethnic or religious, rather than political, in nature.

Whenever Muslims commit acts of terrorism, there are always commentators who point out that it is the work of only a few "extremists" or "radicals" and that their actions should not reflect on all Muslims. Of course, no one should be held accountable for events over which they have no influence or control. The problem is that there is an attitude that is very prevalent in Muslim societies that Muslims should always take the side of Muslims rather than non-Muslims in any conflict, regardless of right or wrong. Any actions that the victims of Islamist terrorism undertake to retaliate, or to prevent further acts of terrorism against themselves, are portrayed as a persecution of Muslims or an attack on Islam. This portrayal is used by the Islamists to inflame other Muslims to draw them into the conflict.

We read, for example, that the killing of a teacher, while he was teaching in front of his students, is "in revenge for the arrest of four suspected insurgents". How does killing a teacher and traumatising children in any way avenge any kind of wrong? Or we read that the terrorists take two female teachers hostage to secure "the release of two Muslims arrested in connection with the killing of two soldiers". When the authorities refused, the women were beaten, one of them into a coma. How were the authorities wrong to arrest suspects wanted in connection with the killing of soldiers, and even if they were, how does kidnapping and beating up women right that wrong?

By behaving in this manner, the Islamists are ensuring that the situation snowballs out of control. Muslims are polarised so that those who had been co-existing peacefully with their non-Muslim neighbours are either forced to side with the Islamists, or be driven out or killed. This pattern has repeated itself throughout history in every place where Muslims have been a sizeable minority in a society. In the past, this behaviour has resulted in the seizure of a considerable amount of territory for Islam, at the expense of impoverishing or destroying the pre-existing societies.

So this pattern of behaviour is nothing new. The Islamic invaders of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent also targeted monks and teachers and razed non-Muslim places of worship to the ground. Pakistan, Bangladesh, and many of the countries of Central Asia used to be predominantly Buddhist or Hindu. And while Hindus could at least claim to worship "one God", albeit under different names, it was considerably more difficult to reconcile Buddhism with monotheism, when the Buddha specifically rejected the belief in a personal creator God. Buddhists were classified as idolators and were given the choice of conversion, departure, or death. The looting and destruction of important Buddhist monasteries and universities by the invaders also precipitated the decline of Buddhism in India.

The violent and heedless behaviour of the Islamists, and the departure of the Buddhists, will only result in the impoverishment and debilitation of the southern Thai provinces and their inhabitants. This has been the outcome in every place where Muslims have driven out Buddhists by force. Furthermore, the terrorists claim to be fighting for their sovereignty, but they are in fact unwittingly acting as the agents of Islamic imperialism. Muslims – not only in Thailand, but worldwide – are trapped in a vicious cycle, labouring under the delusional belief that acting like a bunch of 7th Arab warriors (but armed with modern technology) is the path to spiritual and material prosperity, while carrying out actions that harm others as well as themselves. There is a word for this cycle in Buddhism: it is called "samsara".

In order to defeat the terrorists, the Thais must break the cycle by learning the right lessons from the Islamic invasion of India.

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The Bangkok Pundit blog, which is an excellent place to learn about the political landscape in Thailand, is running a series of posts on the changing nature of the insurgency in the southern provinces. From the first part of the series (the emphases are from the original post):

Prior to January 2004, the main target of attacks were police and military officials in rural areas [...] However, since January 2004, there has been a noticed shift to also include attacking Buddhist monks/symbols, teachers, and civilians (Buddhists and Muslims) in urban areas (The Nation). [...]

It is not just that the insurgents have changed their target of attacks to urban areas, but that the nature of the attacks has also changed. Beheadings, as the story above illustrates, are becoming a more regular occurrence since the upsurge in violence in January 2004. Coordinated bombings have also become more frequent. These tactics, particularly beheadings, appear to be copied directly from Iraq.

This violence instills fear amongst the population and I believe why the activities of the insurgents can be described as terrorism - most of the acts would fit within the definition of a terrorist act in the Criminal Code.

The changing nature of the insurgency shows a shift from an ethno-nationalist insurgency towards jihad.

The second post of the series examines the targeting of Buddhists by the Islamist terrorists:

Buddhist temples have also been attacked and bombed (The Nation). In one violent incident in October 2005, newspapers report that 20 gunmen entered a Buddhist temple, hacked an elderly monk to death then opened fire on the monk's dwelling killing two temple boys before setting the temple on fire (The Nation).

Just after this attack monks became more vocal in their protest - not in favour of a softening of the government's approach either [...] It is not just Buddhist temples, but Buddhist monks have also come under attack. In 2004, a number of Buddhist monks were 'hacked to death' (The Nation). Buddhist monks have also been attacked when they collect alms and many state that they are fearful and no longer willing to travel freely through southern communities to collect alms (US State Department). [...]

Buddhists make up a majority of the victims of the violence in the 3 southern border provinces [...] Buddhists are also dying in increasing numbers. For the first 6 months of 2005, 111 Buddhists were killed, this rose to 141 for the first 6 months of 2006. However, for Muslims the opposite occurred, the death toll decreased from 208-183 (Deep South Watch).

It is not just the number of Buddhists who have been attacked, but also the way they have been killed. In May 2004, one Buddhist was beheaded and a note left on his body warning of sectarian violence (Strait Times). In a 5 week period in June-July 2005, a further 9 Buddhists were beheaded (Washington Times). Killing by beheading is new phenomenon for the 3 southern border provinces. A government minister has stated that intelligence suggests the beheadings were copied from Iraq (Washington Times). [...]

This, of course, just raises the question of where the jihadists in Iraq got the idea of beheading their victims from. The Islamist terrorists in both Iraq and Thailand are, in fact, just imitating the examples set by the first Muslims and carrying out the rulings of the classical Islamic jurists (see, for example, these articles from Slate, FrontPage, and The Middle East Quarterly).

The post from Bangkok Pundit continues:

It is widely believed by Thai government officials (The Nation) and foreign analysts (The Nation) that Buddhists are deliberately targeted to raise sectarian tensions. One senior Thai government official has described the situation as 'ethnic cleansing' as Buddhists have been told to leave the 3 southern border provinces under the threat of violence (The Independent). For example, Amnesty International report citing a message which stated: "Thai Buddhists if you are still on our land we will kill you all. Get out from our land. Otherwise you will eat bullets again." (Amnesty International ) It is estimated that up to 10% of Buddhists living in the 3 southern border provinces have left the southern border provinces (Zachary Abuza).

The Islamist terrorists are, by their own admission, embarking on a campaign of genocide against the Buddhists.

Some other relevant posts from Bangkok Pundit:

• A Coherent Policy on Southern Thailand Needed
• War on insurgents enters a new phase
• Academics vs the People on the Situation in Southern Thailand

For more background on the Muslim secessionist movements in southern Thailand, see this report by the Jamestown Foundation: "A Breakdown of Southern Thailand's Insurgent Groups".

南無阿彌陀佛