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