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

"Reformation of Islam" aberrant?

Someone (based on the context, a Muslim) calling himself (or herself) "God's Servant" left a comment yesterday on this post from October:

There is no reformation of Islam, it's impossible. Actually Islam is declining, modern time of Islam existed 14 centuries ago while other civilizations and religions were in darkness, that's why the expression "reformation of Islam" is aberrant.

Nowadays, even muslims don't know nothing about their religion and they are the first victims of fanatism and terrorism existed in muslim countried before existing in the west.

Islam is like money, you got to work hard to find the truth.

I didn't want to reply just in that post, since it's over a month old, so I'll reply here in this new post. I specifically want to address this claim:

modern time of Islam existed 14 centuries ago while other civilizations and religions were in darkness

This is a myth perpetuated by apologists for Islam, and it is simply not true. Persia (Iran), India, and China were all enjoying relatively high degrees of civilization at the time of the advent of Islam. Buddhism had been transmitted from India to China over the previous several centuries and was fomenting an intellectual revolution along its routes of transmission. The disintegration of many of these highly developed societies was in fact caused by the relentless waves of Muslim invasions.

One of the major reasons for the initial successes of Islam was that the early Muslim conquerors assimilated the civilizations of the peoples it conquered. The first Arab-Islamic conquests were facilitated by the fact that the Byzantines and the Sassanians had exhausted themselves fighting against each other. When the Muslims conquered Persia, they essentially adapted the pre-existing structures of governance and methods of statecraft of the Persians. They recruited Persian scholars to their cause and employed many Persian administrators to run the Islamic empire. They similarly assimilated the knowledge of various smaller communities living under Islamic rule by the appointment of their scholars to court and through the conversion of their members to Islam. (Try looking into the ethnic backgrounds of the most influential philosophers, scientists, and other scholars in the Islamic world at this time.)

If it had not been for Persian administrative practices and experience, Greek medicine and philosophy, Indian mathematics and metallurgy, Chinese papermaking technology, and a host of other sciences and technologies captured or learned from others — not to mention Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian religious beliefs and practices — there would have been no Islamic civilization. The Islamic empires were built upon ideas copied from neighbouring civilizations and with the wealth obtained through their conquest and plunder.

Yes, the Muslims were at one time leaders in civilization, but it wasn't quite 14 centuries ago. It was several centuries afterward, after Islam had established itself more or less securely in Persia and Central Asia and was making its way across India. But as the Islamic empires expanded and dhimmi populations were converted to Islam, the policy of continual military expansion pursued by Islamic rulers started to become uneconomical. At the same time, influential Muslim theologians popularized the idea that Islam represented the height of civilization and that other societies were in darkness, and Muslims began to cease learning from other cultures. These internal developments, coupled with external events such as the irruption of the Mongol hordes, marked the beginning of the decline of Islamic power.

The myth that the first generation of Muslims had attained the pinnacle of civilization seems to explain the success of the Islamic empires relative to their competitors at this time, as well as their subsequent decline. I suppose that's why it's popular among Muslims. But an examination of the historical evidence shows that this myth is false. Belief in this myth – which can only be described as hubris – is precisely what led to the downfall of Islamic societies to begin with, and is one of the major factors preventing Islamic societies from adapting or developing modern concepts of individual rights.

Islam is indeed in decline, and has been for centuries. Most of the Islamic countries in the world cannot support themselves and would collapse if not for oil (Saudi Arabia, Iran), massive amounts of foreign aid (Egypt, Pakistan), or a sizeable non-Muslim population that is wealthy and industrious (Indonesia, Malaysia). This state of affairs will not be sustainable for very much longer. You wrote that 'the expression "reformation of Islam" is aberrant', but the way things are going, the alternative to reformation is destruction.

You seem to be suggesting that the only real Islam was practised 14 centuries ago and that what is needed is not a reformation but a return to some pristine ideal. The problem is that this ideal exists only as a myth, invented centuries after the fact. To base one's actions on such a false view of the world is to act under the influence of ignorance (or delusion), one of the "three poisons" in Buddhist philosophy. What is needed among Muslims is not more blind adherence to religious dogma and mythology, but a genuine understanding of real history.

(By the way, I skimmed through your blog. It seems to consist of nothing more than parroting other people's poorly reasoned Islamic apologetics. For a critic's view of these arguments for Islam, I recommend a visit to Freethought Mecca.)

南無阿彌陀佛