Christians disappearing from Bethlehem and the Middle East

The town of Bethlehem [בית לחם], the birthplace of Jesus according to Christian tradition, is emptying of its Christian population. From the Daily Mail:

It is one of the most sacred sites in Christendom, but there are no tourists queuing to see it.

Just 500 yards down the road, Joseph Canawati is not looking forward to Christmas.

The expansive lobby of his 77-room Hotel Alexander is empty and he says: "There is no hope for the future of the Christian community.

"We don't think things are going to get better. For us, it is finished."

Life for Palestinian Christians such as 50-year-old Joseph has become increasingly difficult in Bethlehem — and many of them are leaving.

The town's Christian population has dwindled from more than 85 per cent in 1948 to 12 per cent of its 60,000 inhabitants in 2006.

There are reports of religious persecution, in the form of murders, beatings and land grabs. [...]

The sense of a creeping Islamic fundamentalism is all around in Bethlehem.

A mosque on one side of Manger Square stands directly opposite the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, while in the evening the muezzin's call to prayer clashes with the peal of church bells. [...]

This isolation was heightened when, last year, Bethlehem found itself behind Israel's security wall, a 400-mile-long concrete barrier which separates Jewish and Palestinian areas and is designed to stop suicide bombers - in 2004, half the Israeli fatalities caused by such attacks were committed by extremists from Bethlehem. [...]

The terrorists obviously chose the town of Bethlehem as a staging ground for strategic as well as symbolic reasons. If Israel had build its security wall to include Bethlehem, it would have left itself vulnerable to attack. By excluding Bethlehem, however, Israel is effectively strangling one of the holy places of Christianity and thus earning the ire of Christians. Either way, the terrorists win.

Here are two articles about Christian disapproval of the Israeli wall due to its isolation of Bethlehem:

• Yahoo! News: Anglican leader criticizes Israeli wall
• Catholic online: Catholic church to replace Nativity scene with replica of Israeli wall

The following article from Times Online begins by placing the blame for the flight of Christians from the Middle East squarely on the shoulders of the West:

Christians in the Middle East have paid a high price for the Iraq war, the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad and the Pope’s controversial remarks about Islam.

Egyptian Copts, Iraqi Chaldeans and the Palestinian Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant communities have faced violence and even death at the hands of their Muslim neighbours. [...]

The problem with this theory is that Middle Eastern Christians have been persecuted by and "faced violence and even death at the hands of" their Muslim neighbours long before the relatively recent events mentioned above. The article is accompanied by the following graphic and even notes that the flight of Christians from the Middle East started more than a century ago:

Christians in Jordan and other neighboring states began leaving for the West more than a century ago to escape the poverty of the Ottoman Empire. Estimates put the number of Arab Christians living in the diaspora at 4 million, with between 10 million and 15 million living in the Middle East.

It is a pity that the West, which is ostensibly Christian, does not pay more attention to the plight of Christians in the Middle East.

南無阿彌陀佛

China ordains Catholic bishop without Vatican approval

In this previous post, I discussed the Chinese government's attempts to assert control over Tibetan Buddhism by taking over the process of choosing the next incarnation of Tibetan Lamas.

The Chinese government also ordains its own Catholic bishops without Vatican approval. From The New York Times:

China and the Vatican exchanged renewed criticisms over the weekend about China’s selection of a new bishop over the Vatican’s objections, but there were hints on each side that the dispute might be papered over in the months ahead.

[...]

The Vatican said in a statement on Saturday that Pope Benedict XVI was “deeply pained” by the ordination of Wang Renlei [王仁雷] last Thursday as a bishop in Xuzhou [徐州] Diocese in Jiangsu [江蘇] Province in eastern China. The statement was slightly shorter and slightly less condemning than the one issued when the state-approved mainland church consecrated two other Chinese bishops last spring over the Vatican’s objections; a statement at that time said the pope “has learned of the news with profound displeasure.”

The pope warned then of the excommunication of the two bishops, Liu Xinhong [劉新紅] and Ma Yinglin [馬英林], although the Vatican has not begun the paperwork for such an action. In his statement on Saturday, he cited the same section of canonical law that includes excommunication for clergy who defy the Vatican. The Vatican’s statement was less directly critical of Beijing than the statement issued here late Thursday night by Cardinal Joseph Zen [陳日君], who is the bishop of Hong Kong and the only Chinese cardinal. He accused the Chinese government of kidnapping clergy and forcing them to participate in the consecration on Thursday, and he said the government sought to disrupt the unity of the Roman Catholic Church.

Liu Bainian [劉柏年], the vice president of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church Association [中國天主教愛國會], which oversees the government-approved mainland church, denied in a telephone interview that anyone had been kidnapped or coerced. He also provided further details of the selection of Wang Renlei to become the auxiliary bishop of the diocese. [...]

China has a history of religiously inspired rebellions, and the loyalty of large numbers of Chinese citizens to any organisation outside of state control makes the Communist Party very nervous.

南無阿彌陀佛

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