[Buddha-l] Religious violence, Buddhist violence

[Curt Steinmetz]

Dan Lusthaus wrote:
>
> ... But to acknowledge that Christianity and Islam are special cases, and 
> clearly the worst offenders, doesn't let Buddhists, etc. off the hook 
> completely. 

Buddhists should never be let off the hook for anything. And thanks to 
Buddha's Immutable Law of Karma we never will be. ;)

But the rhetoric employed by Jerryson, Juergensmeyer and their publisher 
seeks to blur all real distinctions between the more violent religions 
and the less violent ones -- and they emphatically state that this is 
precisely their aim. Until the larger distinctions are clear, the finer 
distinctions cannot possibly be understood. This has nothing to do with 
letting anyone off the hook, although it might have repercussions for 
the size of the hooks employed.

Charges of religious violence intolerance are always treated with 
suspicion by those against whom the charges are being made (to state the 
obvious). This makes it incumbent on those making such accusations to 
provide some evidence of their objectivity. In my most recent post I did 
this by making frequent references to the writings of respected 
historians and religion scholars, including many contemporary scholars 
(as well as some old war horses I dragged out like Gibbon and Bury). 
That doesn't make me right, but it does make me not someone just 
spouting irresponsible unsupported accusations.

But what steps have Jerryson & Co. taken to demonstrate that they are 
not just out to sensationalize this issue in order to sell books, or, 
worse, to "get" Buddhism? Doesn't making ludicrous accusations about 
conspiracies by "Buddhist monastic intellectuals", and lurid statements 
about Buddhism's "dark side" go in the other direction?

More importantly, though, anyone genuinely concerned with the issues of 
religious violence and tolerance will want to draw attention to positive 
examples and negative examples and try to understand what makes them 
tick. They will also ask the difficult questions about systemic patterns 
of violence and intolerance as opposed to violence and intolerance that 
occur as aberrations.

If Jerryson hadn't gone so far off the reservation in his self-promoting 
diatribe at religiondispatches.org he might be able to (just barely) 
claim that he is just trying to make a contribution to knowledge, like a 
good scholar. But he is clearly a man on a mission. It takes one to know 
one.

Just one last thing on Japan. There was a stiff competition, but I 
believe that Imperial Japan earned a place in the Top Four Most 
Murderous Regimes of the 20th Century competition. The other three were 
the Third Reich, the USSR and the PRC. The honorable mentions are too 
numerous, and too dishonorable, to mention. I always find myself 
wondering: how in blue blazes could anyone claim that this comes as a 
surprise? Any more than it is a surprise that Buddhism is one of the 
major religions of Japan, and was all during the Imperial period? People 
may have suppressed these facts in their own minds, but most of the 
world already knows this (well, at least that tiny minority of humanity 
who can find Japan on a map of the world).

Curt