[Buddha-l] Buddhist warfare

[L.S. Cousins]

  Well, I have finally managed to read the book. It is actually quite 
interesting to read a book after so much discussion.

I share the view that the editors have a definite agenda of some kind. 
Mark Juergensmeyer is the author of a book on global religious violence 
and perhaps wants to assimilate Buddhist approaches to violence to that 
of other religions. It is difficult to be sure because he doesn't 
actually contribute to the volume.

This is much more clearly so with the other editor: Michael Jerryson. He 
writes the introduction. That has already been much criticised and 
rightly so. He seems rather lacking in historical judgment and draws on 
all sorts of dubious and inaccurate sources. He is clearly trying to 
make a case rather than engaging in any kind of serious scholarly 
evaluation.

His other contribution is the chapter on "Militarizing Buddhism: 
Violence in Southern Thailand". I was left quite uncertain how much of 
this to believe. Jerryson tells us that "If not for the fact that I 
personally and directly interviewed military monks, I might have 
dismissed these informants' depictions as a communal fabrication." In 
fact, however, he only tells us about one (anonymous) informant who 
actually claimed to be such a monk. His other informants seemed mostly 
to be giving hearsay. Note that Jerryson makes it quite clear that the 
existence of such monks was officially denied by government sources and 
also that the vast majority of abbots he asked also denied their existence.

Even if what he claims is true, it doesn't seem to amount to much.

1. Soldiers, like all other civil servants in Thailand, are entitled to 
take a three month leave of absence in order to ordain for a period as a 
monk. This is a rite of passage in Thailand and neighbouring countries. 
It is absurd to assimilate this to a phenomenon of 'military monks'.

2. We have a situation in which soldiers are sent to protect Buddhist 
monasteries, monks and buildings from Muslim extremist violence. 
Unfortunately this is a rather common phenomenon around the interface 
between Southern Buddhist communities and Islamic ones. Note for example 
the current situation in Bangladesh. Certain types of Muslim extremist 
see this a a virtuous thing to do.

3. The claim is that soldiers have been sent either to become monks to 
provide a religious presence in otherwise deserted monasteries or to 
pretend to be monks so as to be in a position to defend monastic sites 
if they come under attack. In the latter case they would of course not 
be monks at all and hence not military monks. In the former case it 
would be rather improper in normative Buddhist terms if they were to 
defend the monastery when it was attacked. But it is hardly surprising 
and there is no telling what some undercover department of the Thai 
government or military might have got up to.

4. The significant thing, surely, is that this is so alien to the 
normative views of Thai society that it has to be done covertly. If 
indeed the whole thing is not the kind of shaggy dog story that Thais 
love to tell to innocent westerners.

5. The remarkable thing about Jerryson's paper is that he appears to 
think that the problems in the southern three provinces began in 2004. 
In fact various kinds of insurgency in this area have a long history 
going back to the 1960s. Not to mention the situation before the British 
took control of most of the Malay states.

Lance Cousins