[Buddha-l] Buddhist warfare

[Curt Steinmetz]

Jerryson has also independently promoted this book in a way that makes 
his personal agenda (and his ignorance of the subject at hand) quite 
explicit:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/books/2158/monks_with_guns%3A_discovering_buddhist_violence

In that diatribe Jerryson makes the ludicrous claim that D.T. Suzuki 
participated in "a very successful form of propaganda" to hoodwink 
westerners into believing that Buddhists eschew all forms of violence. 
D.T. SUZUKI!?!?!? Think about that for a moment, and then decide for 
yourself what possible worth their could be in any scholarly volume on 
Buddhism and violence co-edited by this genius.

Curt Steinmetz

L.S. Cousins wrote:
>   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
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