[Buddha-l] Was Buddhists Taking a Stand Against Isllamophobia

[Dan Lusthaus]

Gerald McLoughlin writes:

>I checked the map. [...] Nothing can be established by the article's choice of one spot over another.

Then see if these establish something:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_military_conflicts
http://www.conservation.org/warfare/Pages/map.aspx
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17g9hi4f6ep3vjpg/original.jpg
(but check the legend and explanations of the last two carefully)

If anyone has a clearer map of current conflict hot-spots around the world, please post it.

>What, by the way, is the Muslim world?  

There are about 60 nations which are Muslim (separation of "church" and state is not an option), some for many centuries, some established in the 20th c precisely on the basis of muslim identity (e.g., Pakistan). If you get out a world map and start around Indonesia (the most populous muslim nation in the world) and continue westward through Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kashmir, western China, Chechnya, Azerbaijan, etc. etc, Iran, the middle east, Balkans, Bosnia, Armenia, north Africa, Somalia, Sudan (but not the recently established South Sudan which is still fighting for its independence from the muslim north, although already granted statehood), Chad, Nigeria, etc., you will have circumscribed the Muslim world (and in countries like Nigeria containing large non-Muslim populations, constant slaughter and outbursts or religious intolerance). You will also have traced something that fits directly on top of the maps above. Not a coincidence. The periphery of the Muslim world -- i.e., where it borders on non-muslim states and populations -- there is violent conflict. 

>How does it intersect with the world of Buddhist discussions?

You might address that to those who introduced the topic (I was a latecomer). But if you need assurances that these conflicts do impact directly on the Buddhist world (about which Buddhist discourse should be concerned), then one has to look at the history of Central Asia (from Iran eastward), and pay attention to how Buddhist communities that thrived for nearly a millennium were eliminated by the onslaught of Islam, which also played a major role in the extinction of Buddhism in its native India. Tibet survived because of its military prowess and general inaccessibility, but found itself surrounded by an Islamic sea (for Tibetan attitudes on Islam, read the Kalacakra). For present day, aside from Bamiyan, etc., there are conflicts in Thailand, etc. China's western frontier is home to Tibetans and muslim Uigurs, whose protests and repression have become conflated in the Chinese mind, although their histories and demands are quite different. And so on.

Dan