[Buddha-l] comment on illustration in Zarni's Todays Thoughts

[Jo]

Reply to Chris Fynns' question. 
>From the article:
 "Shashanko Barua's voice trembles when he recounts how he and his family
ran for their lives to escape an angry Muslim mob last year. They hid in a
forest for a whole night near their village in the south-eastern Bangladeshi
district of Cox's Bazar before returning home."
The Cox's bazaar location is what counts here. This is where hundreds of
Rohingya refugees live crowded together in camps, and also from where north
and south of CB hundreds were sent back to Burma at one point.  Thus Muslim
antagonism to Theravada Buddhists is probably more intense here than
elsewhere. 

Jihadist-type Muslims are experts at creating and disseminating blasphemous
texts and images in order to start pogroms, as happened here: 
"The protests were triggered after an image allegedly insulting the Koran
was posted on the Facebook site of a Buddhist youth. Investigations by local
media later revealed the youth had nothing to do with the incident." This
goes on all the time in Pakistan when some outfit wants to attack Christian
Pakistanis. 

" and they say hundreds of people were brought in trucks and vans from Cox's
Bazar and Chittagong districts."  Chittagong is the biggest  jihadist center
in Bangladesh, more so than any other place. No surprise rioters were
recruited from that city. That Hindu homes & temples were also ransacked
always goes along with any kind of jihadi excuse to attack non-Muslims in
Bangladesh, even though Hindus had absolutely nothing to do with it and
weren't named in the alleged post on fb. 

"Our neighbours were also involved in the attacks. So the government should
take measures to make the local Muslim community show tolerance. Only that
will bring a permanent solution and prevent such events in the future," said
Nilutpal Barua, a teacher."  Shades of the Partition of India in 1947, when
communal violence was carried out both in India and Pakistan by neighbors
who had lived peacefully with one another for decades.  
In South Asia it has always been easy to instigate inter-religious violence
if one religion's devotees think they have been attacked by another
religion's devotees.  Still, communal (a term for inter-ethnic or
inter-religious) violence is always instigated...it doesn't happen
spontaneously. The attacks in Burma on Rohingyas started when some entity
claimed that a Buddhist girl was raped by Muslims. Doesn't take much.

I doubt if the Sept. 2012 violence reported in this BBC article was related
to goings on in Burma, but who the hell really knows?

Joanna
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Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2013 4:04 AM

I wonder - Is there any relation between last year's attacks on Buddhists by
Muslims in neighbouring Bangladesh - and the recent attacks on Muslims by
Buddhists in Burma?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21161354