Time magazine မွာပါတဲ့ Hannah Beechရဲ႕ သတင္းႏွစ္ပုဒ္ကို မူရင္းအတိုင္း ေဖာ္ျပလိုက္ပါတယ္။သူမကို ေနျပည္ေတာ္ World Economic Forum မွာ ကတည္းက သတိထားမိခဲ့ပါတယ္။ဒါေပမဲ့ ဒီလို Buddhismကို ထိုးႏွက္တိုက္ခိုက္တဲ့ သတင္းမ်ိဳး ေရးမယ္လို႕ မထင္ခဲ့ပါဘူး။ When Buddhists Go Bad: Photographs by Adam Dean The spectacle of faith makes for luminous photography. Buddhism, in particular, lends itself to the lens: those shaven heads and richly hued monastic robes; the swirls of incense; the pure expressions of devotees to a religion whose first precept is “do not kill.” But as photographer Adam Dean and I discovered when traveling through Burma and Thailand from May to June, Buddhism’s pacifist image is being challenged by a radical strain that marries spirituality with ethnic chauvinism. In Buddhist-majority Burma, where communal clashes have proliferated over the past year, scores of Muslims have been killed by Buddhist mobs, while in Thailand and Sri Lanka the fabric binding temple and state is being stitched ever tighter. The godfather of radical Buddhism is a monk named Wirathu, a slight presence with an outsized message of hate. Adam followed Wirathu, who has taken the title of “Burmese bin Laden,” around Mandalay in central Burma, as he preached his loathing of the country’s Muslim minority to schoolchildren and housewives alike. In March, tensions detonated in the town of Meikhtila, where communal violence ended dozens of lives, mostly Muslim. Entire Muslim quarters were razed by Buddhists hordes. Even today, anxiety churns. One late afternoon as Adam walked near Wirathu’s monastic compound, a monk hurled a brick at him. Burgundy robes cannot camouflage inborn hostility. In Southern Thailand, which was once united as a Muslim Malay sultanate, monks count on soldiers to shield them from harm. A separatist insurgency has claimed around 5,000 lives since 2004, and while more Muslims have died, it is Buddhists who feel particularly vulnerable as targets of shadowy militants. The Thai military now stations its troops in Buddhist temple compounds, further cleaving a pair of religions whose followers once shared each other’s feast days. One morning in mid-June, a bomb exploded in Kradoh, Pattani province, as Thai rangers patrolled a street where a peace and reconciliation meeting was taking place. Chanchote Phetpong, 28, who was clutching a bag of rose apples as he strolled, endured the brunt of the explosion; his orphaned fruit lay scattered in a pool of his blood. At the nearby Yarang hospital, Adam photographed as teachers, mostly Buddhist, came to pay their respects to the dead ranger, who normally protected them as they walked to school each day. A Muslim nurse with a head covering quietly plucked shrapnel out of Chanchote’s face, cleaning him up for his funeral, while another tended to one of his wounded comrades. A clutch of Buddhist rangers looked on. The nurses’ veils felt like a reproach, a symbol of the divide between faiths in this nervous land. “They are scared of all of us,” whispered one Muslim hospital worker. “We used to have trust but that’s gone.” Adam Dean is a photographer based in Beijing. He is represented by Panos Pictures. Hannah Beech is TIME’s China bureau chief and East Asia correspondent. Straying From the Middle Way: Extremist Buddhist Monks Target Religious Minorities By Hannah Beech The fault-lines of conflict are often spiritual, one religion chafing against another and kindling bloodletting contrary to the values girding each faith. Over the past year in parts of Asia, it is friction between Buddhism and Islam that has killed hundreds, mostly Muslims. The violence is being fanned by extremist Buddhist monks, who preach a dangerous form of religious chauvinism to their followers. Yet as this week’s TIME International cover story notes, Buddhism has tended to avoid a linkage in our minds to sectarian strife: “In the reckoning of religious extremism—Hindu nationalists, Muslim militants, fundamentalist Christians, ultra-Orthodox Jews—Buddhism has largely escaped trial. To much of the world, it is synonymous with nonviolence and loving kindness, concepts propagated by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, 2,500 years ago. But like adherents of any religion, Buddhists and their holy men are not immune to politics and, on occasion, the lure of sectarian chauvinism. When Asia rose up against empire and oppression, Buddhist monks, with their moral command and plentiful numbers, led anticolonial movements. Some starved themselves for their cause, their sunken flesh and protruding ribs underlining their sacrifice for the laity. Perhaps most iconic is the image of Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese monk sitting in the lotus position, wrapped in flames, as he burned to death in Saigon while protesting the repressive South Vietnamese regime 50 years ago. In 2007, Buddhist monks led a foiled democratic uprising in Burma: images of columns of clerics bearing upturned alms bowls, marching peacefully in protest against the junta, earned sympathy around the world, if not from the soldiers who slaughtered them. But where does social activism end and political militancy begin? Every religion can be twisted into a destructive force poisoned by ideas that are antithetical to its foundations. Now it’s Buddhism’s turn.” Over the past year in Buddhist-majority Burma, scores, if not hundreds, have been killed in communal clashes, with Muslims suffering the most casualties. Burmese monks were seen goading on Buddhist mobs, while some suspect the authorities of having stoked the violence—a charge the country’s new quasi-civilian government denies. In Sri Lanka, where a conservative, pro-Buddhist government reigns, Buddhist nationalist groups are operating with apparent impunity, looting Muslim and Christian establishments and calling for restrictions to be placed on the 9% of the country that is Muslim. Meanwhile in Thailand’s deep south, where a Muslim insurgency has claimed some 5,000 lives since 2004, desperate Buddhist clerics are retreating into their temples with Thai soldiers at their side. Their fear is understandable. But the close relationship between temple and state is further dividing this already anxious region. As the violence mounts, will Buddhists draw inspiration from their faith’s sutras of compassion and peace to counter religious chauvinism? Or will they succumb to the hate speech of radical monks like Burma’s Wirathu, who goads his followers to “rise up” against Islam? The world’s judgment awaits. Click here to read Hannah Beech’s full story on the violence between Buddhism and Islam in Asian countries.world.time
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 06:52:11 +0000