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Understanding Islam: Buddhist Common Sense vs. Western Nonsense

Raymond IbrahimCBN News Contributor, Middle East and Islam Expert

posted on Wednesday, July 31, 2013 11:46 AM

Source: http://blogs.cbn.com/ibrahim/archive/2013/07/31/understanding-islam-buddhist-

common-sense-vs.-western-nonsense.aspx

A recent New York Times article, titled "Extremism Rises Among Myanmar's Buddhists,"

offers important lessons on common sense and nonsense. Written by Thomas Fuller, it

begins by telling of how:

After a ritual prayer atoning for past sins, Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk with a rock-

star following in Myanmar, sat before an overflowing crowd of thousands of devotees and

launched into a rant against what he called "the enemy"- the country's Muslim minority.

"You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog," AshinWirathu said, referring to Muslims. "I call them troublemakers, because they are

troublemakers."

While the article is meant to highlight the supposed "intolerance" of Myanmar's

Buddhists, for those who can read between the lines-or who are familiar with Islamicteachings, history, and current events-it is clear that Buddhists are responding to

existential threats posed by the Muslims living among and around them.

Here is the first lesson: unlike the West, Buddhist monks, despite their reputation asdevotees of peace, are still able to accept and respond to reality; are still governed by

common sense. Unlike the West, whose sense of reality has been so thoroughly warpedby a nonstop media propaganda campaign emanating from ubiquitous TVs and computerscreens, conditioning Americans how to think and what to believe, "third world"

Buddhist monks are acquainted with reality on the ground. They know that, left

unchecked, the Muslim minority living among them-which began hostilities-will growmore aggressive, a historically demonstrative fact.

As in other countries, the Muslims of Myanmar have engaged in violence, jihadi terror,

and rape of Buddhist girls. And that's as a minority. Myanmar's Buddhist are alsocognizant that, in neighboring nations like Bangladesh where Muslims are the majority,

all non-Muslims are being ruthlessly persecuted into extinction. But even in bordering

Thailand, where Buddhists are the majority and Muslims a minority, in the south whereMuslims make for large numbers, thousands of Buddhists-men, women, and children-

have been slaughtered, beheaded, and raped, as separatist Muslims try to cleanse the

region of all "infidel" presence.

Click here for graphic reports and images of Muslim atrocities committed against

Buddhists that may shed light on why Myanmar Buddhists are wary of Muslims.

http://blogs.cbn.com/ibrahim/archive/2013/07/31/understanding-islam-buddhist-common-sense-vs.-western-nonsense.aspxhttp://blogs.cbn.com/ibrahim/archive/2013/07/31/understanding-islam-buddhist-common-sense-vs.-western-nonsense.aspxhttp://blogs.cbn.com/ibrahim/archive/2013/07/31/understanding-islam-buddhist-common-sense-vs.-western-nonsense.aspxhttp://blogs.cbn.com/ibrahim/archive/2013/07/31/understanding-islam-buddhist-common-sense-vs.-western-nonsense.aspx

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Accordingly, Wirathu, the "radical" Buddhist monk is quoted in the NYT article as

saying: "If we are weak, our land will become Muslim." The theme song of his nationalist

organization speaks of people who "live in our land, drink our water, and are ungratefulto us" - a reference to Muslims - and how "We [Buddhists] will build a fence with our

bones if necessary" to keep supremacist Muslims out.

His pamphlets say "Myanmar is currently facing a most dangerous and fearful poison that

is severe enough to eradicate all civilization." Another senior and apparently "radical"

monk concurs: "The main thing is that our religion and our nationality don't disappear."

From here we come to lesson two: if Buddhists understand what is at stake - their entire

civilization - the NYT report is a testimony to why the West still cannot face reality.

Fuller's article carries all the trademarks - moral relativism and pro-Islam bias, and thatdangerous mixture of confidence and ignorance - that characterize the mainstream West's

inability to acknowledge and respond to Islam, but rather to sprout sentimental,

nonsensical platitudes.

For starters, Fuller doesn't seem to comprehend why Myanmar's Buddhists are worried

about disappearing , saying that "Buddhism would seem to have a secure place inMyanmar. Nine in 10 people are Buddhist Estimates of the Muslim minority range

from 4 percent to 8 percent of Myanmar's roughly 55 million people while the rest are

mostly Christian or Hindu."

Indeed, in neighboring Thailand Muslims also make for about 4 percent but have been

engaging in genocide against Buddhists in the south where Muslims are concentrated.

Moreover, an acquaintance with history - real history, not the whitewashed versionscurrently peddled in American schools - proves that for 14 centuries, Islam has, in fact,

wiped out entire peoples and identities: what we today nonchalantly refer to as the "Arab

World" was neither Arab and almost entirely Christian in the 7th century, when Islamcame into being and went on the jihad.

Fuller also seems to miss the significance of the fact that there are more Christians andHindus in Myanmar than Muslims - yet Buddhist hostility only extends to Muslims. If

indigenous Buddhists are simply becoming nationalistic radicals, as Fuller suggests, how

come they are only attacking Muslims, not Christians, and Hindus?

Then there is the clear bias. While regularly descrying the Buddhist treatment of

Muslims, including by giving several anecdotes, Fuller does not mention the jihadi terror

and murder that Muslims have visited upon Buddhists. He condemns Buddhists forreportedly displacing some 150,000 nonindigenous Muslims, without seeming to be

aware that, all around the Islamic world, Muslims are displacing hundreds of thousands

of non-Muslims, leading to a mass exodus of Christians. If Fuller is unaware of thesignificance of this fact, Myanmar's Buddhists are not - hence their very real concerns of

being swallowed up by Islam if they don't act now when they're in the majority in their

own homeland.

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But these objective facts are apparently not relevant to the NYT's readership, which has

been more conditioned to subjective talk of "feelings" and other therapeutic nonsense.

And here Fuller certainly delivers: the entire tone of the article is one of disappointmentat the Buddhists and how "many Muslims are worried."

His closing paragraph is of "a Muslim vendor in the city's central market" who spoke "ina whisper" saying "I'm really frightened. We tell the children not to go outside unless

absolutely necessary."

Thus while Myanmar's Buddhists fight for their right to survive against an ever

encroaching Islam, the NYT does what it does best-distort reality to make it fit the

mainstream media's make believe world, in this case, that Muslims are always innocent

and misunderstood victims.

Raymond Ibrahim is author ofCrucified Again: Exposing Islams New War on Christians.

Postscript: Ralph Sidway reminds me that Indonesian priest, Fr. Daniel Byantoro, haswritten the following applicable words:

For thousands of years my country (Indonesia) was a Hindu Buddhist kingdom. The last

Hindu king was kind enough to give a tax exempt property for the first Muslim

missionary to live and to preach his religion. Slowly the followers of the new religion

were growing, and after they became so strong the kingdom was attacked, those whorefused to become Muslims had to flee for their life to the neighboring island of Bali or to

a high mountain of Tengger, where they have been able to keep their religion until now.

Slowly from the Hindu Buddhist Kingdom, Indonesia became the largest Islamic country

in the world. If there is any lesson to be learnt by Americans at all, the history of my

country is worth pondering upon. We are not hate mongering, bigoted people; rather, weare freedom loving, democracy loving and human loving people. We just don't want this

freedom and democracy to be taken away from us by our ignorance and misguided

'political correctness', and the pretension of tolerance.