Religious conflict was regularly emphasized by narrators in every city except Pathein. Nonetheless, in
Pathein nearly all narrators included religious conflict within those issues that concerned them for the
whole country or the Pathein area, though they did not choose it as their central concern. Yet, when
people across all six cities told us that something like religious conflict caused them to feel concern, this
could mean different things. For some, this related to concerns about the way that the spectre of additional
riots might be used to postpone elections in 2015 or legitimate a resumption of military rule. For others,
this was empathy and distress at the suffering of people from both religious communities. For many, it
was a feeling of threat, to the narrators as individuals and to their religious, ethnic, and/or national
communities. And for many, it was a sometimes contradictory set of feelings that combined and exceeded
the above.
In Mawlamyine, for example, a Buddhist man we interviewed spoke articulately and at length about the
importance of the 2015 elections and the ongoing ceasefire process. Eventually, however, he decided to
identify religious conflict as his primary concern for the whole country:
A: I’d like to say that religious conflict is the biggest issue.
Q: Since when do you feel like this religious conflict is the biggest issue for the country?
A: Since the incident happened in Rakhine State, and as the tension has grown recently, the
hatred towards Islam has grown. I have concerns for the actions upon [Burma] that will be taken
by the middle part.
Q: What do you mean ‘by the middle part’?
A: ISIS from the Middle East. If they declare Jihad on Burma, that can be a problem for us as
well as the whole ASEAN community. I am worried about it.28
He had previously stated his commitment to peace and progressive social action; he had also expressed
concern for hatred against another religion; and he identified a genuine fear.
Muslims as threat
Many of the people we spoke with articulated a narrative about Islam in general and in Myanmar, that
posits Islam as an intrinsically violent religion and Muslims in Myanmar as potentially dangerous. This
dominant narrative can be loosely grouped into two interrelated conceptions of threat. Firstly, Muslims
were presented as an existential threat to race and religion. Narrators repeatedly referenced the
28 Man, 26, Buddhist, Myanmar, Mawlamyine, March 2015 MSPT MLM 2.
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vulnerability of Buddhism or a particular ethnic community to being erased or supplanted in Myanmar.
Variants on the phrase ‘one people swallowing another’ were regularly used, for example, invoking the
slogan of the Ministry of Immigration and Population: ‘A nation will not disappear even if it is swallowed
up by the earth. But a nation will disappear if it is swallowed up by another people.’29 Secondly, Muslims
were presented as a personal threat to the narrator or to the narrator’s local community of residence.
Narrators described Muslims as violent, untrustworthy, and devout. This is an understanding of Islam in
unitary terms, as a homogenous and universal category. Islamic religious practices were referenced to
prove this, in terms both general (‘Islam is an ideology of violence’) and specific. Cow butchering was a
common example. Cows are revered by many in Myanmar and, for some Buddhists (and all Hindus), beef
is taboo.
30 Even for those Buddhists who eat beef, that Islam would require butchering a revered animal is
a powerful statement about violence embedded within the religion. Another common example given was
the position of women, especially their perceived treatment and perceived lack of freedoms within Islam.
In conceiving of Islam as intrinsically violent, narrators thus constructed an image of Muslims in which
being devout is equivalent to being violent. That is, the image is of ‘Muslims’ as an Other that is
dangerous because of religious belief. Outward indications of religious devotion such as the sound of
prayer or clothing choices, then, are not just markers of difference but of ‘extremism’ and the potential for
violence. The following excerpt from an interview with a young Buddhist man in the Ayeyarwady Delta
comes close to illustrating the connection drawn between views of Muslim devoutness and ‘extremism’:
My aunt’s husband is Muslim... As he is my aunt’s husband, we tried to see him as an uncle at
first. Later, what happened was, they are very good at mobilizing for their religion. They are very
religious people… For them, from children to old people, they only trust their god. Then,
eventually, they persuaded my aunt to their religion. At first, my aunt worshipped [Buddha] but
later, she did not. He would persuade her with different ways until he got it. Now, she and the
children who she gave birth to became Muslim… I was also a friend with an Islam [Muslim]…
However, as I observed his behavior and his beliefs, I noticed that he was very serious in his
religious belief. To say it rudely, he was like an extremist. I didn’t discuss this with him… I just
lived innocently with him. If he asked me, I talked to him and if he called me, I answered…
However, I was not comfortable. He is from a different religion and also an extremist… At that
time, I really wanted to do something to him but I tried to control myself. Later, it was fine. I just
let it go and didn’t argue with him much.31
29 In Myanmar, ‘Myay myo yweh lu myo: ma pyouk: lu myo hma lu myo: pyouk meh.’ Note that, although lu myo:
can be translated as ‘nation,’ ‘ethnicity,’ or simply ‘people,’ here we understand it to refer to ‘nation.’ As of July
2015, signs bearing this slogan still hang on the walls behind immigration officers at township level immigration
offices. A much larger sign bearing this slogan hangs in the office of the Minister of Immigration and Population.
See, Sai Latt, “Burma’s Ominous Political Debate over Ethnicity,” The Irrawaddy, June 25, 2013,
http://www.irrawaddy.org/contributor/burmas-ominous-political-debate-over-ethnicity.html.
30 There is no consistent doctrinal position within Myanmar Buddhism regarding the consumption of beef. While
some Buddhists in Myanmar might attribute their abstinence from eating beef to ‘religious’ reasons, some who also
identify as Buddhist might forego eating it for reasons more related to astrology, magical practice, or simply
because, as in other rural environments, farmers are reliant on cows for labor and food production. In the past,
sizeable movements opposing the slaughter and consumption of beef have arisen in Myanmar. One of the more
notable recent efforts was by the famous Ledi Sayadaw around the turn of the twentieth century, who argued that, if
the Burmese were to have any hope of winning their freedom from British colonial rule, they must cultivate their
collective moral practice more assiduously; he suggested that people refrain from eating beef. See, Erik Braun, The
Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw (Chicago: University Of
Chicago Press, 2013).
31 Man, 20, Buddhist, Myanmar, Pathein February 2015 MSPT 5.
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Devotion, when understood to be synonymous with extremism, helps to establish the nature of a
perceived Muslim threat: all devout Muslims are potentially dangerous. Component to this was the idea
that Muslims seek to expand and overtake other religions, as a function of a colonizing imperative (or an
unwillingness to assimilate) asserted to originate within Islamic teaching. Some narrators explained this
as the meaning of Jihad or a requirement contained within Sharia. Both words are in common usage,
though understanding of their meaning may vary and may not conform to common Muslim
understandings of these concepts. A few narrators situated such claims historically, with references to
countries such as Afghanistan or Indonesia, places that are understood to have once been Buddhist but
which are now Muslim. For Myanmar, this specter of a ‘Muslim takeover’ was explained as potentially
occurring through a variety of mechanisms that require vigilance on the part of Buddhists. This is
primarily a demographic argument, about rapid Muslim population growth driven by large families,
intermarriage and forced conversion of Buddhist women, illegal immigration from Bangladesh, and the
use of violence or economic power.
Justifying arguments
In our interviews, people called upon an identifiable, persistent set of arguments to illustrate the idea that
Islam is violent and Muslims present an existential or personal threat. These arguments can be loosely
grouped into three interrelated strands: references to international events, events within Myanmar, and
personal experiences.
We use the term ‘argument’ here because, by asking narrators to choose their primary concerns and then
explain them, the interview encounter obliged narrators to justify their choices. Different narrators
approached this differently, with some investing clear energy into not only answering our questions but
into persuading us to agree. In Lashio, for example, we interviewed a mother who works at the central
office of the Shan State Ma Ba Tha. She spoke to us earnestly, sometimes seeming to be on the verge of
tears, and with a high degree of certainty about the information she presented:
In my opinion, for the first point, it is religion. They [Muslims] are swallowing our religion… I
am so worried about it for our future generations, our grand children and so on. In our time,
horrible things like this happen to our religion. For the future of our children, I am so worried that
our religion will disappear. I have these worries and concerns. I don’t want this religion to
disappear for our future generation. I want it to last forever.32
Given that this woman told us she had left her previous employment to come work for Ma Ba Tha
because of her desire to protect