| >Buddhism is about peace, fundamentally and (in nearly all cases) in practice. There's a slight subtlety to this. Buddhist ethics are very different to Judeo-Christian ethics. The Buddhist equivalent to "thou shalt not kill" is the first of the five precepts, "panatipata veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami", which loosely translates to "I undertake the rule of training to refrain from killing living beings". This is not so much an absolute proscription as a broad axiomatic principle. In western terms, Buddhist ethics are most closely aligned with negative utilitarianism - broadly speaking, Buddhists seek to minimise net suffering. One study found that, when presented with the trolley car problem, Buddist monks were drastically more likely to push the man off the footbridge than Americans. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/06/how-d... The main religious support for the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya comes from monks affiliated with Ma Ba Tha, a hardline nationalist group. From their perspective, the Rohingya represent an existential threat to the Rakhine people and the republic of Myanmar. If this assessment were true, then the expulsion of Rohingya people could be interpreted as the least-harm option, even if it involves substantial violence. Although the vast majority of Buddhists condemn the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, it is not intrinsically incompatible with Buddhist ethics. This conflict is not new. Rohingya Islamist groups have been fighting the government of Myanmar/Burma since 1947, with the aim of establishing an Islamic regime in Rakhine state. The current crisis was most likely precipitated by an attack on border guards in 2016, which Islamist militant groups claimed responsibility for. There is clear evidence that Rohingya guerrilla groups are being trained in Bangladesh; there is also substantial evidence of ties between Al-Qaeda and militant Islamists in Myanmar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_insurgency_in_Western... I strongly disapprove of the oppression of the Rohingya people and the silence from the civilian government, but I do think that the western media has presented a grossly over-simplified narrative that frames the actions of the Myanmar people as senseless and unprovoked. I would ask the reader to consider how their country would react if Islamist guerrillas were active in their own back yard, sponsored by a neighbouring Muslim nation. |
For the level of Buddhism practiced in this area (Theravada) it is incompatible, there’s clearly nothing good that can come from it. They were clearly taught not to do this, there’s no ambiguity.
Additionally monks have no authority, they are not saints or have even the slightest clue about anything, anyone can put on a robe and be a monk. This isn’t understood in the West, where a monk is considered to be a title, but it’s really a zero, like saying your child got into pre-school.