“Killing people” is not the same as “Forcing them from their homes”. I don’t endorse the latter, but you’ve repeated a false claim a couple of times now.
Furthermore, it’s the government of Myanmar that did that. This isn’t unlike laying responsibility for Stalin’s 10 million deaths at the feet of the atheists. Let’s consider the evidence:
[QUOTE=ABC News]
Another scene showed a young Muslim man who had tried to flee being forced out of a thicket of green reeds and beaten by an angry crowd that included a Buddhist monk who was armed with a stick.
[/QUOTE]
So in an angry crowd, we have a single Buddhist monk with a stick. More seriously: The report detailed how officials from the powerful Rakhine Nationalities Development Party, as well as Buddhist monks, publically vilified the Rohingya after the June riots. They encouraged segregation, the boycott of Muslim businesses, and described the Rohingya living among them as a threat to the state.
“These groups and others issued numerous anti-Rohingya pamphlets and public statements, explicitly or implicitly denying the existence of the Rohingya ethnicity, demonizing them, and calling for their removal from the country, at times using the phrase ‘ethnic cleansing,’” Human Rights Watch said. “The statements frequently were released in connection with organized meetings and in full view of local, state, and national authorities who raised no concerns.” Again, this is principally a governmental action, one taken by a notoriously despotic regime.
That said, the wise cracks about True Scotsmen et al are spot-on. And Rahula’s claim has been falsified.
Another example of non-peaceable Buddhists: see Civil War, Sri Lankan.
Interesting thing, though, is that at least from the Middle Ages onward, in the West the Church often acted as an antagonist to secular power; whereas in China any such rival center of authority would be simply inconceivable*. Up to the advent of the Christian missionaries, religious authority required the explicit sanction of the state–and this is a pattern that the modern Chinese government still attempts to emulate today, FWIW. Ruling classes have always used religion to keep the mob in line, but I think it’s interesting that in China religion was used much more as an explicit tool of the state.
*unless in the context of rebellion or civil war, which is also a recurring theme in Chinese history.
Which is why I am tempted to understand if not forgive the PRC for its treatment of the Falun Gong. There are a lot of examples in Chinese history – even in the past three centuries, which is yesterday by Chinese standards – of a religious movement evolving into a political/dynastic rebellion.
And nearly (but not nearly quite) equivalent to the introduction of Christianity to the Roman Empire. I say “not nearly quite” because Chinese civilization (1) never fell because of Buddhism and (2) never actually fell at all and (3) always was able to absorb it and remain essentially Chinese, while Western civilization quite sadly failed to remain both Christian and Classical.
I couldn’t give any incidents of it off the top of my head, except perhaps with the Hill Tribes of Thailand and Myanmar (and even then, it’s more just the sort of thing that I assume they’d be doing), but even as a practicing, sincere Buddhist, I have come to grips with the fact that:
We are total bastards, just the same as everyone else. -
The first time that regular people started believing that holy monks understood right from wrong, the rich and powerful have always cozied up to those holy monks in order to legitimize them. We’ve been in this business for over 2,000 years, and we’re still involved in it. This brings with it all the dogmatic and political nastiness that it would entail elsewhere.
No, don’t think so. I’m not so familiar with that era, but going by what you linked here–three memorials by lower officials submitted to the emperor urging him not to be so welcoming to Buddhism, and unsuccessfully at that–is irrelevant what I was asserting, that under the imperial system it would be impossible for Buddhists themselves to set up a rival center of authority in opposition to the emperor.
The three memorialists are cited as influences on widespread government suppression of Buddhism under the T’ang. From the website:
The reasons often cited are - that Buddhism was growing too powerful as an institution, thus taking away imperial authority (and removing people from the imperial economy in the form of widespread monasticsim).
This is not something totally unfamiliar or alien to the European context …
More:
[Emphasis added]
The guy is not exactly a Chinese Henry VIII, but his motives were in some ways similar - crush the tax-sapping, authority-defying Buddhist establishment …
The persecution is said to have had permanent effects: Buddhism obviously survived ant thrived in China, but the Buddhist clergy and establishment never again formed a powerful, tax-free block.
In that case, I think you and I are arguing the same point: a separate focus of temporal authority in China would simply not be tolerated as it was in Europe from the early Middle Ages onward.
