What type of person bombs a peaceful Buddhist temple? Islam, the religion of peace, perhaps? http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/07/world/asia/india-temple-blasts/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 New Delhi (CNN) -- A series of small bombs went off in and around a world-famous Buddhist temple in eastern India Sunday, injuring two people, authorities said. Four of the eight explosions occurred at the Mahabodhi temple complex, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Bihar state that houses a tree where Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment. The temple itself was not damaged. The other four blasts hit other sacred locations around Mahabodhi, said Bihar police official S.K. Bhardwaj. A 50-year-old Tibetan and a 30-year-old Myanmar national were injured in the attack, Bhardwaj said. While no one took responsibility for the attack, suspicion fell on the home-grown Islamist group Indian Mujahideen, Bhardwaj said. The group, designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, is blamed for dozens of deadly bomb explosions throughout India since 2005.
Agreed. There is no cause for such an action. Buddhists are peaceful people who live their lives in search of inner peace to go along with the outward peace they exhibit. Prayers for the victims and hope that those responsible will be brought to justice.
I'm not defending this in any way shape or form. It's effing ridiculous. But there are other spots of the world right now where Buddhists are violently persecuting Muslims. The problem is not the ideology...but people twisting ideology for their own political/power reasons.
I was about to say this and Buddhist have been involved in very violent conflicts in that region. Buddhism is a religion of peace and compassion but that doesn't mean that Buddhists are automatically peaceful. I say that as someone who follows the Buddha's teachings.
Not condoning this, all terrorism is bad terrorism. But keep in mind when targeting a specific group as the motivator behind these strikes, it might help to have added perspective on the region and the conflict in the region. If anything, terrorism has become more and more region specific rather than the overall "anti-americanism" we've seen over the last few decades. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324251504578576972115164736.html Recent WSJ article highlighting a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment, propagated by a radical buddhist leader. Recent Time magazine article labeled him, the "face of Buddhist terror". Intolerance and hate begets intolerance and hate.
Those Burmese aren't using Buddhism as a source of their violence. It's racial and cultural violence involving Buddhists and Muslims. The ideology of Buddhism has nothing to do with it.
The ideology of Islam also has very little to do with the racial and cultural violence in the middle east and across the world. Unfortunately, each splinter groups pulls a passage from the Quran to promote their purpose. This is why Islam itself is facing an internal battle erupting across the streets of the middle east, whether it's Sunni v. Shia or tribal group v. tribal group. It's a sad and telling sign of a war being fought no longer as "Islam v. the west" but rather Islam (insert subgroup interpretation) v. Islam (insert subgroup interpretation).
Every religion is supposed to be a religion of peace. Its the people that decide to shoehorn violence and forced conscription into that religion for their own personal gain that cause this ****. Note that rarely do you find moderates, reasonable people in the thrones of power in any given religion.
I am not aware of specific teachings from Dhamapada but there are several Buddhist stories that justify violence. One of the stories of the past lives of the Buddha was he was a merchant prince who killed several robbers who were robbing his caravan. A very famous Tibetan story involves a monk who killed an anti-Buddhist king.
Islam needs to be ridiculed and shamed out of existence, every day it's just more stories of tribal savagery
I don't necessarily think that the teachings of every religion are inherently peaceful, but they are all subject to interpretation. Personal views get tied in with doctrine, and a few misguided followers are all that's needed for validation. If law in America has taught me anything, it's that even the slightest amount of ambiguity exists in a statement a rainbow of interpretations will be drawn from it. Once there are people in your ear supporting your take, it's easy to brush off any counter points of view without actually considering them. The "of course it's Islam" mentality is bothersome because it's nothing more than a heuristic assumption. Not that dissimilar from "of course is was an atheist," or any other instance where people incorrectly assess probability because it works out more often than not. It's not easy to fight against these things. We are hard wired with so many instincts that are primitive in nature. Violent acts typically draw violent responses from people who are often moderate in nature. These instincts helped the early humans survive in a harsh world, but they work in direct conflict with our more evolved concepts, such as reason, that are what actually make human so unique. The only way to fight it, is by educating individuals to the point where they can differentiate their very subjective emotional states from objective reason. It will take more time than is fathomable by most humans. We know how slowly groups of people evolve culturally. A person can either help facilitate the evolution, or fight using the same emotionally reactive behavior that perpetuates the ignorance.
Yeah... those peaceful pacifist Buddhists never hurt anybody... Considering it is Burmese Buddhist monks leading and organizing the violence, I think to try and say that the ideology of Buddhism excludes this is splitting hairs. The fact is that religion and culture necessarily intersect, and whether the religious dogma in its most academic form promotes violence or not, any religion, be it inherently peaceful or violent, makes a pretty good pivot point for leveraging people into killing people who are different. Anybody who wants to use religion, can use which ever particular one is handy to make people do horrible things. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ese-buddhists-embracing-anti-muslim-violence/ [rquoter] ‘I am proud to be called a radical Buddhist’: More Burmese embracing anti-Muslim violence Members of Burma’s Buddhist majority, including some of its much-respected monks, are increasingly persecuting the country’s long-suffering Muslim minority and adopting an ideology that encourages religious violence. It seems a far way from the Buddhism typically associated with stoic monks and the Lama – who has condemned the violence – and more akin to the sectarian extremism prevalent in troubled corners of the Middle East. The violence has already left nearly 250 Burmese Muslim civilians dead, forced 150,000 from their homes and is getting worse. “You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,” Ashin Wirathu, a spiritual leader of the movement and very popular figure in Burma, said of the country’s Muslims, whom he called “the enemy.” He told the New York Times, “I am proud to be called a radical Buddhist.” Wirathu calls himself “the Burmese bin Laden” and was recently labeled on the cover of Time magazine as “the face of Burmese terror.” A prominent Burmese human rights activist, after a lifetime of fighting government oppression, now warns that Wirathu’s movement is promoting an ideology akin to neo-Nazism. Already, the movement has expanded beyond this one self-styled radical Buddhist monk. It’s now expanding across Burma (also known as Myanmar) according to the Times article. The anti-Muslim sentiment has spread with alarming speed over just the last year, as Burma – which is finally opening up after years of military dictatorship – loosened its strict speech laws. It has prompted boycotts and sermons that can sound an awful lot like calls for violence against Muslims. Monasteries associated with the movement have enrolled 60,000 Burmese children into Sunday school programs. By far the worst attack so far was in late March in the central Burmese city of Meiktila. Tellingly, the attack was not let by a single leader or religious figure but carried out by mobs of Buddhists, a worrying sign that Wirathu’s violent ideas may have taken hold in the city. A minor dispute at an outdoor jewelry stall between a Buddhist customer and a Muslim vendor escalated rapidly out of control. Buddhist rioters razed entire Muslim neighborhoods, burned several civilians alive and killed up to 200 more Muslims until, after three long days in which the army was conspicuously absent, troops intervened to stop the killing. Here, from Human Rights Watch, is a set of before-and-after satellite images of one of the neighborhoods attacked, where Buddhist mobs destroyed a staggering 442 Muslim homes. Heightening the fear is that none of Burma’s leaders has stepped in to end the bloodshed. The military rulers, though they once jailed Wirathu, have held back, perhaps reluctant to risk the backlash at a time when they are willingly abandoning much of their power. Aung San Suu Kyi, the longtime democracy activist who became an international cause as a political prisoner, is so beloved in Burma that she may well become its first democratically elected president. But the Nobel Prize winner has also failed to fully condemn the violence. This has been typically seen as a political choice, meant to avoid angering too many Burmese voters if she wants to maintain national support. As the Economist points out, many Burmese were angered when Suu Kyi criticized a draconian new law that forbids some Burmese Muslims from having more than two children. Unchecked, though, Burma’s self-declared radical Buddhists may show no interest in ending their campaign against the country’s Muslim minority. [/rquoter]
Human beings are violent. We are bent on power and the love of money. We are prone to use and twist anything for our own purpose. Violence isn't exclusive to one religion/nationality/race/etc.
