Bangladesh: "Offended" Muslims burn 100 Buddhist homes, 10 temples

Bangladesh: Muslim mobs burn 100 Buddhist homes; 10 temples




Hundreds of offended Muslims in southeast Bangladesh burned about a hundred Buddhist homes and ransacked and torched 10 Buddhist temples Sunday.
The raging Muslims became violent after alleging a Buddhist man insulted Islam on his Facebook page, according to an LA Times report.
The protest in predominantly Muslim Bangladesh began Saturday and escalated on Sunday resulting in large roving gangs of Muslims assaulting the Buddhist residences and temples.
The Muslim violence broke out in the area of Cox’s Bazar about 200 miles from the capital of Dhaka. The Muslims say they were offended because a Buddhist man’s Facebook page showed a burned copy of the Koran, before they headed to several Buddhist villages in the area to burn out the Buddhists.
Whilst there have been sporadic clashes between the majority Muslim population and Hindus, historically Muslims seldom attack Buddhists in the country. Buddhists represent about 1% of Bangladesh’s 150 million people.
“This comes as a real surprise, and I feel sadness that this happened,” said Manzoor Hasan, advisor to the Institute of Governance Studies at Dhaka’s BRAC University. “Generally, not just with Buddhists, but the small Christian community and relatively larger Hindu community, as a society we’ve been tolerant and respectful of each other’s religions and ways of conducting ourselves.”
According to Bangladesh's English-language Daily Star newspaper the man who allegedly posted the offensive image on Facebook and his mother had to be escorted to safety. The newspaper did not say where the scores of families whose homes were torched by angry Muslims will live.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/333896

Protesters burn Bangladesh Buddhist temples
Picture of allegedly desecrated Quran on Facebook blamed for burning of Buddhist homes and places of worship.

Hundreds of Muslims have set fire to at least 10 Buddhist temples and 2,100 homes in southern Bangladesh, according to officials.

The violence on Saturday night came in reaction to an allegedly derogatory image of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, posted on Facebook.

"They became unruly and attacked Buddhist houses, torching and damaging their temples from midnight to Sunday morning," Joinul Bari, a government administrator, told the AFP news agency.

"At least 100 houses were damaged. We called in army and border guards to quell the violence," he said, adding that authorities had temporarily banned public gatherings in the area to prevent further clashes.

Nojibul Islam, a police chief in the coastal district of Cox's Bazaar, said at least 20 people were injured in the attacks that followed the posting of a photo of a burned copy of the Quran on the social networking site.

Torching and looting

Protesters blamed the photo on a local Buddhist boy, but it was not immediately clear if the boy actually posted the photo.

Rumia Khatun, a local police officer, said that about "25,000 Muslims chanting God is Great" first attacked a Buddhist hamlet in Ramu, torching centuries-old temples, and later stormed Buddhist villages outside the town.

"I have seen 11 wooden temples, two of them 300 years old, torched by the mob. They looted precious items and Buddha statues from the temples. Shops owned by Buddhists were also looted," said Sunil Barua, a local journalist on the scene.

Bari, the government administrator, said authorities had detained the boy's parents and that an investigation was under way.

Buddhists, who make up less than one per cent of Bangladesh's 153 million population, are based mainly in southeastern districts, close to the border with Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

Although the South Asian country has witnessed deadly clashes between Muslims and Hindus in the past, sectarian
clashes involving Buddhists are rare.

In recent weeks, tens of thousands of Muslims have hit the street across the country to protest an anti-Islam video that mocked the Prophet Mohammed.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2012/09/201293092057855387.html

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How does that fit into the whole "religion has nothing to do with it, we are just rightfully mad at the oppressive imperialists from the USA" narrative?

 

Are you trying to rationalize the behavior of this mob?

 

Why would you say it then? If it doesn't justify or excuse their behavior in any way, why mention it?

 

So if someone's first reaction to Breivik murdering people would have been:

"Must have to do with the crime rate of immigrants in Norway" and would have justified it with

...then you are telling me that that would have been an acceptable response?

Because that is exactly what you just did.