A few days ago I posted a story from Thailand about the murder of a Buddhist monk. Now two more have been killed, evidently as part of a larger jihadist effort. Note that these "tensions between Buddhists and Muslims" seem to be coming from just one side. Killing policemen would be somewhat expected from a separatist group, but the targeting of monks as well sheds light on what the separatists hope to establish themselves, given the opportunity: a radical Muslim Sharia state would be most likely. This from AP, with thanks to Nancy Block and Susan:
Five people were killed in southern Thailand, including two Buddhist clergymen who were slashed as they collected food offerings, as tension between Buddhists and Muslims mounts in the region, police and news reports said yesterday.Sectarian violence is rare anywhere in Thailand, and the murders of monks in recent days are the first such attacks in the Muslim-dominated south in several years. About 90 percent of Thailand's 63 million people are Buddhists.
Four young men fatally slashed the head of a novice -- 13-year-old Jedsak Nhusang -- with knives in front of a temple in Yala province, while a monk accompanying him on the traditional morning alms rounds escaped unharmed, police captain Ranon Surawit said.
Ten minutes later, also in the provincial capital, four men fatally knifed Vichai Boonpan, a 65-year-old monk, in the neck. The men involved in the killings all approached the monks on motorcycles.
Shortly afterward, in the nearby community of Lamai, one monk was stabbed in the back and another punched twice, police lieutenant-colonel Mut Thopah said.
Thailand's southernmost provinces have been tense since Jan. 4, when suspected Muslim separatists torched 21 government-run schools and raided an army camp in Narathiwat province, killing four soldiers and stealing hundreds of rifles.
Also yesterday morning, in Narathiwat province, two men on a motorcycle shot police sergeant-major Prasart Lahtheh, 57, as he was riding on his motorbike with his wife near their home. Prasart, an investigator, was hospitalized in stable condition, captain Sunan Sangsawat said.
In a third southern province, Pattani, three killings were reported Friday night.
Police sergeant Mayaki Waesamah, 33, also an investigator, was fatally shot in the head while at work, said a police officer who requested anonymity. Local television iTV reported that two villagers were slashed to death in their homes.
Mut said no suspects had been arrested in the attacks on the monks.
In school one learned, in world history, that "Buddhism disappeared from India, but moved to China." A mysterious statement, that, but no one thought to inquire further. Now we know: Buddhism disappeared from India because of the Muslim invasion; the massdestruction of Buddhist temples and statuary, and the smaller number of Buddhists (as compared to Hindus) account for its disappearance. Had Muslims conquered China, Buddhism would have disappeared there as well.
It is important to remember that the Bamiyan statues were only the last of tens of thousands of statues destroyed, over hundreds of years, by Muslims in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, in what is present-day Pakistan, Kashmir, and India, in Malaysia, Indonesia (600,000 Chinese murdered by Muslims in the 1960s, massacres described as being directed at "Communist fifth-columnists" when in fact it was a Jihad directed at a non-Muslim minosrity, and now in Thailand these attacks on Buddhist monks, temples, and believers -- all of this should remind us that Jihad should not be thought of as an attack on the West, but as an attack on all non-Muslims. What unites the Coptic caretaker at the Patmos Center in Egypt, the Episcopalian bondtrader,the Assyrian and Armenian Christian women shot dead in Baghdad, the Italian monks killed in Algeria, the Hindu peasants slaughtered in Kashmir and in India, the Buddhist monks killed in Thailand, the Christian Pakistanis killed in hospitals, schools, and churches, the Orthodox held hostage in a Moscow theater, and....you can fill in the list yourself -- is one thing: the ideology of Islam, as it relates to the Unbeliever. There is no "war of ideas" (pace the moronic Tom Friedman); there is simply the ideology of Islam, which cannot be reformed, but from within, if conditions become too dire, and Islam is seen as a failure (as happened with Ataturk, and perhaps with Musharraf -- with the latter, it is hard to know if he is to be trusted), there may be consraints put on Islamic teachings and Islamic power. That, and not some impossibility -- despite Irshad Manji's plea, the gates of ijtihad will not swing open again -- is what all non-Muslims must work toward, by refusing to subsidize, prop up, or otherwise support (with OPEC money) the Muslim polities. No need to do them harm: they will fail on their own, and that failure must be thoroughly assimiliated and understood by thinking Muslims. There can be more Ataturks.
What might we learn from the CIA’s involvement in the 1965 Indonesian “coup”, which (maybe inadvertently) also contributed to the chaos and slaughter of non-Muslims.