Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Religion is the new politics — but Britain’s secular politicians just don’t get it

Increasingly, not to understand faith is not to understand the world

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[/audioplayer]Aren’t Buddhist monks adorable?  They meditate for days without needing to go to the toilet. They talk to each other in ‘grasshopper’ haikus. Their pot bellies are full of wholesome vegetarian fare. Your package tour to Southeast Asia isn’t complete without a sprinkling of them begging politely in the markets. Hollywood stars hire them for beachfront weddings because they’re so cute.

Apart from the ones who are terrorists.

In Burma, Buddhism has turned nasty, thanks to a gang of monks who call themselves the ‘969’, after the nine virtues of Buddha, the six elements of his teachings, and the nine attributes of the clergy. The 969 are consumed with hatred for Burma’s Muslims, who make up 4 per cent of the population. Nearly 200,000 have been driven from their homes. For Burmese Muslims, the numbers 969 — which jump out at them from gaily coloured stickers in shops and taxis — are as menacing as the swastika for Jews. In March, Buddhists set fire to an Islamic boarding school in central Burma. Twenty-four students and teachers were killed; a boy was decapitated; police stood by while onlookers applauded.

Sound familiar? In February, Boko Haram gunmen shot or incinerated 59 pupils at a boarding school in north-east Nigeria. The press reported it, but this was before the kidnap of the schoolgirls inflamed Twitter, so no one paid much attention.

Boko Haram are members of the ‘religion of peace’, as anti-Islamist campaigners remind us sarcastically. But the people who raze Muslim villages in Burma belong to a faith that really is associated with peace. So what’s going on? Sayadaw Wirathu, the venomous preacher who leads the 969 monks, calls himself ‘the Burmese bin Laden’.

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