Religious Intolerance in Myanmar

An uncanny echo of terrorists' manipulation of religion to attain their own goals. This monk, Ashin Wirathu, is allegedly responsible for the sectarian strife, leading to outbreak of violence in Myanmar some months back, where the majority Buddhists, supposedly under his instigation, torched the villages of the minority Muslims, even killing some of them, in a bid to chase them out. Ashin Wirathu could have been an incarnation of Osama, using religion to rally the people to conduct atrocities and spread hatred in the name of religion. Their attempt to curtail the rights to women by attempting to pass a law to ban interfaith marriage is also an uncanny echo of the practices in the Arab nations. And if, as the article suggests, religious authoritarianism eventually takes the place of militarianism in Myanmar, then Myanmar would have become something like a theocratic state such as Iran, where religion is at the core of politics. But as Aung San Suu Kyi said in the article, what the Buddhist monks are doing 'is not part of Buddhism'. At the end of the day, like terrorism, we should NOT make religion the scapegoat here, as it is man (man's interpretation/manipulation of religion) that is the root cause of the problem.

This article provides a good example of how religion (when abused) can be used to preach intolerance and oppress the rights of women.