OIC must stop anti-Islam violence: Rouhani

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (R) meets Organization of Islamic Cooperation Secretary General Iyad Ameen Madani in Tehran on February 5, 2014.

Wed Feb 5, 2014 11:16AM

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says the prevention of atrocities and massacre of Muslims worldwide is the main duty of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

In a meeting with the OIC Secretary General Iyad Ameen Madani in Tehran on Wednesday, Rouhani stated that promotion of all-out ties with Muslim nations, particularly neighboring countries, is among the foreign policy priorities of the incumbent Iranian administration.

“The Muslim world holds great expectations from the OIC. We should join hands and make efforts to satisfy such expectations,” he pointed out.

The Iranian president further pointed to the role that the OIC secretariat can play in facilitating further interaction among influential members of the organization, stating that all OIC member states should actively contribute to decisions being made by the Jeddah-based world body.
Rouhani also made reference to Islamophobia and the extremist moves which serve the interests of the enemies of Islam, calling on the OIC to confront such attempts and present the real image of Islam to the world.
He added that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation must seek to make the voice of Muslims heard, stop insults to the religious beliefs held by Muslim nations and spare no effort to liberate the occupied Palestinian lands.
Madani, for his part, stressed Iran’s significant role in the settlement of the Muslim world disputes.
He added that the OIC needs the backing of all Muslim nations, and it appreciates the Islamic Republic of Iran’s generous support.
Madani arrived in Tehran on Tuesday evening.
MP/HMV/HRB

'Buddhist bin Laden' or man of peace? Monk leads anti-Muslim campaign in Myanmar

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images, file

Wirathu is the leader of a Buddhist extremist movement known as 969. He was once jailed for anti-Muslim violence and believes it is vital that Buddhist people keep their business, relationships and land dealings away from followers of Islam.

By Fiona MacGregor, NBC News contributor

YANGON, Myanmar -- A monk has been dubbed the "Buddhist bin Laden" and the "face of Buddhist terror" after launching a campaign against Muslims.

U Wirathu has been accused of inciting violence against Myanmar's Muslim minority with fiery sermons claiming the growth of Islam is putting Buddhism and Burmese culture at risk.

About 200 people have been killed by violence since religious riots erupted in June 2012 and tens of thousands fled after homes owned were burned by mobs.

Wirathu, who says he once compared himself to the al Qaeda leader as "a joke," claims Islamic beliefs can encourage people to have "bad characters." As a key figure in a movement that encourages people to boycott Muslim businesses, Wirathu espouses a form of radical Buddhism which seems incongruous to those in the West who associate the religion with peace and acceptance.

However, the 46-year-old  monk insists he does not advocate violence against Muslims, who make up just 5 percent of the country's 60 million people.

Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters, file

A Buddhist monk and other protesters demonstrate against TIME magazine in Yangon, Myanmar, on June 30.

"I believe Islam is a threat not just for Buddhism, but for the people and the country and the religion," he said.

According to Wirathu, it doesn't matter that Muslims make up a small proportion of Myanmar's population. 

"When someone went into a school in Virginia armed and killed people there, it didn't matter that the teacher and the pupils were the majority," he offers as an illustration.

Last month, TIME magazine's portrayal of Wirathu as "The Face of Buddhist Terror" sparked widespread protests across the country.

But Wirathu laughs at reports that he even branded himself the "Buddhist bin Laden."

"People used to write things like that about me on Facebook, call me that, and the 'bald Bin Laden,' all sorts of names," he said. "I ended up calling myself that as a joke ... and it got reported from there."

In Myanmar, Buddhist religion and culture means monks are generally seen as beyond question because of their holy status, yet at the same time their role has long been political as well as spiritual.

Wirathu's notoriety has grown amid deadly violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar, which is in its second year on "the road to democracy" after decades of military rule.

Tensions are highest in the western state of Rakhine, which borders predominantly Muslim Bangladesh. Rakhine has long been the scene of conflict between rival ethnic groups but sectarian violence has increasingly been breaking out in other parts of the country. In May, Buddhist mobs burned Muslim homes in the northern city of Lashio.

Human Rights Watch noted that violence in June and October 2012 "resulted in countless deaths, destruction to property, large scale internal displacement and segregation within Rakhine state of Myanmar."

Other organizations have recorded incidents of mosques and Muslims being attacked in Rakhine state and elsewhere. Tens of thousands of Muslims have been effectively trapped in displacement camps after clashes saw an estimated 200 people killed and 

Wirathu is behind a pro-Buddhist movement, known as 969. Its badge has been appearing on businesses keen to promote their Buddhist credentials, and encourage other Buddhists to choose theirs over Muslim-run ones. The logo also increasingly appears at rallies and on pamphlets issued by religious and nationalist organizations describing Muslims as a threat.

Wirathu claims he came up with the idea of 969, numbers which represent Buddhist virtues.

He insists it is vital that Buddhist people keep their business, relationships and land dealings away from Muslims because he fears "their population will get bigger than ours" and "shariah law will take over."

Wirathu and others operating under the 969 umbrella highlight videos and images of butchered monks, violent crowds of people in Muslim dress and destroyed temples which they allege show attacks by Islamists targeting Buddhists.

Wirathu insisted he "does not believe that violence will solve the problems" and suggested many of the more inflammatory quotes attributed to him have either been taken out of context or are simply wrong.

"I don't believe that violence is the way forward and I do not want to see Buddhist people ganging up and taking revenge on Muslims," Wirathu said. 

To most Buddhists in Myanmar, the idea that a monk could be responsible for inciting violence is almost incomprehensible, yet many seem happy enough to accept his message of intolerance.

"The monk Wirathu is peaceful person and he is not a terrorist. Look around the world, at Afghanistan, Indonesia, who are the main culprits when it comes to terrorism?" asked Htway Maung Kyaw, an elderly Yangon bookseller, who having studied in the U.K. in his youth is proud to describe himself as "Philologist (London)"

Niels Huby

The Venerable Ashinkumara believes Muslims are plotting to take over Myanmar.

"It is true he was in prison," he said of Wirathu's detention in 2003 under the junta, reportedly for incitiing violence against Muslims. "However, that was under the military regime [when many people were imprisoned]. He was struggling on behalf of humanity."

The Venerable Ashinkumara, a fellow monk and member of the 969 movement, said his controversial friend has "a tender heart."

Ashinkumara, who believes that Muslims are plotting to take over Burma and "are the ones who started all the fights," added: "I don't believe Wirathu has called for violence."

This view that Wirathu is somehow "misunderstood" is expressed by businessman and Buddhist charity founder Ko Moe whose maternal grandfather was Muslim and whose grandmother was he says "forced" to convert from Buddhism.

"Wirathu never told people to fight against Islam," Moe said. "He is trying to give the message that people should protect their own religion and race.

"Not to fight, but there is a big concern that the Muslim population is growing faster than the Burmese people, because they can have many wives and are told not to use birth control," he says, echoing a view heard over and over again in Burma's tea-houses.

Moe points to Indonesia, Malaysia and southern Thailand, which are now predominantly Muslim, as examples of what many in Myanmar fear is their country's future.

Many also express the feeling that they are a minority in their region: a nation of 60 million, dwarved by neighbors India at 1.2 billion and China at 1.3 billion, and conscious of the growing influence of Islam in other Asian nations.

Moe's Piti (Light of Truth) charity helps orphans and people living with HIV, but he has clear religious aims and the organization also works to promote "a proper understanding of Buddhism".

"What Wirathu talks about is patriotism," he said. "It is about protecting our nationality, our race and our religion."

For Muslims born in Myanmar, that is a hard view of patriotism to swallow. 

At a central mosque in Yangon, it's not something people like to discuss publicly, but they feel the discrimination against them is about more than religion.

"I don't believe this is really about religion," one imam said. "It is about certain people trying to gain political power. We Muslims have been here for 1,000 years and are Burmese too."

Buddhist monk uses racism and rumours to spread hatred in Burma

Thousands watch YouTube videos of 45-year-old 'Burmese Bin Laden' who preaches against country's Muslim minority

Link to video: Burma's Bin Laden, the Buddhist monk who fuels hatred

His name is Wirathu, he calls himself the "Burmese Bin Laden" and he is a Buddhist monk who is stoking religious hatred across Burma.
The saffron-robed 45-year-old regularly shares his hate-filled rants through DVD and social media, in which he warns against Muslims who "target innocent young Burmese girls and rape them", and "indulge in cronyism".
To ears untrained in the Burmese language, his sermons seem steady and calm – almost trance-like – with Wirathu rocking back and forth, eyes downcast. Translate his softly spoken words, however, and it becomes clear how his paranoia and fear, muddled with racist stereotypes and unfounded rumours, have helped to incite violence and spread misinformation in a nation still stumbling towards democracy.
"We are being raped in every town, being sexually harassed in every town, being ganged up on and bullied in every town," Wirathu recently told the Guardian, speaking from the Masoeyein monastery in Mandalay where he is based.
"In every town, there is a crude and savage Muslim majority."
It would be easy to disregard Wirathu as a misinformed monk with militant views, were it not for his popularity. Presiding over some 2,500 monks at this respected monastery, Wirathu has thousands of followers on Facebook and his YouTube videos have been watched tens of thousands of times.
The increasing openness of Burma, which was once tightly controlled under a military junta, has seen a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment spread across the 60 million-strong Buddhist majority – and Wirathu is behind much of it.
Rising to prominence in 2001, when he created a nationalist campaign to boycott Muslim businesses, Wirathu was jailed for 25 years in 2003 for inciting anti-Muslim hatred but freed in 2010 under a general amnesty.
Since his release, Wirathu has gone back to preaching hate. Many believe his words inspired the fighting last June between Buddhists and ethnic Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state, where 200 people were killed and more than 100,000 displaced.
It was Wirathu who led a rally of monks in Mandalay in September to defend President Thein Sein's controversial plan to send the Rohingya to a third country. One month later, more violence broke out in Rakhine state.
Wirathu says the violence in Rakhine was the spark for the most recent fighting in Burma's central city of Meiktila, where a dispute in a gold shop quickly spiralled into a looting-and-arson spree. More than 40 people were killed and 13,000 forced to flee, most of them Muslims, after mosques, shops and houses were burned down across the city.
Wirathu says part of his concern with Islam is that Buddhist women have been converted by force and then killed for failing to follow Islamic rules. He also believes the halal way of killing cattle "allows familiarity with blood and could escalate to the level where it threatens world peace".
So he is back to leading a nationalist "969" campaign, encouraging Buddhists to "buy Buddhist and shop Buddhist" and demarcate their homes and businesses using numbers related to the Buddha (the number refers to his nine attributes, the six attributes of his teaching and the nine attributes of the Buddhist order), seemingly with the intention of creating an apartheid state.
Wirathu openly blames Muslims for instigating the recent violence. A minority population that makes up just 5% of the nation's total, Wirathu says Burma's Muslims are being financed by Middle Eastern forces: "The local Muslims are crude and savage because the extremists are pulling the strings, providing them with financial, military and technical power," he said.
Not everyone agrees with Wirathu's teachings, including those of his own faith. "He sides a little towards hate," said Abbot Arriya Wuttha Bewuntha of Mandalay's Myawaddy Sayadaw monastery. "This is not the way Buddha taught. What the Buddha taught is that hatred is not good, because Buddha sees everyone as an equal being. The Buddha doesn't see people through religion."
Critics point to Wirathu's lack of education to explain his extremism as little more than ignorance, but his views do have clout in a nation where many businesses are run successfully by Muslims.
The second son of eight children, Wirathu was born in 1968 in a town near Mandalay and only attended school until 14, after which he became a monk. Eager to leave "civilian life rife with its greed and spite", he said he had no intention of marrying: "I didn't want to be with a woman."
Wirathu claims he has read the Qur'an and counts Muslims among his friends, but said: "We're not so close because my Muslim friends don't know how to talk to Buddhist monks … I can accept [being friends] if they consider me an important and respected religious figure."
Despite spending seven years in prison for stoking religious violence, Wirathu won a "freedom of religion" award in February from the UK's foremost Burmese monastery, Sasana Ramsi in London, in the same week that he spread rumours that a Rangoon school would be developed into a mosque.
Analysts warn that Wirathu's seeming freedom to preach as he pleases – in addition to his influence over other monks, who have also started preaching against Islam – should be taken as a wake-up call to the rest of the world. "If a similar hate movement like Burma's '969' movement – which spreads hate speech and hate symbols – [existed] specifically against, say, the Jews in Europe, no European government would tolerate it," Burmese activist and London School of Economics visiting fellow Maung Zarni said.
"Why should the EU not take it seriously, in a major EU-aid recipient country?"
Both Thein Sein and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi have been criticised for not taking a greater stand against the violence that has racked Burma in recent months. Some have pointed to the seemingly planned nature of many of the attacks; UN special envoy Vijay Nambiar said the violence had a "brutal efficiency" and cited "incendiary propaganda" as stirring up trouble.
Multifaith activists in Burma recently took to the streets to counter the violence, distributing T-shirts and stickers with the message: "There shall be no racial or religious conflicts because of me." But the Buddhist-Muslim tension has already spread far and wide.
In Rangoon, a recent mosque fire that killed 13 children was widely believed to be a case of arson. And in Indonesia, eight Buddhists were beaten to death by Rohingya Muslims at a detention centre, in apparent retribution for incidents of sexual assault by Buddhist inmates against Rohingya women.
Rumours abound that those inciting the fighting, like Wirathu, are pawns for being used by Burma's military generals to stir up trouble in the nascent democracy. But Wirathu insists he is working alone: "These are my own beliefs," he said. "I want the world to know this."
In a chilling sermon last month, Wirathu warned that the "population explosion" of Burma's Muslims could mean only one thing: "They will capture our country in the end."
And just like his namesake, this "Burmese Bin Laden" made a brazen call to arms: "Once we [have] won this battle, we will move on to other Muslim targets."

Preacher of hate

1968 Wirathu is born in Kyaukse, near Mandalay
1984 Joins the monkhood
2001 Starts promoting his nationalist "969" campaign, which includes boycotting Muslim businesses
2003 Jailed for 25 years for inciting religious hatred after distributing anti-Muslim leaflets, leading to 10 Muslims being killed in Kyaukse
2010 Freed under a general amnesty
June 2012 Violence breaks out between ethnic Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists in Rakhine state
September 2012 Wirathu leads a rally of monks in support of President Thein Sein's proposal to send the Rohingya to a third country
October 2012 More violence breaks out in Rakhine state
March 2013 Inter-religious fighting in Meiktila sees 40 killed and nearly 13,000 displaced; "969" stickers and plaques distributed throughout Burma

A mosque and an Islamic religious school of orphans torched : Eastern Burma

M-Media
28th May 2013

A mosque and an Islamic religious school were torched today in Lashio which is a town located in Shan division, eastern Burma.

The mob had gathered at the surrounding area of the mosque, which is the largest mosque in Lashio, located in No.8 quarter at 8 pm tonight and they set fire to the building at around 8.10 pm.

According to some sources, fire brigate did not take any responsibility upon late arrival of fire engines and not extinguishing. Fire fighters just simply claimed that they did not receive any further instruction to do so.

The mob moved on to the Islamic religious school and orphanage and set it on fire. That school gives shelter to more than 200 students.

M-Media correspondent reported that the tension appeared after the dispute between a man and a woman who had been set on fire and later it was spread out as the man is a muslim. Based on a local resident, our correspondent confirmed that the man is not muslim. The victim was admitted to Lashio hospital.

The authorities have issued Section 144 in Lashio in response to this.

In Lashio, there are five mosques and an orphanage. Around 1500 muslim families are residing in.