To give you an update on Buddhist nationalism, Phra Apichart Punnajanto has “temporarily” closed his Facebook page, after the Sangha Council sent him a warning letter in the aftermath of the monk’s call for a crusade against the Muslim South.
Arm Buddhists, and burn a mosque for every Buddhist killed — that was the gist of his speech. In his parting statement, Phra Apichart of the Marble Temple, in incendiary rhetoric resembling the clerical hardliners of Myanmar or the Iranian Ayatollahs of the 1970s, vowed that he would back off “only once” and that he would “return when Buddhists want him”.
We’re benumbed by all kinds of hatred on social media, but this passionate call for killings is the most sinister of late, especially when it comes from a clergyman of a respected temple. Last week I also came across an anti-halal poster (think anti-smoking signs, with a cross over the word “halal” instead of a cigarette), and a twisted rationale that the production of halal food increases the cost, and hence the price, which has to be shouldered by non-Muslims who couldn’t care less how a cow is slaughtered. The comments were, of course, a litany of hate speech. It was masochistic fun glancing at them, but up to a point before they turned into a vision of hell.
Phra Apichart was inaccurate on fact, which means he’s inaccurate on everything else. In October, 27 Buddhists and 41 Muslims were killed in the deep South. In September, 43 Buddhists and 25 Muslims. In August, 16 Buddhist and 24 Muslims. In all of 2014 — the least violent year — 148 Buddhists were killed, compared to 176 Muslims. Altogether since 2004, nearly 6,500 have been killed in the past 10 years, with the scale tipping slightly more toward the Muslims.
This is depressing, not only because of the figures, but because death is death, and while categorising the dead is bureaucratic necessity, we’re reducing humans to numbers and types. The point is, both Muslim and Buddhist civilians share the same fate, the same risk, the same prospect of danger. Monks have been murdered, and imams too. Of course the criminals are mostly the Muslim insurgents, but that’s not changing the bare fact that the protracted conflict — which has destroyed so many lives and consumed a 200-billion-baht defence budget so far — affects everyone alike regardless of what they pray to.
Ten years on and Phra Apichart still doesn’t get this simple truth.
No one denies that religion does breed terror; Islam has seen much of this, here and abroad, only that I never wished to see Buddhism catching up so fast. What complicates it all is the toxic cocktail of religion and nationalism, and here’s the real concern: Phra Apichart’s speech manifests the undying desire to over-Islamise the southern problem, which is further complicated now by the call of the clergy to enshrine Buddhism as the state religion. When violence broke out in the deep South 10 years ago — when the public still had a narrow mindset due to long-held prejudices and lack of information — the narrative was that it was a Muslim versus Buddhist clash. Over the years, I thought it had become clearer that it wasn’t — again, just look at the figures. But what Phra Apichart said has shown that no, that mindset has never gone away from some parts of society. It is simmering, lurking, even growing, waiting to explode back to the surface.
And it has. What ignites it is perhaps the example of right-wing Myanmar monks, or the horror of Islamic extremism on the global stage, or trouble with immigration, or all-too-human bigotry, or the structural impulse to promote nationalism. Or by the writing of the new charter and the idea of constitutionalising Buddhism as a form of national identity.
The Islamisation of the problem does nothing good except for some blood-rush satisfaction (and this also means the act of over-Islamisation by some Muslims themselves, because hardliners often think the same). The southern conflict, as we’ve repeated many times in the past 10 years, is a matrix of historical injustice, ethnic discrimination, nationalistic fervour, failure of the justice system, and yes, cultural and religious tensions. To distort the complexity by emphasising only this last issue — for pride, prejudice, politics or vengeance — is to ignore the larger structure that has made the region bleed for so long. The Sangha Council did the right thing to warn Phra Apichart off, and yet what the firebrand monk and his fan club are haranguing about is an expose of a disturbing psyche that demands the state be the same as the religion, and that society be desecularised in favour of a pompous claim of religious morality. Phra Apichart is “temporarily” quiet, and his silence rings like an echo in the abyss.
Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life Editor, Bangkok Post.