Myanmar's Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim 'Other' (Asian Arguments)

by Francis Wade

But as we went, the translator exclaimed that she had been impressed with the wealth of information the monk had. I was surprised. My thoughts had been moving in the opposite direction. Many of the statements U Wirathu made appeared so obviously baseless that it felt almost pointless to question them. Did she believe the claim that Muslims were responsible for all rapes in the country? She wasn’t sure, but had come to understand the significance of the threat facing Buddhism in Myanmar. We reached the road and parted ways. I returned to Yangon several days later. Soon afterwards a message came through on my phone. “I watched Wirathu CD. I feel very angry – they take our air, water, land; they make terrorism!” It had come from the young man who had organised our meeting. Only days before he had thought the monk to be a dangerously provocative figure. All it had taken was a DVD to flip him and to bring to his attention the supposed enemies in his midst.