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

by Francis Wade

Long before Islam became the dominant threat in the Rakhine imagination, the independence of the Rakhine people, and their freedom to follow their own customs and traditions, was snatched from them. Their once mighty kingdom, encompassing much of present-day eastern Bangladesh as well as the western flank of Myanmar, was annexed by a king who sat on a throne hundreds of miles away and ruled with little regard for the traditional norms of his new subjects. They came to be managed by his people, under his strictures. Yet the power of this new and remote authority, projected from afar, had a curious effect, for it began to erode the tradition of inclusivity that had once been a marker of Rakhine culture.