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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Decent, though I find his description of the Muslim Brotherhood as non-violent as questionable. They may not be as violent as, say, the Taliban, but they have plenty of thugs. Not to mention that enforcing the kind of law they want would include a lot of violent things.

[nenjin]

Kind of like the late day political wing of the IRA?

[GlyphGryph]

Basically its the sort of nonviolence used by those advocating it for primarily pragmatic reasons. There are plenty of thugs in the party but plenty of people who've grown quite proficient at working within the system at the top. They are very much a political organization rather than one bent on achieving its aims through violence I think that is clear. Even if it is only for pragmatic reasons and they have very very good reasons  to remain nonviolent what with the military having all the guns.

I still can't believe they were stupid enough to use a plurality based vote here though. I understand why the brotherhood would have supported it but not why anyone would have gone along with it.

[palsch]

Decent, though I find his description of the Muslim Brotherhood as non-violent as questionable. They may not be as violent as, say, the Taliban, but they have plenty of thugs. Not to mention that enforcing the kind of law they want would include a lot of violent things.

Remember that they had to denounce violence in the 70's in order to stop being, well, tortured. Non-violence is a central part of the identity of the Egyptian Brotherhood since then.

What resemblance their public ideology bears to their street supporter's outlooks is another matter.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Decent, though I find his description of the Muslim Brotherhood as non-violent as questionable. They may not be as violent as, say, the Taliban, but they have plenty of thugs. Not to mention that enforcing the kind of law they want would include a lot of violent things.

Remember that they had to denounce violence in the 70's in order to stop being, well, tortured. Non-violence is a central part of the identity of the Egyptian Brotherhood since then.

What resemblance their public ideology bears to their street supporter's outlooks is another matter.

They had to make statements to stop being tortured by a regime that is completely out of power now. Doesn't mean much.

[GlyphGryph]

It means they are quite good at supressing violence within their ranks for pragmatic political purposes. That's not nothing. It means they are composed in large part by those who understand that their are other ways to accumulate power. It means they are unlikely to resort to violence on a large scale because their leaders will.stick with what they know especially with the military around. That's not nothing at all

[Loud Whispers]

Myanmar's experiencing rioting and ideological clashes. 3 Muslim men gang raped a Buddhist girl to death. All three were detained, but later around 100 people, amongst them relatives and friends of the girl showed up at the police station and demanded the men be handed over. The police dispersed the crowd with fire. It then turned into riots with Buddhists and Muslims clashing and killing each other, Mosques getting burnt down and the situation was so fucked even some Buddhist monks were calling for violence. This is coming from the people who teach it is better to be sawn in half than to fight off attackers.
27 arrests, around 100 casualties with 79 of those being deaths, 1300 homes torched.

[Owlbread]

Loud Whispers, that's an extremely important story, I am horrified by the implications, but I have to say this:

That's South-East Asia! Blast it. We should have a South-East Asian politics thread. I'm sorry, I don't mean to be a party pooper and I really didn't want to say this but you brought up another South East Asian country like Malaysia or similar earlier on so I feel I have to. God I feel like Kanye West.

Fuck it, the article is too important to ignore, we should discuss it anyway and it is tied to the subject of the Islamic world. God only knows how this is going to progress, expecially with all the hardship the Muslims of Rachine state are experiencing.

[GlyphGryph]

Mosques getting burnt down and the situation was so fucked even some Buddhist monks were calling for violence.

You do realize there are some extremely violent and heavily militant Buddhists, right? Some of which are pretty frickin brutal. The Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Upayakaushalya Sutra, and the Kalachakra Tantra all explicitly call for Buddhists to reign violence down upon their enemies.

And Myanmar is basically the center for the worst of them, and one of the few places with active Buddhist terrorist cells.

Nothing about this story (sadly) is even remotely surprising to me though, because as bad as the buddhists are there, well... shit is fucked in general.

(Although Japan had a problem with Buddhist assassins offing people for a while.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketsumeidan)

[alway]

and the situation was so fucked even some Buddhist monks were calling for violence. This is coming from the people who teach it is better to be sawn in half than to fight off attackers.

This is an entirely incorrect mis-characterization of the situation. The region's Buddhists aren't some poor minority dragged into a conflict they never wanted. For the most part, they're the instigators; in large part led by a monk who is self described as the "Burmese Bin Laden." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/18/buddhist-monk-spreads-hatred-burma

Wirathu openly blames Muslims for instigating the recent violence. A minority population that makes up just 5% of the nation's total

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."

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ah crap. Looked at the map and thought it was all inclusive. Apologies, my mistake.

So there were allegations that some Muslims had set fire to their own homes. I can't quite fathom such action, and there were large mobs of Buddhists around torching buildings so I'd say they're both to blame.
It's what happens when two honour cultures clash. The Muslims bomb their sanctuaries, torch their shrines and lynch the Buddhists, the Buddhists torch the mosques, lynch more Muslims and both stop associating with each other with anything but revenge at mind. Before long it's escalated until segregation is the only thing stopping them from killing each other.

and the situation was so fucked even some Buddhist monks were calling for violence. This is coming from the people who teach it is better to be sawn in half than to fight off attackers.

This is an entirely incorrect mis-characterization of the situation. The region's Buddhists aren't some poor minority dragged into a conflict they never wanted. For the most part, they're the instigators; in large part led by a monk who is self described as the "Burmese Bin Laden." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/18/buddhist-monk-spreads-hatred-burma

Wirathu openly blames Muslims for instigating the recent violence. A minority population that makes up just 5% of the nation's total

I'd say it's unfair to group people into these groups 'unfairly dragged in' or no. As quite a lot of people will have been unfairly dragged in on both sides, indeed thousands, both Buddhist and Muslim lost their homes. It'd be quite like saying the persecution of Buddhists in Bangladesh by Muslims in a Muslim majority region means the majority of Muslims are like that. Sweeping generalizations founded in stereotypes and not facts, although you didn't quite do so, are a crappy way of going and talking of these things.

You do realize there are some extremely violent and heavily militant Buddhists, right? Some of which are pretty frickin brutal. The Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Upayakaushalya Sutra, and the Kalachakra Tantra all explicitly call for Buddhists to reign violence down upon their enemies.

Yeah yeah, it just surprises me every time the people who are supposed to uphold the tenets of the philosophy they subscribe to carelessly throw them away for political gain.

[Gervassen]

What part of "three muslim men raped a buddhist girl to death" implies that the buddhists there are the problem? I missed that part, and suddenly everyone is lamenting all the horrible buddhists there. Consider me thrown for a loop.

[Loud Whispers]

What part of "three muslim men raped a buddhist girl to death" implies that the buddhists there are the problem? I missed that part, and suddenly everyone is lamenting all the horrible buddhists there. Consider me thrown for a loop.

The problem would be in the endless revenge cycle that claims the livelihood of the Muslims and Buddhists who had nothing to do with that crime. You know, kinda like how Buddhist talks about the cyclical nature of suffering...

*EDIT
To clarify, the problem is in that when the individuals act out of their doctrines and hatred, they are not seen as criminals but as components representing their ideology. When that girl was raped to death, they did so because they saw her as a Buddhist. When the Muslims were lynched, they saw them as Muslims. When both started burning each others' works down, they saw each other as larger threatening entities that warranted such violence.
It'd be wrong to absolve any one group of blame here, for everyone involved's sake.

[Gervassen]

So then get me an article about three buddhist men raping a Muslim girl to death. Cyclical, right?

[Loud Whispers]

http://www.narinjara.com/main/index.php/three-suspected-culprits-of-rape-and-murder-in-rambree-arrested
http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/6249
Of interest is that Arakan state is not actually in Burma. It's in Bangladesh, bordering the line between Bangladesh and Burma. It was very much a conflict between a majority Muslim group and a majority Buddhist group. I don't understand why they were protesting the arrest of the criminals though, who were protected against the mob despite their crimes.

Cyclical, right?

The point of what I was trying to say is that all of these people seeking revenge where proper justice could have ended it kept perpetuating and escalating the conflict.