Thesis (D. Min.)--Logos Evangelical Seminary, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 330-349).

For years there has been an ongoing conflict, geographically concerning the southern parts of Thailand. The Malay-Muslim inhabitants of the area state that they do not fully belong to Buddhist Thailand and therefore require independence in various forms. Along with the Muslims, the Buddhist inhabitants of the area also suffer from daily violence and killings. The counteractions over the years seems to have resulted in chaotic conditions where civilians die regularly. After many years of violence, this complex situation has not successfully been ended and is still current. This case study will examine the requisites for peace in southern Thailand. The conflict has been studied through a conflict management perspective, thereof the choice of theory; Svante Karlsson’s conflict management theory. The conflict has been described, discussed and applied to the chosen theory. Results presented in this study shows that it is possible to achieve peace in the southern provinces of Thailand, however cooperation between the parts is necessary. A combination of several conflict management methods by Svante Karlsson can possibly result in peace in southern Thailand.

The purpose of this minor field study, and BA-thesis, is to visualize the situation for Rakhine Buddhists and Rakhine Muslims; both through their stories and through analysing Enemy Imaging within the two researched groups. The research questions posed are “What do the informants emphasise regarding their situation pertaining to the conflict and their everyday life” and “To what extent could the image of The Other be called an Enemy Image”. Methods of Thematic Content Analysis and Framing are used to analyse the material and theories of Enemy Imaging and Othering constitute the theoretical base of the study. The analysed material, ten interviews, five with Buddhists and five with Muslims, all identifying as being Rakhine, show that the informants experience feeling threatened and scared as well as to a large extent feeling misunderstood and unfairly treated. There were very few signs of Enemy Imaging among the Muslim group, but far more in the Buddhist group. This thesis calls for further research both within these two groups and extended to other actors identified in the context.

For centuries Islam and Muslims have been subject to islamophobic attitudes in the west. The purpose with this study was to see into the making of open and closed attitudes against Islam and Muslims from a conflict in southern Thailand, and also to so see if Muslims are portrayed as more violent than the Buddhist groups in the conflict. The aim of the study is also to see if Muslims fall into a violent stereotype. This was studied by looking at five Swedish newspapers coverage of the conflict, during a given time. To be able to look into this, two theories will be used, the first one is the Runnymede Trust theory, which is about open and closed attitudes against Islam and Muslims. The second one is Duncan’s violent stereotype theory, which will be used to see differences between the Muslims and the Buddhists when it comes to the use of violence, and also to see if Muslims are portrayed as a violent stereotyped group. The method was a psychology discourse method with a theory driven analysis with Template Analyze Style. The conclusion of the study was that there was a mix of open and closed attitudes against Islam and Muslims, where the closed attitudes follow a pattern of earlier studies. Another conclusion from the study was that there are only small differences in the portraying of the different groups as more and less violent, where the Muslims tend to be portrayed as a bit more violent but the differences are small. And from that conclusion it is not possible from the material to say that there are any clear stereotypes of Muslims as a violent group.

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This dissertation explores the innovation and creativity behind elite Gelukpa thinking and writing about Buddhist place in Tibet in the long eighteenth century. It argues that writing about place offered Geluk thinkers a way to embed themselves in the land and history of Tibet, giving a rooted support to their expanding influence. More broadly, it demonstrates a growing spatialization of religious thought in Tibet and reveals a continuous and dynamic conversation around Tibetan Buddhist place and the nature of Buddhist space. This conversation went to the heart of matters of history, power, religion, and aesthetics and was tied intimately to the historical context of its production. To contextualize the period of Gelukpa growth, I begin by presenting the history of Tibetan Buddhist place writing across the longue durée. Based on my collection and analysis of over 400 place writing texts, including guidebooks, histories, poetry, and ritual texts, I suggest for the first time a periodization for this history, delineating distinct phases in the development of place writing across time. This periodization reveals that at most points throughout this history, Nyingma writers dominated place writing production. From the twelfth to seventeenth centuries, they set the standard for traditional place writing genres like guidebook literature. Beginning at the end of the seventeenth century, however, Gelukpa authors joined the conversation with great energy, producing both traditional and new styles of place writing in greater numbers than ever seen before. Why did the long eighteenth century see a burgeoning of place writing, both generally and by Gelukpa authors, specifically, and what characterized these new texts? I explore these questions by looking more closely at the work of three Gelukpa writers. First, I show how place writing was part of the Gelukpa rise to political and institutional dominance by an analysis of the Fifth Dalai Lama’s use of the supine demoness narrative in his efforts to unify Tibet under his government. Gelukpa place writing of this period was forced to grapple with earlier Nyingma narratives that in many cases dominated the conversation. Sumpa Khenpo’s Annals of Blue Lake offers an example of the creativity with which writers presented their new visions for Buddhist place in Tibet. Finally, I look at the poetry of Tukwan Lozang Chökyi Nyima as evidenced of the incorporation of new spatial configurations and the cultural exchange happening due to increased interactions with the Qing capital and imperial patronage. These snapshots ultimately show that the Gelukpa used place writing as part of its efforts to cement a growing influence politically, geographically, and culturally in Tibet and across Asia in the long eighteenth century. Just as importantly, however, these examples exhibit the creative power of writers in shaping the Buddhist landscape of Tibet. Through an analysis of an array of place writing texts, this dissertation brings to light one moment in the long history of Tibetan Buddhist place writing and demonstrates that Buddhist place has been a site of dynamic conversation (and often contestation) throughout that history.

This dissertation examines whether Buddhist beliefs and practices serve to reinforce and/or promote a Korean and/or Canadian cultural prism for next-generation Korean Buddhist practitioners in Toronto, Canada. I define Korean and Canadian cultural prisms based on the cross-cultural psychological framework of Individualism-Relational Collectivism (I-RC) and Analytical-Holistic (A-H) cognition. The aim of my research is to problematize culture in the construction of religious meaning and behaviour for relatively bicultural individuals. My research question can thus be summarized as follows: How is religious meaning and behaviour culturally constructed by next-generation Korean Buddhist practitioners in Canada? What role do individual cultural orientations and the different Buddhist cultural traditions play in this cultural construction and how does Buddhism compare to the other religions (namely Protestantism) practiced by younger-generation Korean-Canadians in this regard? By answering these questions, I ultimately hope to show whether the meaning system of Korean culture is preserved through religion among the younger generation of Korean Buddhist practitioners. I hypothesize that, due to the relatively non-authoritarian nature of Buddhism, the light of Buddhist beliefs and practices will predominantly be refracted through the a priori cultural prism of the individual in question, and the role of Buddhist doctrine and institutions in promoting a particular orientation (individualistic/relationally collectivistic and analytic/holistic) will be minimal and subordinate to the individual. The particular cultural orientation of this prism will, in turn, be dependent upon individual levels of monoculturalism (Korean or Canadian) or biculturalism (Korean and Canadian). In this way, Buddhism may serve to both preserve and undermine the Korean cultural meaning system. By comparison, I hypothesize that the relatively authoritarian nature of (Protestant) Christianity will likely encourage younger-generation Korean Christians to relate to their religion in a predominantly uniform way, regardless of the individual’s cultural orientation.

This dissertation examines whether Buddhist beliefs and practices serve to reinforce and/or promote a Korean and/or Canadian cultural prism for next-generation Korean Buddhist practitioners in Toronto, Canada. I define Korean and Canadian cultural prisms based on the cross-cultural psychological framework of Individualism-Relational Collectivism (I-RC) and Analytical-Holistic (A-H) cognition. The aim of my research is to problematize culture in the construction of religious meaning and behaviour for relatively bicultural individuals. My research question can thus be summarized as follows: How is religious meaning and behaviour culturally constructed by next-generation Korean Buddhist practitioners in Canada? What role do individual cultural orientations and the different Buddhist cultural traditions play in this cultural construction and how does Buddhism compare to the other religions (namely Protestantism) practiced by younger-generation Korean-Canadians in this regard? By answering these questions, I ultimately hope to show whether the meaning system of Korean culture is preserved through religion among the younger generation of Korean Buddhist practitioners. I hypothesize that, due to the relatively non-authoritarian nature of Buddhism, the light of Buddhist beliefs and practices will predominantly be refracted through the a priori cultural prism of the individual in question, and the role of Buddhist doctrine and institutions in promoting a particular orientation (individualistic/relationally collectivistic and analytic/holistic) will be minimal and subordinate to the individual. The particular cultural orientation of this prism will, in turn, be dependent upon individual levels of monoculturalism (Korean or Canadian) or biculturalism (Korean and Canadian). In this way, Buddhism may serve to both preserve and undermine the Korean cultural meaning system. By comparison, I hypothesize that the relatively authoritarian nature of (Protestant) Christianity will likely encourage younger-generation Korean Christians to relate to their religion in a predominantly uniform way, regardless of the individual’s cultural orientation.

In January, 1951, the Lutheran Church of China denounced all relations with the American, German and Scandinavian missions, which for more than half a century had worked in the country. As one of the first, this church made a clear and corporate stand in favour of the New Democracy and the Three-Self Movement, while most of the missions made their political choice, retreated with the Nationalists and finally went to Taiwan. This book presents the Lutheran missions from optimistic new orientations in 1944 to the evacuation and the break down of the cooperation with the Chinese church seven years later. This short .period was dramatic and of great importance for the whole missionary movement, and the study may lead to renewed self-criticism and to a necessary re-evaluation of the Chinese Revolution - one of the most significant events in World History.

The notion that religion intensifies nationalism and escalates conflict is widely accepted. In spite of its frequent association with violence, however, religious doctrines and institutions sometimes appear to have the radical power to deescalate conflict and reroute the expression of political grievances away from bloodshed. How, and under what conditions, might religion lend itself to the mitigation of ethnic conflict? Focusing on Buddhist nationalisms in East Asia and Southeast Asia, the three papers in this dissertation study the influence of religious beliefs on political attitudes and conflict behavior at various levels of analysis. Using ethnographic approaches, case study methods, and original field data collected from nearly a hundred interviews among Tibetan subjects in India and Sinhalese monastics in Sri Lanka, these essays seek to deepen the nuances and complexity in our understanding of the relationship between Buddhism, nationalism, and violence.Paper #1 studies the relationship between Buddhism and suicide protest, focusing on the puzzle of self-immolation: Why do high-commitment protesters in some conflicts choose this method over conventional tactics of nonviolent resistance or suicide terrorism? Taking the wave of Tibetan self-immolations between 2009 and 2018 as a case study, this paper probes the causal importance of strategic considerations, structural constraints, and normative restraints that may have influenced the protesters’ choice of method. I develop a theoretical framework proposing that suicide protesters evaluate potential tactics based on three criteria: disruptive capability, operational feasibility, and ethical permissibility. Leveraging in-depth interviews and a close reading of the self-immolators’ last words, I conclude that the Buddhist clergy’s broad conception of violence, interacting with international norms, constrains the protesters’ tactical latitude by narrowing the parameters of what qualifies as nonviolent action, thereby eliminating many of the standard repertoires of contention from the movement’s arsenal while sanctioning self-immolation as a legitimate form of dissent. I argue that a fundamental paradox in the self-immolators’ theory of change, namely the tension between a tactic’s disruptive capability and ethical permissibility, ends up restricting their freedom of action. Paper #2 zooms out to examine the relationship between religion, nationalism, and violence. It starts with a broad question: How, and under what conditions, might religion lend itself to the mitigation –– or the escalation –– of ethnonational conflict? To what extent do religious ideas travel from scripture to political preferences and conflict behavior? I develop two hypotheses predicting the influence of scriptural ideas on nationalist commitment and suggestibility to violence –– devoting special attention to how a group’s conception of its own national interest might be affected when the religious identity of its members supersedes their political identity. The paper finds that the Buddhist belief in rebirth can undermine the strength of one’s nationalist commitment by injecting a dose of ambiguity into one’s conception of identity. This suggests that a religious belief such as rebirth can be mobilized to deescalate ethnonational conflict by highlighting the fluidity of ethnic identity and thus lowering the stakes of conflict. Moreover, it also finds that Mahayana Buddhism’s emphasis on altruism, while rooted in compassion toward others, can end up increasing an individual’s suggestibility to violence and therefore should not be assumed to be a pacifying force in conflict. Mahayana doctrines, though built on more inclusivist founding principles than the Theravada tradition and therefore more resistant to exclusivist ideologies like nationalism, are nevertheless susceptible to utilitarian reasoning and lend themselves readily to the justification of violence. In our interviews, Tibetan monastics, educated under a uniform Mahayana curriculum, turned out to be far more suggestible to violence than their Theravada counterparts in Sri Lanka, an observation that supports our counterintuitive hypothesis linking an altruism-oriented curriculum with suggestibility to violence. Paper #3 takes a historical case study approach to examine how Buddhist religious ideas may have, in interaction with liberal international norms, influenced the Tibetan leadership’s de-escalation politics in the Sino-Tibetan conflict. While paper #2 of this dissertation explored Buddhism’s relationship with nationalism and violence at the level of rank-and-file citizens, this paper shifts the focus from group-level preferences to elite-level decision-making. It relies on document analysis and process tracing methods to answer a particular historical question: How did the independence-seeking Tibetan nationalist leadership of the 1960s evolve into compromise-seeking pacifists in the 1980s and subsequent decades? I seek to illuminate the pathways by which religious beliefs and charismatic leadership structure, in interaction with the normative constraints of liberal internationalism, may have facilitated the Tibetan leadership’s de-escalation politics in the Sino-Tibetan conflict. To do so, I leverage counterfactual history (Belkin & Tetlock, 1996), biographical data of key leaders (Creswell, 1998), and document analysis of their speeches and writings –– including a close examination of the Dalai Lama’s annual March 10 speeches from 1960 to 2011. While the other two papers explore the multifaceted relationship between Buddhism, nationalism, and violence by studying the political attitudes and conflict behavior of ordinary people and rank-and-file monastics, this paper delves into the political and psychological evolution of two Tibetan leaders, the Dalai Lama and former Tibetan prime minister Samdhong Rinpoche, to examine the ways in which private religious beliefs can interact with global norms to guide and constrain the high-level foreign policy decision-making of political elites.