In the years between 2012 and 2014, Burma has been shaken by waves of violence against Muslims which has resulted in destroyed mosques and shops, at least 140 000 displaced and 200 killed persons. The person who is said to lay behind this violence is the Burmese Theravada monk Ashin Wirathu. Being the founder and leader of the radical Buddhist movement 969, he has been accused of indirectly motivating violence against Muslims and has been portrayed with titles such as “The face of buddhist terror”. This essay investigates the relation between Wirathu and the anti-Muslim violence by applying the method of content analysis on a speech of him. Identifying an emphasis on subjects concerning politics, nationalism and anti-Muslim statements, these factors are contextualized to colonial and postcolonial Burma for the purpose of finding causes for the recent struggles. Recognizing the appearing of these factors in the context of Burma, which has undergone a tense 20th century comprising colonization and military dictatorship, offer some explanation of the rhetoric found in the analyzed speech. Using the context of the identified subjects and a theory which explains the rise of religious conflict in postmodern states, this study concludes that the content in Ashin Wirathu’s speech motivate for anti-Muslim violence through the use of political, ethnic nationalistic and islamophobic statements.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-255133 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Pfeiffer, Fabian |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Religionshistoria |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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