{"id":7029,"date":"2017-09-10T16:13:11","date_gmt":"2017-09-10T16:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/frog\/?p=7029"},"modified":"2017-09-10T16:14:14","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T16:14:14","slug":"buddhist-atrocities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2017\/09\/buddhist-atrocities\/","title":{"rendered":"On &#8220;Buddhist Atrocities&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the odd substrains of commentary on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com\/2017\/09\/they-have-come-for-the-rohingya\">ongoing Rohingya genocide in Myanmar<\/a> is Americans (mostly, as near as I can tell) <strong>shocked<\/strong> that <a href=\"https:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/pharyngula\/2017\/09\/10\/buddhist-atrocities\/\">a Buddhist society is capable of the kinds of cruelty<\/a> we associate with Western imperialism and 20th century totalitarianism. <\/p>\n<p>As I said on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jondresner\/status\/906875404119658499\">twitter<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>People saying that Rohingya genocide proves that &#8220;Buddhist atrocities&#8221; can happen apparently ignored Sri Lankan civil war, Imperial Japan.<br \/>\nThe hell of it is, Buddhism is as much a &#8216;religion of peace&#8217; as Islam,Christianity. Same basic lessons, most adherents perfectly nice people<br \/>\nLike Islam, Christianity (I&#8217;m just covering major world religions here), Buddhism intersects with systems of power that implement violence.<br \/>\nLike Islam &#038; Christianity, Buddhist institutions have, historically, validated state violence when it was in their institutional interest.<br \/>\nBuddhism&#8217;s reputation in the West benefits greatly from being not associated with any particular 20th century power (unless you&#8217;re paying<br \/>\nclose attention to states like Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand and their treatment of non-Buddhist populations) and being strongly associated<br \/>\nwith countercultural, anti-imperialistic movements (centered in 60s, but not exclusively) including association with Gandhian nonviolence.<br \/>\n(Gandhi was Hindu, not Buddhist, but *ahimsa* is common value among Jain, Buddhist, some Hindu traditions. Plus, sloppy Western orientalism)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I doubt any readers of this blog need me to fill in the historical details. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the odd substrains of commentary on the ongoing Rohingya genocide in Myanmar is Americans (mostly, as near as I can tell) shocked that a Buddhist society is capable of the kinds of cruelty we associate with Western imperialism and 20th century totalitarianism. As I said on twitter: People saying that Rohingya genocide proves&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[280],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-1Pn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7029"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7032,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7029\/revisions\/7032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}