Habib Siddiqui

Myanmar - the apatheid state - has once become the scene of anti-Muslim racism and bigotry. Scores of Muslim homes and shops were burned down and destroyed by racist Buddhist mob on Sunday --terrorizing the Muslim community in the commercial capital of Rangoon (Yangon). One wonders if this Buddhist country is beyond repair, and will continue to remain savage displacing non-Buddhists! I pray and hope not. The full report on the latest episode of violence can be seen by clicking here .

Tomas Quintana's entire speech on his recent visit to Myanmar can be seen by clicking here .

Tomas Ojea Quintana, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, was in Myanmar last week on a 10-day fact finding trip. It was his eighth official visit to the country that took him to Rakhine State, Chin State, Kachin State and Shan State, and Meikhtila in Mandalay Region. Quintana’s visit to Burma got off to a bumpy start when he was greeted in Arakan State by nearly 90 Arakanese Buddhist Magh protesters, some of whom carried signs urging the “one-sided Bengali lobbyist” to “get out,” reflecting perceptions among some that the UN envoy is biased in favor of the state’s Rohingya Muslims. It is not unusual for a country that has come to symbolize the den of intolerance, racism and bigotry in our times. Many in Burma—including the government—refer to the Rohingya - who are indigenous to Arakan before Buddhist Maghs moved to the region – as Bengalis. At Wednesday’s press conference, Quintana pushed back against accusations of bias, saying, “Le...

Concluding remarks: As noted in this series of articles, it was not the Islamic conquests which caused Buddhism to fade away in South Asia but a plethora of causes that made the difference. In the early medieval period when Buddhism lost the royal patronage, and Hinduism became a resurgent force in its battle with Buddhism, not only did the Buddhists face serious persecution and elimination, it also lost its intellectual battle against the Brahmans.  Thanks to the brilliant scheme concocted by the Brahman philosophers, Gautama Buddha was transformed into a reincarnation of Hindu Lord Vishnu, which virtually sealed the fate of Buddhism by putting the final nail in its coffin -- centuries before Islam became a dominant force in South Asia. The prominent 8th-century CE Hindu philosopher Shankara described Buddha as an enemy of the people. Interestingly, he developed a monastic order on the Buddhist model, and also borrowed concepts from Buddhist philosophy. Anti-Buddhist pro...

As the first millennium of the Common Era (C.E.) gave way to the second, the contours of political geography shifted substantially in South Asia. The Indian Ocean became an integrated commercial system, and South Asia became a land of wealth and trade, connecting the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean.    In Sri Lanka, virtually the whole population shifted to the coast doing business with merchants and traders that frequented the island from the territories to the west, especially the Muslim world. Though the Arab and Persian merchants had been trading for centuries before Islam, they started dominating the entire sea trade along the Indian Ocean since around the middle of the 7 th century.  South Asia’s encounter with Islam dates back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad (S), beginning with the conversion of a Hindu king of Kerala and the presence of the Mappila (also called Moplah) Muslim community in the Malabar Coast since the early 7 th century CE. Sindh c...

According to the area historians of South Asia in ancient times the region was very thinly populated. Vast expanses of open scrubland separated countless, tiny, scattered communities of nomads, shifting cultivators, hunters, gatherers, and settled farmers, who multiplied over the centuries. By Gupta times, an array of densely populated, complex societies thrived in fertile lowlands along major rivers. Their agricultural settlements were still surrounded by dense forest and open scrubland but they were expanding visibly, and they were extensively connected to one another and to many other regions across Eurasia. By the middle of the first millennium of the Common Era, a second great transformation was well underway with the rise of cities that were surrounded by open land and by communities disconnected from city life. Medieval kingdoms arose from the power of social groups in dynastic core regions. “ Dynasties grew as rising kings subordinated existing local elites and official...