WHEN Islam first arrived in this
ancient region, called “Burma” under the British and “Myanmar” after 1989, is
difficult to determine. With China to the north, India and Bangladesh to the
northwest and Thailand to the east and south, Myanmar faces west into the
Andaman Sea.
The name “Burma” is a British colonial
construct for a country that was plundered for its natural wealth. British rule
lasted from 1824 to 1948, from the Anglo-Burmese Wars to the creation of Burma
as a province of British India, to the establishment of an independently
administered colony, and then finally, to independence in 1948.
The locals called their country
“myanma naing ngan”, the lexical source of the name Myanmar. The British
imperial tongue stumbled over these words and adopted Burma, naming the country
Burma in honour of the Burmans, the dominant ethnic group.
From the earliest times, Myanmar was
known to seafarers from Persia, Arabia, India, China and Indonesia. It was
renowned for its rubies, sapphire, jade, teak and rice. It was also part of the
overland silk route from India to China. The earliest archaeological evidence
suggests civilisations existed in Myanmar as early as 11,000 BCE.
It is along these sea routes and
overland passes that not only trade, but culture and faith travelled. The old
Arakan Kingdom, which is our focus, hugs the western coastline as a long finger
of land, abutting Bangladesh in the northwest. The region is divided from Burma
by a range of mountains, the Arakan Yomas.
The people of Arakan are known as
Rakhine, or Rohingya, with Arakan annexed to British India in 1826. Researchers
say the name “Rohingya” (as well as “Rakhine”) is probably derived from
“Rohingyahang”, an ancient name for Arakan.
The Rohingya hail from the Rakhine
State, Arakan, which in pre-colonial times was a distinct region, sometimes one
kingdom and sometimes several kingdoms. They were either ruled by Buddhist
potentates, Hindu kings, Muslim Sultans, or hybrid Muslim-Buddhist courts.
Complex history
The history of the region is complex,
convoluted and very often layered with multi-ethnic and multi-faith narratives.
The Rohingya are an intimate part of this diverse tapestry, a colourful human
tapestry in Myanmar which has 135 different ethnic groups in a population of
about 55 million.
Some sources claim that the first
Muslim in Myanmar was Muhammad ibn Hanafiyya, a son of Sayyidina ‘Ali, one of
the Righteous Caliphs who ruled after the demise of the Prophet.
According to legends he converted a
cannibal queen, Kaiyapuri, to Islam and married her.
The most enduring narrative is that
from the 8th century onwards, Muslim seafarers settled along the coast,
marrying into local communities. This thesis coincides with how Islam arrived
in the China Seas, spreading to northern Sumatra and mainland China.
To the maritime Arabs and Persians,
the coastal regions of Arakan en route to the Malacca Straits, would have been
well known.
Other sources maintain that the very
first Muslims to be mentioned in the Myanmar chronicles, the Maha Rajaweng,
were the two sons of an Arab merchant, Byat Wi and Byat Ta, in 1050 CE. The
second mention in the chronicles is Yaman Khan, or Rahman Khan, from the days
of King Sawlu (1077-1088), who succeeded his father Anawrahta to the throne.
Anawrahta, the first king of Myanmar, introduced Theravada Buddhism.
It propagated four noble truths: that
existence itself was suffering; that suffering had a cause in earthly
attachment; that there was a cessation of this suffering by striving; and that
there was a path to success by achieving nirvana, or cosmic harmony.
Anawrahta’s capital on the Irrawaddy
River became a prominent city of pagodas and temples. Interestingly, Anawrahta
appointed a Muslim-Arab scholar as a royal teacher to his son, Prince Sawlu.
When Prince Sawlu became king, he appointed the son of his teacher as well as
his childhood friend, Yaman Khan, as governor of the city of Pegu.
This cultural intimacy between
Buddhism and Islam from the earliest days is something forgotten in the
contemporary xenophobic narrative of the Rohingya, which has been marred by the
ultra-nationalism of the current Myanmar state; a sugar-coated junta which
claims the Rohingya belong to neighbouring Bangladesh.
Ironically, it is this very same junta
that makes a Freudian slip when one of its official publications, Sasana Ronwas
Htunzepho, published in 1997 says, “Islam spread and was deeply rooted in
Arakan (the Rakhine Rohingyan state) since the 8th century from where it
further spread into the interior of Burma.”
An example of this is the old city of
Mrauk U, which literally means “monkey’s egg”. It is a sleepy town today, but
for 355 years, was the seat of the Arakan Empire where Portuguese, Dutch and
French traders rubbed shoulders with the literati of Bengal and Indian Mughal
princes. It was part of the Bengal sultanate from 1430-1531.
At its peak, Mrauk U controlled half
of Bangladesh, Arakan and the western part of lower Myanmar. Buddhist pagodas,
Hindu temples and mosques were built as the city grew. In fact, the golden city
of Mrauk U became known in Europe as a centre of oriental splendour.
Buddhist rulers style themselves after the Sultans
Historians note that the Buddhist
rulers, who took power after 1531, styled themselves after the Sultans, even
giving themselves Islamic titles such as “Shah”, and hiring Muslim civil
servants. They adopted the conical Sufi hats of Isfahan and Delhi. They also
minted coins inscribing the kalimah in Persian and Arabic calligraphy.
The Mandalay academic, Dr Ko Ko Gyi,
says, “This was because they (the Arakanese kings) not only wished to be
thought of as sultans in their own rights, but also because there were Muslims
in ever larger numbers among their subjects.”
Indeed, there were large scale
conversions of Buddhists to Islam from the 15th to 18th centuries, with the
Mughals taking over Arakan in 1665. Later, when the Dutch were ordered by the
Mughals to quit Arakan, they were afraid of leaving behind the children they’d
had with local women, horrified at the idea of them becoming Muslim.
Once a sovereign and independent
entity, and geographically and historically cut off from the rest of the
country, these facts explain the distinctly separate development of Arakan in
terms of its Muslim population. This until the Burmese king, Bodaw Paya,
conquered and looted it on 28th December 1784, taking its regent and 20,000
captives.
Thousands of Arakanese Muslims and
Buddhists were put to death. 30, 000 Burmese soldiers destroyed mosques,
temples, shrines, seminaries and libraries. The fall of the Mrauk-U Empire was
a mortal blow to the Muslims, for everything Islamic in it was razed to the
ground.
In 1790, Hiram Cox, a British diplomat
sent to assist Arakan, or Rohingya, refugees established the town of Cox’s
Bazaar in Bangladesh. This is where many Rohingya still live today, and where
there is the biggest Rohingyan refugee camp in the world with nearly one
million inhabitants.
Bodaw Paya’s disruption would seal the
modern-day fate of Arakan and shape Myanmar’s jaundiced perceptions of the
Muslim minority. Michael Symes, the British representative at Bodaw Paya’s
court, described him as “a child in his ideas, a tyrant in his principles, and
a madman in his actions”.
Bodaw Paya was an extremist Buddhist
who had proclaimed himself a messianic figure. He even persecuted other
Buddhist sects, deeming the Buddhist sins of drinking, smoking opium and
killing animals punishable by death. His reign was so oppressive that in 1794 the
people of Arakan rose up against him.
When Bodaw Paya sent an army to crush
the revolt, thousands of refugees fled from Arakan into British territory.
Conditions on the Arakan border became so unsettled that in 1795 the British
had to send a representative to negotiate with Bodaw Paya. By 1826, the British
had annexed Arakan to colonial Burma.
1942 Burmese nationalists slaughter Muslims and Buddhists
In 1942, during the Second World War,
Japan invaded Myanmar. As the British retreated, Burmese nationalists attacked
Muslim and Buddhist communities in Arakan whom they thought had benefited from
British colonial rule. 40,000 Rohingya and 20,000 Arakan Buddhists were
slaughtered
Britain liberated Myanmar from
Japanese occupation with the help of Burmese nationalists and Rohingya fighters
in 1945. The British recognised the Rohingya Muslims as a distinct racial
group, and promised them autonomy in North Arakan. However, the British didn’t
fulfil their promise.
In 1948 tensions increased between the
government of newly independent Burma and the Rohingya, many of whom wanted
Arakan to join Pakistan. The government retaliated by ostracizing the Rohingya,
including the removal of Rohingyan civil servants from their posts.
Prior to 1962, and the socialist era, the
government tried to appease Rohingyan aspirations of autonomy with limited
Arakan nationhood. This came against a background of armed resistance led by
the Mujahid movement and the former Qawali singer, Jafar Kawal.
After the military coup of March 1962,
the military regime led by General Ne Win, cancelled plans to grant Arakan
statehood. In February 1963, the regime nationalised all commercial
enterprises. In Arakan, most of the business establishments were in the hands
of the Rohingya Muslims.
If that wasn’t enough, in 1964
Rohingyan welfare organisations were banned. In 1965, the military regime
banned the Rohingyan language from the airwaves. In 1974, the Peoples’ Congress
ratified Arakan as the Rakhine State. It was now controlled by a Buddhist majority
with the Rohingya marginalised.
The discrimination against the
Rohingya is best explained by the military junta systematically – and cynically
– stoking the fears of the demise of Buddhism (89% of the population compared
to Muslims being 4%), and the break-up of the nation due to Islamic insurgency.
This was done to cultivate loyalty in a population resentful of unpopular junta
policies.
The narrative that Myanmar needs to
protect Buddhism from Islam is a cheap and tawdry nationalism that has
persisted for over a century. And as with so many dictatorships, 911 would
prove to be a boon for Myanmar’s junta, which in the name of fighting “Islamic
terror” could justify its human rights abuses.
Operation King Dragon 1978
The fact is that by the 1970s the
Rohingya, the straw dogs of Burmese nationalism, had already become victims of
state-sponsored terror. During “Operation King Dragon” in 1978, military forces
targeted the Rohingya, and were accused of mass detentions, rape, and the
burning of villages. 300,000 people fled to nearby Bangladesh.
In 1982, the Rohingya were denied
citizenship under the Myanmar Nationality Law. The junta’s apartheid was
entrenched by imposing severe restrictions on marriage, family planning,
employment, education, religious choice and freedom of movement.
In 1991, another targeted campaign,
“Operation Clean and Beautiful Nation,” ostensibly directed at squashing the
Rohingya Solidarity Organisation, pushed another 200,000 people out of the
country. These pogroms, now acknowledged as genocide, were to happen again
(post 911) in 2012, 2015, 2016, and would come to an ugly head in 2017.
Space precludes a detailed examination
of the horrors of the consistent Myanmar pogroms, but on 25 August 2017 a group
of young men from a small resistance movement, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation
Army (ARSA), attacked a military barracks with knives and home-made bombs. In
the attack, they killed 12 security force officials.
International think tanks have alleged
that ARSA has Saudi roots, but its spokesman told the Asia Times in 2017 that
it had no so-called jihadi links, and was a bona fide resistance movement.
Response to the attacks was regarded
by the UN as grossly disproportionate to the actual security threats posed.
Nearly 300 villages were razed to the ground. This violence, set off by the
military, was accompanied by mass killings, rapes and torture. An estimated
3,000 Rohingya perished, which caused a migration of 700,000 people.
In a 2018 report, the UN cited six
senior military figures for possible genocide, naming commander-in-chief,
General Min Aung Hlaing. The UN, which has always been circumspect about using
the word “genocide”, used it in its report.
Since the 2000s there have been two
key personalities complicit in the Rohingya genocide. The first is an extremist
Buddhist monk, Ashin Wirathu, who on the cover of Time Magazine of 1 July 2013,
was described as “The Face of Buddhist Terror”.
He is a member of the 969 group, an
ultra-nationalist movement opposed to what it sees as Islam’s unwelcome
expansion in Buddhist Myanmar. Banned on Facebook, Wirathu is a leader of the
Organization for the Protection of Race and Religion, commonly known by its
Burmese acronym, Ma Ba Tha.
The Baghdadi of Buddhism, Wirathu has
coloured his preaching by stoking up Islamaphobic hate. For Wirathu it is the
simple equation of Rohingya swartgevaar, of a Saudi-backed Bangladeshi insurgency,
whose sole purpose is to destroy Buddhism and establish a caliphate.
In January 2015, he publicly called UN
envoy Yanghee Lee a “bitch” and a “whore” and invited her to offer her “arse to
the kalars” (a derogatory term for Rohingya).
Of Muslims, he once said, “You cannot sleep next to a mad dog…”
Aung
San Suu Kyi
He also called Aung San Suu Kyi,
Myanmar’s political leader, a “prostitute”. He has also accused her political
party, the National League for Democracy, of secretly supporting a Muslim agenda.
He has also said if Myanmar officials are brought to book he will be holding a
gun, something totally against Theravada Buddhism.
The state has slapped him on the
wrist, even suggesting sedition charges be laid against him for insulting Aung
San Suu Kyi, but he remains at large with the monastic authorities also
seemingly unable to curb him.
The most disappointing figure by far
is Aung San Suu Kyi, the former human rights activist and peace advocate, who
whilst under house arrest in Rangoon, received the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
Once idolised by millions around the
globe, she has proved to be hugely remiss and beholden to the junta on the
Rohingya question since her election victory of 2015. Her fall from grace has
been spectacular. By August last year, she had been stripped of no less than
seven international awards.
As Myanmar’s leading public figure,
she has an angered and infuriated the international community on her reluctance
to seriously acknowledge the crisis, which sees the Rohingya as the most
persecuted minority on earth. Sadly, most of the world’s leaders – eyeing prime
jade and teak – have been unforgivably and equally mute as her on Myanmar’s
genocide pogrom, the worst since the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.
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