Keywords
Islam
Rohingya
Repression
Pluralism
How to Cite
Abstract
This article discusses the world’s most oppressed people, the Muslim Rohingya of Burma (Myanmar) through the lens of “state symbologies and critical juncture”. It further argues the amalgamation of Burmese-Buddhist ethno-nationalism and anti-Muslim hate speech have become elements of Burma’s state symbology and components. Colonialism established conditions in which ethno-religious conflict could develop through policies that destroyed the civic religious pluralism characteristic of pre-colonial states. Burmese Buddhist ethno-religious nationalism is responsible for a series of communal conflicts and state repression because it did not recognize Muslims and other minorities as full and equal participants in the post-colonial national project. Therefore, the cycles of violence and the complexities of inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations indicate that Burmese political culture has become increasingly violent and genocidal.
References
Alatas, Syed, “Hadhramaut and the Hadhrami Diaspora: Problems in Theoretical History,” Freitag, Ulrike (ed.) Hadhrami Traders, Scholars and Statemen in the Indian Ocean 1750s-1960s, Leiden: Brill, 1997.
Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1983.
Aung, Htin, The Stricken Peacock: Anglo-Burmese Relations 1752–1948, New York: Springer, 2013/1965.
Aung-Thwin, Maureen, “The Burmese Ways to Socialism,” Third World Quarterly, 1992.
Bekker, Sarah, “Transformation of the Nats: The Humanization Process in the Depiction of the Thirty-Seven Lords of Burma, Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 1988.
BBC News, 2016, “Myanmar Wants Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya - UN Official,” http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38091816.
Barth, Fredrik, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organization of Culture Difference, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969.
Carson, Penelope, The East India Company and Religion, London: Boydell Press, 2012.
Chan, Aye, “The Creation of a Muslim Enclave in Arakan (Rakhine) State of Burma (Myanmar),” SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, 2005.
Charney, Michael, “Rise of a Mainland Trading State: Rahkaing Under the Early Mrauk-U Kings, c. 1430-1603,” Journal of Burma Studies, 1998.
___________, Where Jambudipa and Islamdom Converged: Religious Change and the Emergence of Buddhist Communalism in Early Modern Arakan (Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries), PhD Dissertation, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1999.
__________, “Theories and Historiography of the Religious Basis of Ethnonyms in Rakhaing (Arakan), Myanmar (Burma),” London: SOAS: eprints, 2005.
___________, A History of Modern Burma, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Cheesman, Nick, “How in Myanmar “National Races” Came to Surpass Citizenship and Exclude Rohingya,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2017.
Collins, Maurice, The Land of the Great Image - Being Experiences of Friar Manrique in Arakan, New York: New Directions, 1958.
Crouch, Melissa, “Myanmar’s Muslim Mosaic and the Politics of Belonging,” New Mandala, 2014.
____________, “States of Legal Denial: How the State in Myanmar Uses Law to Exclude the Rohingya,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2019.
D’Hubert, Thibaut, “Pirates, Poets, and Merchants: Bengali Language and Literature in Seventeenth-Century Mrauk-U,” Culture and Circulation, 2014.
Egreteau, Renaud, “Burma (Myanmar) 1930-2007,” Online Encyclopaedia of Mass Violence, 2009.
Ferguson, Jane, “Who’s Counting? Ethnicity, Belonging, and the National Census in Burma/Myanmar,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia), 2015.
Fink, Christian, “Myanmar in 2018: The Rohingya Crisis Continues,” Asian Survey, 2019.
Galache, Carlos, “Rohingya and National Identities in Burma,” New Mandala, 2014.
Galen, Stephan, Arakan and Bengal: The Rise and Decline of the Mrauk U kingdom (Burma) from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century AD, PhD Thesis, Leiden: Leiden University, 2018.
Government of Burma, Report of the Riot Enquiry Committee, Rangoon: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1939.
Graves, Michael (ed.), Exploring Ethnic Diversity in Burma, Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2007.
Green, Nile, “Buddhism, Islam and the Religious economy of Colonial Burma,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2015.
Green, Penny., MacManus, Thomas and de la Cour Venning, Alicia, Countdown to Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar, London: International State Crime Initiative, 2015.
____________, Genocide Achieved, Genocide Continues: Myanmar’s Annihilation of the Rohingya, London: International State Crime Initiative, 2018.
Hall, Daniel A History of South-East Asia, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981.
Harvey, George, History of Burma from the Earliest Times to 10 March, 1824: The Beginning of the English Conquest, London: Frank Cass, 1967/1925.
________, British Rule in Burma (1824-1942), London: Faber and Faber, 1946.
Haque, Mahbubul, “Rohingya Ethnic Muslim Minority and the 1982 Citizenship Law in Burma,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 2017.
Heikkilä-Horn, Marja-Leena, “Imagining ‘Burma’: A Historical Overview,” Asian Ethnicity, 2009.
Holt, J., Myanmar’s Buddhist-Muslim Crisis, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2019.
Ilahi, Maudood, “The Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh: Historical Perspectives and Consequences,” In Rogge John (ed.), Refugees: A Third World Dilemma, New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987.
Ibrahim, Azeem, The Rohingyas. Inside Myanmar’s Genocide, London: Hurst & Company, 2018.
Ishikawa, Kazumasa, “The Foreign Presence in Mandalay during the Konbaung Period: A Review of the Urban Area,” The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies, 2014.
Lee, Ronan, “A politician, not an icon: Aung San Suu Kyi’s silence on Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, 2014.
Lehman, F.K., “Freedom and Bondage in Traditional Burma and Thailand.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 1984.
Lehr Peter, Burma: “You Cannot Sleep Next to a Mad Dog”. In: Militant Buddhism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Leider, Jacques, “These Buddhist kings with Muslim names: A discussion of Muslim Influence in the Mrauk-U Period. In: Etudes Birmanes en Hommage à Denise Bernot. Paris: l’École Française d’Extrême Orient, 1998.
__________________ ,“Relics, Statues, and Predictions: Interpreting an Apocryphal Sermon of Lord Buddha in Arakan,” Asian Ethnology, 2009.
_________________, “Rohingya: The Name and It’s Living Archive.” HAL: Archives ou Vertes, 2018.
Liu, James, Fisher-Onar, Norma and Woodward, Mark “Critical junctures? Complexity and the Post-Colonial Nation- state”, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 2014.
Mendelson, E. Michael, State and Sangha in Burma: A Study of Monastic Sectarianism and Leadership, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975.
Naw, Lily, “Ulama, State, and Politics in Myanmar,” Al-Jamiah Journal of Islamic Studies, 2015.
Phayre, Arthur, “Account of Arakan,” Journal of the Asiatic Society, 1841.
Rodgers, Benedict, Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads, London: Ebury, 2012.
Roy, Asim, The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal, Delhi: Sterling Publishing, 1983.
Sarkisyanz, Emanuel, Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution, Amsterdam: Springer, 1965.
Schober, Juliane, “In the Presence of the Buddha: Ritual Veneration of the Burmese Maha- muni Image.” In: Sacred Biography in the Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997.
Scott O’Connor, Vincent, Mandalay and Other Cities of the Past, London: Hutchinson, 1907.
Silverstein, Josef, “Civil War and Rebellion in Burma,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 1990.
Simons, Marlise and Hannah Beech, “Aung San Suu Kyi Defends Myanmar Against Rohingya Genocide Accusations,” The New York Times, 11 December 2019 at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/world/asia/aung-san-suu-kyi-rohingya-myanmar-genocide-hague.html
Smith, Donald, Religion and Politics in Burma, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965.
Smith, Martin, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnic Conflict, London: Zed Books, 1999.
Spiro, Melford E., Buddhism and Society: A Great Tradition and its Burmese Vicissitudes, New York: Harper and Row, 1971.
Sperber, Dan, Rethinking Symbolism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Tambiah, Stanley, Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand, Cambridge University Press, 1970.
_________, World Conqueror and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand against a Historical Background, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
__________, Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Thant, Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Tilman, Frasch, The Relic and the Rule of Righteousness: Reflections on U Nu’s Dhammavijaya, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Tin, Pe Maung and Luce, Gordon, The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma, Rangoon: Burma Research Society, 1960.
UNHCR, Rohingya Emergency, 2017, https://www.unhcr.org/rohingya-emergency.html.
Woodward, Mark, “Religious Pluralism in Bali: Premodern and Contemporary Perspectives,” Journal Aqlam: Journal Islam and Plurality, 2019.
Yegar, Moshe, The Muslims of Burma, Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1972.
______________, “The Crescent in Arakan,” Israeli The Crescent in the East: Islam in Asia Major, London: Cruzon, 1982.
__________, Between Integration and Secession: The Muslim Communities of the Southern Philippines, Southern Thailand, and Western Burma/Myanmar, New York: Lexington, 2002.
Yusuf, Imtiyaz, “Islam in Myanmar – Research Notes,” Islam and Muslim Societies: A Social Science Journal, 2017.
Zarni, Maung, 2020, “The Official Evidence of the Rohingya Ethnic Identity and Citizenship which the Burmese Ethno- and Genocidists Don’t Want You to See,” Rohingya Blogger.
Zarni, Maung and Alice Cowley, “The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya,” Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, 2014.
Epistemé: Jurnal Pengembangan Ilmu Keislaman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.