Political Buddhism and Political Islam in Arakan

by Hein Htet Kyaw

Pic: from Wikimedia Commons

Prior to British colonisation, the Rohingya Muslims and Arakanese Buddhists coexisted amicably in the area for decades and even centuries. Bengali Muslim settlements in Arakan were first documented during the reign of Min Saw Mon (1430–34) of the Kingdom of Mrauk U. However, there is no historical record of interethnic or interreligious warfare.

To free Burma from British colonial rule, Burmese insurgents forged an alliance with the Japanese Empire during World War Two. Even though the Japanese Empire was a fascist state in terms of political theory, most Burmese nationalists and left-wing rebels initially believed that it would liberate Burma. General Aung San, who was the founding father of the “Burma Independence Army” and a co-founder of “Communist Party of Burma”, led the group of Thirty Comrades to receive military training from the Japanese Army.

There were, nevertheless, some communist dissenters. The "Insein Manifesto," a thesis written by Thakin Soe, the important leader and theoretical head of the "Communist Party of Burma" at the time, essentially declared that fascism was more dangerous than colonialism. Consequently, the Marxist faction of Thakin Soe remained opposed to the Japanese Empire and supported the British Indian colonial regime.

Certain ethnic groups with distinct political interests, like the Karen, supported the British-Indian colonial government and continued to oppose the Japanese Empire. However, the Arakanese, a distinct ethnic community from Burma, rebelled against British domination and sided with the Burmese majority.

In northern Arakan, the British armed Muslims to counter the largely pro-Japanese ethnic Arakanese and to create a buffer zone that would protect the region from a Japanese invasion after they retreated. The British offered the Rohingya a separate Islamic state in exchange for their loyalty to the British Empire. Violence also erupted between Rohingya militants linked with the British and Burmese-Arakanese nationalist movements during this period.

Over 20,000 Arakanese were tortured, raped, and killed by Muslims from Northern Rakhine State. Buddhist Arakanese and Japanese forces retaliated by killing, raping, and torturing Indians, Bengalis, and Rohingya Muslims. Tens of thousands of Rohingya were forced into the Bengal state of British India.

The Rohingya Muslims in western Arakan launched a separatist movement in the 1940s to join the East Pakistan Movement. The Mujahideen, a well-known Islamist organisation that was active in the Afghanistan-Soviet War, the Iran-Iraq War, the Philippines, and Pakistan, were crucial to the Rohingya Muslim movement in western Arakan. Muslim leaders claimed that they had been promised a "Muslim National Area" in the Maungdaw area by the British. During 1946, the creation of an independent Rohingya state was also demanded.

Given their religious affinities and proximity to East Pakistan, Muslim leaders from Arakan wrote to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, before to Burma's independence in January 1948, requesting his help in assimilating the Mayu region into Pakistan. Two months later, at modern-day Sittwe, the North Arakan Muslim League was established. The political Islamist objective here was never carried out because Jinnah allegedly rejected it, stating that he had no business meddling in Burmese affairs.

The Rohingya Independence Front (RIF) was founded on April 26, 1964, with the intention of establishing an independent Muslim area for the Rohingya. After changing its name to the Rohingya Independence Army in 1969, the group changed its name to the Rohingya Patriotic Front (RPF) on September 12, 1973. Following the separation of the Rohingya Patriotic Front (RPF) into extremist factions, the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) was established in 1982.

Many Islamist organizations, including Angkatan Belia Islam sa-Malaysia, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Jamaat-e-Islami, Hizb-e-Islami, and the Islamic Youth Organization of Malaysia, supported it. Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) was founded in 1982 following a large-scale military operation conducted by the Myanmar Army. Operating in exile in Cox's Bazaar, the Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO) was established on October 28, 1998, following the merger of the Rohingya Solidarity Organization and the Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front.

In 2012, a Buddhist woman in Arakan was raped by a group of male assailants who were supposedly of Muslim and Rohingya ethnic backgrounds. The cops arrested three individuals and sent them to a nearby jail via bus. Perhaps believing that those were among those on board, a mob attacked a bus in a nearby city. After the Rohingya Muslims retaliated, there were intercommunal rioting, which significantly contributed to the growth of the 969 movement in Burma. The violence caused an estimated 90,000 people to be displaced, and 2,528 houses were set on fire; 1,336 of the homes belonged to Rohingyas, and 1,192 to Arakanese.

Given the instances of intercommunal rioting, the Myanmar military's dictators saw it as a chance to manipulate most Burmese nationalists and Buddhist leaders, who had previously been anti-military, into viewing the military as a protector of Buddhism. Venerable Wirathu, who was dubbed the “Face of Buddhist Terror” had the history of starting an anti-Muslim riot in 2003. He came to equate all Rohingya and Muslims with terrorists. He refused to seek solidarity between the communities.

Venerable Wirathu along with some other nationalist monks, started to form the 969 movement, which later became the Patriotic Association of Myanmar. The anti-Muslim racist 969 movement and Patriotic Association of Myanmar, even though most of the organisers had close ties with the 2007 Saffron revolution and anti-military activism for years, ended up taking the Myanmar military as the defenders of Buddhism from Islamism. The Myanmar military declared a lot of policies against the Rohingya population in the Arakan region and committed several human rights violations and war crimes.

As a result, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) with the original name Harakah al-Yaqin (the Faith Movement) was founded in 2013. Later, the name “Harakah al-Yaqin” was changed to Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.

Even though both Rohingya Solidarity Organisation and Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army are based on Rohingya nationalism and Islamism, they do not get along with each other and each is always busy murdering the cadres of the other group in Bangladeshi refugee camps and elsewhere. On 25 August 2017, Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army massacred 99 Bengali Hindu villagers. There were other incidents where Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army committed massacres against Bengali Hindus, Christians and Arakanese Buddhists too. ARSA has traditionally prioritised a secular nationalist viewpoint above a religious one. This has prevented global jihadist groups like al-Qaeda and Islamic State from establishing a new front in South-east Asia.

However, Katibah al-Mahdi fi Bilad al-Arakan, a new pro-Rohingya rebel group that publicly professed allegiance to the Islamic State and preached jihadist views, appeared in November 2020. Al-Qaeda chiefs of the time ,Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-declared caliph of the Islamic State, had both called for jihad against Myanmar to exact revenge for the horrors committed by the military regime. The Rohingya cause has garnered significant support from regional jihadist networks in South and South-east Asia.

Notably, the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic State's offshoot in Bangladesh have provided training, weaponry, and financial support to prospective jihadist groups in Arakan State. Furthermore, it has been claimed that Salafi-Jihadist organisations in Indonesia intend to recruit 1,200 volunteers for "humanitarian jihad" in Myanmar, with the stated goal of helping Rohingya populations.

Even though Arakanese nationalists viewed Burmanization as a form of colonialism, Burmese and Arakanese nationalists have a history of cooperating against the Rohingya, whom they frequently mistakenly referred to as Bengalis, to deny indigenous and citizenship rights. The Bangladesh army's state-sponsored extermination and Islamization campaigns against the indigenous Chakma and Marma people, who are Buddhist and Hindu, in the Chittagong Hill Tract, strengthened the anti-Rohingya and anti-Bengali political stances of Burmese and Arakanese nationalists.

Given that the Arakan Army always takes pride in exalting the Mrauk-U Kingdom, it is important to recognise the historical evidence that indicates the Bengalis and Rohingyas, as well as the Arakanese living in the area, respected one another and all the religions and cultural heritages that were related to Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. As in the past, the Arakan Army and Arakanese Buddhist nationalists ought to learn to live in harmony with the Bengalis and Rohingyas.

The more irrational fear Arakanese Buddhist nationalists have of the Bengalis and Rohingyas, the more similar the views of Bengalis and Rohingyas will be towards Arakanese and Burmese Buddhist nationalists. The Arakan Army's war crimes against the Rohingyas and Bengalis will attract more of them to the radicalisation of political Islam, perhaps accelerating the prospect for ethno-state separatist movements and the othering of politics between the communities.

To have a multicultural Arakan where all the diverse ethnic groups can live peacefully and in harmony, it’s important to make sure that the Rohingya should have the same civil rights as Burmese and Arakanese citizens and the same universal human rights as all people on the planet.