Saturday, 25 May 2013
What The Burmese Are Thinking Bookmark and Share

The Burmese are now trying to deal with the problem that most agitates Buddhists: the size of Muslim families, who in Burma as everywhere else outbreed -- and who are not unaware that through demographic shifts they are increasing Muslim power, Remember h Boumedienne in 1974 at the U.N. unembarrassedly predicting that "through the wombs of our women" the Muslims of the South would conquer Europe. And many similar remarks, by other less prominent Muslims, have been made -- and Muslims in Western Europe have not been shy about making that prediction, with satisfaction.

The Burmese look around the world, look at the history of formerly Buddhist lands, and become alarmed. They know not only about the Bamiyan Buddhas, but about the destruction, over a thousand years, of so many Buddhist stelae, statutes, temples and temple complexes. They know what happened to the Buddhism in Central Asia -- gone. They know what happened to the Buddhists of the East Indies, whose monument, Borobudur, remains, but without the Buddhists. They know what happens today to Buddhists in southern Thailand, where Muslims kill monks, farmers, students. They know what happens -- unknown to the outside world -- to the Buddhists who remain, in the Chittagong Hills, and who are subject to steady Muslim persecution and land seizures and murders. If the West is unaware of this, so what? Why should the Buddhists of Burma be unaware? And if they know how many provocative acts, how much aggression, by Muslims has led the Buddhists in parts of Burma to fight back, and do so without the casper-milquetoast methods of the West, so what? They are perfectly justified in so doing.



Now they could, if they wished, expel these Muslims back to Bangladesh, as constituting a threat to Burma as a refuge and home of the Buddhists. Instead, they are willing to try something else. If the Muslims limit their families, so that the Buddhists will not be as alarmed as they have been by the steady seemingly inexorable growth in the Muslim population (and the adherents of the ideology of Islam will always be a threat to all non-Muslims) then just possibly the violence that has racked those Muslim-inhabited districts will subside. It's worth a try. But the alternative is not, as in the West, submission to the forces of Islam, and a rewriting of history, and a pretence that Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira do not say what they say.
In asking the Muslims to limit their families to two children, the Buddhists show they are aware that the Muslims have families three, four, five times as large as non-Muslims, wherever they may live. Think of Western Europe, too, where their birth--rates are three to four times as high as those of non-Muslims, and where those Muslim children are supported by non-Muslim taxpayers, non-Muslim taxpayers who, in response to the effect of large numbers of Muslims in the schools, and elsewhere, now seek All over Asia, the non-Muslim population of Muslim-ruled state, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, steadily declines. In Pakistan, Hindus and Sikhs at independence constituted 35% of the population and now are below 3%. In Bangladesh there has been a similar drop. But in India, the Muslim population, both absolutely, and as a percentage of the population, keeps rising. In Malaysia (formerly Malaya), at independence Muslims made up a little less than 50% of the population and now they are about 2/3, as the Chinese and Hindus are out-bred, and the Bumiputra system -- a disguised Jizyah -- makes it possible for Muslims to live off the more productive and enterprising non-Muslims. Everywhere it is the same.
But the Burmese are well ware of what happened to Buddhism - the steles, the temples, the statues destroyed all over Asia. The only reason the Bamiyan Buddhas were still standing, until they were blown up, is that the local Muslims lacked the technical wherewithal to blow them up (but Pakistani engineers and Saudi help, too, came to their rescue, so that those Bamiyan Buddhas have now been destroyed/ They are keenly aware that in the East Indies -- now Indonesia -- a vast Buddhist and Hindu land, the temple complex of Borodur may remain, but the Buddhists are hardly to be found, and the Hindus have been largely confined to the island of Bali. And all of that was achieved not through an invading army, but by slow degrees, beginning with Hadrami traders who established entrepots in Java and Sumatra, and the missionary work required of all Muslims, too, led to the conversion, a few centuries ago, of the rulers of Java and Sumatra, and from that, their people followed dutiful suit on the principle of Cuius regio, eius religio.
Everywhere that Muslims rule, non-Muslim populations drastically decline -- see Pakistan, see Bangladesh, see Malaysia. Everywhere that non-Muslims have allowed in Musilm populations -- through war or through other means of conquest -- the Muslim percentage of the population goes steadily, and very rapidly, up. There are no exceptions to this observable rule. The Buddhists of Burma are not going to allow it. Burma is now the world center, the preserve, the last main redoubt, of Buddhism. Why should they not do everything they can to prevent the encroachment of Muslims -- people who physically show that they are not Burmese but, in the mind, from the area of what is now Bangladesh. And even if those Muslims were natives, why should not the Buddhists, recognizing the aggression, the violence, and the nature of Islam, try to protect and preserve themselves?
At this point, every non-Muslim in the entire West should feel a great sense of relief, and of envy, at this display by the Burmese Buddhists of a realistic refusal to follow the West, and its camerons-and-cleggs. at this minimal act of self-preservation? Why must the West ignore the most elementary measures of self-preservation? Demography is destiny. Already, all over the Western world,the large-scale presence of Muslims has led to a situation of much greater unpleasantness, expense, and physical insecurity, both for the indigenous non-Muslims (whose countries have effectively been invaded, without any resistance allowed) and for other, non-Muslim immigrants (Hindus, Sikhs, Chinese, Vietnamese, Latin Americans, black Christians from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa).
Don't allow yourself to feel you must pretend to be offended by what the Burmese are attempting. They are trying, at least, to prevent their own, their Buddhist country, from becoming steadily less Buddhist, by these Muslims who, with their origins outside of Burma, and hostile -- deeply and permanently hostile -- to Buddhism, its artifacts, its beliefs, its everything -- have portrayed themselves, even as they kill Buddhists and, in turn, are attacked (for the Burmese, and others in Asia, have not yet acquired the Western sickness of tolerating the intolerable behaviour of Muslims, and of trying to find the answer to this behaviour in such things as "poverty" or "a sense of alienation" (the alienation is permanent, and reflects what Islam itself teaches about non-Muslims).

The Muslims, the Rohyingya, in Burma have no interest in respecting Burmese culture, based on Buddhism -- the Buddhism that Muslims destroyed wherever they went -- look at what happened to the Buddhist and Hindu civilization of the vast territories now known as Indonesia. Borobudur still stands, but where are the Buddhists? Don't tut-tut. Applaud, and be envious at those who can so forthrightly take even such minimal measures of self-preservation. .