My Kind of Buddhists
Strategy Page tells us there have been some recent attempts to “cleanse” Southern Thailand of its Buddhists:
The Islamic militants are trying to do some ethnic, and religious, cleansing in the Moslem south. The three southern provinces have a population of some 1.8 million, and only 360,000 of those are Buddhists (the religion of the majority of Thais, who are ethnically different from the Moslems, who are Malays). The terror campaign is having some success, as some ten percent of the southern Buddhists have left the south in the past six months. But many of the remaining Buddhists are arming and preparing to defend themselves, and stay in the south.
Good for them.
For the record, I don’t consider myself a Buddhist, philosophically or otherwise; and lay Buddhists in Southern Thailand probably have relatively little exposure to the Buddhist meditation practices that I’ve personally found so valuable.
But I have always felt that the pacifism of American Buddhism was a major blind-spot, and so I’m glad to read about some Asian Buddhists who are standing up for themselves and their property.
Story found via Instapundit, who adds: “Somebody send them some guns.” Indeed.
