Center for Reduction of Religious-based Conflict

Afghan history can be traced back to somewhere between 3,000 and 2,000 BC. Its modern history, according to most, began circa 500 BC. As with so many countries in that part of the world its history was often violent or, at best, chaotic and almost always involving religion.

The principal religion in Afghanistan is Sunni Muslim 74% of the population with Shi’a Muslims at 15%, and others (including Christians and Jews) at 10%. Internally, there has been continuing conflicts between the Pashtun Taliban and other ethnic groups and warlords, with shifting alliances occurring on a continuous basis.

Though, currently: Islamist jihadis (Taliban, al Qaeda) have been fighting against NATO and allied Afghan warlords, the internal problems have consisted of internal rivalries between Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazara over power and the interpretation of Islam’s social rules. And, there is what many have called a global geostrategic conflict with religious undertones, involving al Qaeda (radical Sunni Islamists) against Western secularism (primarily the USA and NATO countries) and the Saudi establishment.

Complex to say the least, but clearly these conflicts have resulted through the years in an undetermined number of human casualties as well as massive financial loss and destruction of infrastructure.

Government versus Religion

The Chinese government which is formally atheist (Communist) officially sanctions five religions, namely (according to official government data):

• Buddhism, which has 100 million adherents;

• Islam, with 18 million;

• Protestantism, with 20 million;

• Catholicism, with 6 million; and

• a smaller number of Taoists;

as well as unapproved cults, sects and so-called underground religions which are prospering; and given the government position, beginning to be the root of religious-based conflict. The government crackdown on the Falun Gong meditation movement is well known in the west. What is less well known is the government’s use of the law outlawing the Falun Gong to designate 10 Christian sects as illegal, while turning to what it calls “the illegal network of house churches” (mostly Protestant and Catholic) which serve an estimated 30 million to 40 million believers. In 1999 alone, more than 100 Christian leaders were arrested on such charges.

In fact, a 1999 US State Department report placed China near the top of a list of countries that suppress religion. This apparent increase in religious persecution follows a period in which China seemed to be growing more tolerant in spiritual matters. Apparently the Communist government perceives unregulated religious gatherings as a potential challenge to their authority.

In 2000 an article in the Washington Post by John Pomfret stated “A series of recent clashes between the Chinese government and a variety of spiritual groups indicates that religion, more than traditional kinds of political dissent, is now seen by the Communist Party as one of the most serious threats to its monopoly on power” (WP, January 11, 2000).

(Tibet)

Chinese Government versus Panchen Buddhists

Though Tibetans trace their origins back to as early as 200 b.c., their credible history began in the late 6th century a.d. – the Tibetan kingdom being a power to reckon with in all of Central Asia during the succeeding 7th to 9th centuries. During that period Tibetans, in alliance with the western Turks, successfully challenged Chinese control of trade routes through Central Asia. It was also during this time that Tibetan Buddhism became a power and the great temple of Bsam-yas where Tibetans were trained as monks, was established. Tibet has been an “on/off” autonomous region of China since the 9th century, with the exception of a 100 year interval of independence in the 14th and 15th centuries. Other than that, sometimes Chinese control as been passive; at others as it has been since the 1950’s, it has been more active.

In early 2008 the Panchen Buddhists of Tibet once again rebelled against the increasingly tight religious and civil control placed by the Chinese government since its 1950 invasion of Tibet. However, beginning in the 2000’s, the new generation of Tibetans and Tibetan monks became less and less content to simply follow the “Middle Way” promulgated by the Dalai Lama, who believed that non-violent opposition to the ever-increasing controls of Tibet religious activity was the only way to reverse that trend. The younger monks, being less patient, overtly demanded a return to what they saw as their traditional rights of the freer exercise of their religion, using measures which led to conflict, violence, destruction of property and loss of life, particularly in the Tibetan capital city of Lhasa. The immediate results of these demands and the demonstrations that followed, have led to more, not less, control by the Chinese central government.

India vs. Pakistan (Hindus vs. Muslims)

India has one of the world’s largest Muslim populations – 120 million -among its more than 1 billion people.

The continuing controversy and present threat of nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan is religion: India is basically Hindu and Pakistan is Muslim. And, even within Pakistan itself there is conflict between the hard line Sunni Muslims and the equally as fundamental Shiite Muslims. One of the several contentions between India and Pakistan is the state of Jammu-Kashmir where India controls two thirds and Pakistan one third. The two South Asian rivals have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since 1989. Estimates are that about 25,000 people have died, as well as leaving the region socially scarred.

And, within India itself, In August, 2000 violence reached a high pitch when nine different attacks in one day by Islamic guerrillas mowed down unarmed Hindu pilgrims on their way to a religious shrine near Pahalgam, south of Srinagar leaving 101 dead.

Again in early 2001 members of the All India Hindu Protection Committee entered a 200 year old Kheruddin Mosque in Amritsar and burned copies of the Islamic holy book, Quran; and threw pork, a meat forbidden to Muslims, into the main compound. The Hindu group claimed this was in retaliation for the slaughter of cows in Afghanistan by the Taliban regime, which said it needed to atone for the delay in destroying ancient statues of Buddha that were deemed idolatrous. Hindus consider cows sacred.

And in early 2002, a Muslim mob set fire to a train carrying 2,500 Hindus home from a disputed religious site in Ayodhya where they planed to build a temple at the site of a 16thcentury Muslim mosque which the Hindus had destroyed in 1992, killing 55 people including 14 children. An additional 65 were injured.

By April, 2002, there had been 900 deaths attributed to this religious-based conflict, and the communal riots showed no signs of stopping. Intentionally or not, these riots have created a kind of ethnic cleansing, with lower-class Hindus leaving mostly Muslim neighborhoods and Muslims fleeing for all-Muslim refugee camps in the area.

In late 2008 10 young Muslims, who were later determined to have been based in Pakistan, terrorized Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), the financial center of some 18 million people in southwest India, killing more than 190 and wounding nearly 300 other people during a 60 hour assault. This bloody rampage was carried out at 10 different sites, including a Jewish Center and the 565 room Taj Mahal Hotel and appears to have been aimed at any non-Muslims.

As 2008 concluded, the conflict – within and without India – continued with increasing loss of life and property and with both India and Pakistan remaining at the nuclear brink.

Hindus versus Sikhs

(India)

Sikhism, founded in Northern India about 500 years ago, claims about 15 million believers. About 13 million are in India, where they make up about 2 percent of the population but exert a far greater influence over the economy and politics than their numbers might suggest.

The word Sikh means disciple in Hindi. It refers to the followers of the first Sikh mystic, the Guru Nanak, and nine succeeding gurus, or teachers, who preached the Sikh Dharma, or path. It was Nanak who tried to bridge the gap between Islam and Hinduism by teaching a monotheistic creed, with the emphasis on religious exercises and meditation.

Their conflict with the Hindu majority centers largely in the northern state of Punjab, the prairie homeland of the Sikhs.

Most of the unrest, killing and terrorism is said to involve Sikh extremists. Over the years, Sikhs as a whole lived up to their reputation as hard working and successful people who contributed more than their share to India’s economy. The Punjab, by Third World standards, became a model of development. However, by 1947 the seeds of smoldering resentment surfaced. Sikhs felt cheated out of a homeland. There was a feeling that the Hindu-led government in New Delhi was treating Punjab and the Sikhs with less than fairness.

Among their grievances, the Sikhs accused New Delhi of manipulating wheat prices and of steering new industry away from Punjab toward poorer sections of the country. Sikhs were affronted when, in 1966, the government severed some Hindi-speaking portions of the Punjab, made them into a new state of Haryana and then made both of them share one capital, Chandigarh.

By 1982, the main Sikh party, the Akali Dal, broke in the open with a movement of civil disobedience. Its principal objectives were considerable autonomy for Punjab and recognition of Amritsar, the Sikh’s spiritual focus, as a holy city.

Occasional killing police officers and others culminated in the major bloodshed of 1983-1984. The militants went on a rampage against police officers, politicians and even moderate Sikhs.

The conflict continues.

Sunni Muslims versus Shiite Muslims

(Pakistan)

In Pakistan’s mostly Muslim population of 140 million, about 15 percent are Shiites. There has been a long-running feud between the Sunni and Shiite Muslims which, in the last decade alone has taken more than 2,000 lives.

On April 25, 2002, a powerful bomb exploded at a mosque in Bukker, Pakistan killing 12 Shiite worshippers, all of them either women or children, and injuring at least 23 others, in an attack blamed on Sunni Muslims in this religious-based conflict between two sects of the same religion. Earlier in February, 11 Shiites died when Sunni gunmen fired on worshippers at a mosque in Rawaplindi. At this writing, there appears to be no connection with this violence and the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

Likewise, this conflict continues.

Christians versus Muslims

Indonesia is an island nation of some 210 million people, where nearly 90 percent of the population is Muslim, plus 8 percent Christian together with smaller communities of Hindus, Buddhists and others.

Not only in East Timor in this part of the world is there religious-based strife. In Ambon, the provincial capital of the Moluccas, the Spice Islands of old, violence and chaos – caused by religious differences between the Christians and Muslims – reached new depths in 1999 and early 2000. This small city, once the home of 350,000 people, has torn itself apart, with Muslims and Christians retreating into guarded enclaves served by separate hospitals, schools, banks, markets, harbors and government services. Separating these enclaves are burned-out no man’s lands patrolled by soldiers and often infested by snipers.

Until his demise, Suharto, the former president, had been able by sheer force, to repress these differences in this and throughout this nation of 13,000 islands. Until now, that is.

Today, the fear is that the violence in places like Ambon will spread. Already, one sees similar clashes in the resort island of Lombok, attacks on churches in Jogjakarta and rallies in the capital of Jakarta itself, where tens of thousands of Muslims enraged by accounts of violence against them, shout their readiness to die in a Muslim holy war.

The roots of Ambon’s warfare go back to precolonial times more than 400 years ago, when the Dutch, the British and the Portuguese competed for the region’s rich trade in nutmeg and cloves. They brought Christianity where Arab traders earlier had brought Islam. The Spice Islands became the most Christian of Indonesia’s regions, about equally divided between the faiths.

In the 1970′s an influx of Muslim traders began to tip the balance of the religious communities, bringing more frictions that were easy to exploit. In 1999, more than 100,000 people were driven from their homes by violence which ensued from a traffic dispute in January of that year in which a Muslim minibus driver argued with a Christian passenger.

Again, during 2000 more than 2,000 people had died from this religious-based violence; untold property lost or damaged, and incalculable damage has been done to the social and civil infrastructure of the society

Attempts to end the violence and bring peace continue. As Strategic Forecasting wrote in its February 13, 2002, intelligence briefing, the so-called Indonesia Island Agreement recently signed won’t halt religious clashes, stating the “Rival Christian and Muslim factions in Indonesia’s Molucca Islands signed a peace agreement Feb. 12, 2002. But given the highly volatile conditions, there is little reason to believe the violence will end any time soon.”

Hindus versus Muslims versus Christians

Three and a half decades ago the elites of Southeast Asia and their western supporters were preoccupied by the threat posed by communist movements to established political orders. Communism was seen as an alien ideology linked to foreign powers.

But during the 1970′s another threat emerged: the confrontation between three great religions, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam. Not a few consider the threat posed by this confrontation to be no less worrying than that heretofore posed by the communist insurgents. Though Muslims make up barely half the population of 14.8 million people, Islam is the official state religion. Though freedom of worship is guaranteed – to Buddhism, Taoism and other faiths of the Chinese (about 35% of the population), to Hindus and Sikhs, and to the Christians – the situation had, in the following 15 years dramatically deteriorated.

As an example, in October, 2003 the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, told a summit of Islamic leaders in Putrajaya, Malaysia that ”Jews rule the world by proxy” and that the 1.3 billion Muslims should unite, using non-violent means for a “final victory”. He further stated that Jews “invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy” to avoid persecution and gain control of the most powerful countries, providing yet another example of the continuing trend towards the increasing overemphasis of religious differences.

Today the religious-based problems in Malaysia continue.

Buddhists vs. Christians

Burma, now known by the name Union of Myanmar, is the largest country in Southeast Asia. It had achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1948 after more than 100 years of British rule, under the name of “Union of Burma”, only to become the “The Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma” in 1974, but reverting back to “The Union of Burma in 1988. Then a year later it adopted the official name of the “Union of Myanmar”, by which it is known today by the United Nations, but not the USA or the UK.

The Buddhists, make up nearly 90% of the more than 60,000,000 Burmese, or Burman. The Christians, many of them Karens, an ethnic minority who have their own history, language, culture and economy and who live mostly nearly the border with Thailand, compose approximately 5% of the population. There are also the Chin on the other side of the country.

News reports, which are sketchy at best, seem to indicate that the Buddhist majority is in conflict with the Christian minority – this conflict often leading to violence – with the Christians the main sufferers.

Facing destruction of their churches and restrictions on their worship, attacks on their villages as well as periods of forced labor to help the Burmese military fight their own people, many Karens have fled from Burma. According to news reports, more than 80,000 have crossed the border to live in Thailand – 70,000 having arrived in the past 10 years. The vast majority live in 13 crowded refugee camps. As we learn more we’ll report it, but at the moment, the situation appears to be deteriorating.

On the western side of Burma, along the country’s border with India, lies Chin state, where most of the indigenous Chin minority also identify as Christians. Like the Karen, the Chin have been subjected to brutal treatment at the hands of the military regime. Tens of thousands of Chin are now refugees in India and Malaysia.

Two British lawmakers reported in the fall of 2007 stories of atrocities against Chin Christians, including torture, forced labor, rape and religious persecution. One witness described how prisoners were shackled and chained, yoked like oxen and forced to plough fields and if they attempt to escape they are placed on a fire to burn, stabbed with knives, and then forced into a tub of salt water.

We note that the US State Department since 1999 has named Burma as a “country of particular concern” for religious freedom violations. This designation was made under the International Religious Freedom Act.

Buddhists vs. Muslims

Muslims make up approximately 5% of the population in Myanmar where their conflict with the majority Buddhist majority continues. In late May, 2013 this conflict again exploded in the northern city of Lashio when a Muslim man poured gasoline on a Buddhist woman and set her on fire. This act initiated days of violence between the people of these two religions resulting in a Muslim religious school and a number of shops being gutted by fires which had been started by angry Buddhists who rampaged after hearing reports of the burning. Many Muslim homes were burned down and at least one person was killed in this violence.

Muslims versus Roman Catholics

In this predominately Roman Catholic country of 76 million people, an Islamic insurgency has been taking place for more than a quarter of a century. The Muslim rebels in the island of Mindanao have been calling for the creation of an Independent Islamic state – a demand which the Philippine government has repeatedly rejected.

During the early 16th century, Mindanao was part of the Sultan of Sulu’s domain. The native Filipino Muslims, who had been converted to the Islamic religion many years before, were under the rule of the Sultan and were a proud part of a kingdom which extended as far away as Manila and Pampanga on Luzon island more than 600 miles to the north. When the Spaniards arrived in the mid 1500s, they attempted to colonize the native Filipinos (called Moros) and convert them to Christianity. The Moros, however, fiercely resisted. Later in the 19th century with the demise of Spanish rule, the Americans arrived, again trying to enforce a way of life contrary to Filipino customs. Finally, in 1945, the Philippine Islands became independent, and the island of Mindinao and its Muslim inhabitants became a part of the Republic of the Philippines along with the other 7099 scattered islands. Muslims and Catholics co-existed more or less peacefully until the 1970s when an awakened Muslim minority in Mindinao led by a former professor, formed the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and begun to wage war against the government for what they called their “economic survival and their own rights”.

In the year 2000 alone, more than 250,000 people on the southern island of Mindanao have been displaced, when the government army attacked a 10 mile (6 kilometer) stretch of highway held by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) – which is the larger and more moderate of two rebel groups. Additionally, at least 113 government soldiers have been killed and more than 470 others wounded during its latest offensive against the Muslim rebels.

As a consequence of this religious-based conflict and its resulting unstable political climate, the Philippines no longer ranks as a favorite investment area. Due to this unrest, investors who were seen as a boon to the economy, have been scared away. Moreover, the hostage crisis in 2000/2001 in the southern islands where 20 hostages were taken by the Islamic rebel group, Abu Sayyef which reportedly has links to Usama bin Laden, has eroded the confidence of many tourists, and adversely affected the local stock market and peso/dollar exchange rates. The Philippine President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered “all-out war” on Abu Sayyef in April of 2001.

It is estimated that the Philippine government spent nearly 30 million pesos a day (US$700,000) to carry on this war, which involved more than 80,000 troops. In a country where one M-16 bullet costs as much as a kilo of rice, the cost of the conflict is felt deeply.

In early 2002, in the southern island of Jolo, a mostly Muslim area of about 500,000, which has long been the center of Muslim opposition to Manilla, being the base of both Abu Sayyaf and the MNLF, fighting between the Muslims and the Christian government forces continued with loss of life on both sides.

In April, 2002, the president of the Philippines ordered a state of emergency for the southern city of General Santos after it was devastated by a wave of bombings blamed on Abu Sayyaf where the worst of the blasts killed at least 14 people while 69 others were injured. The scene was reminiscent of bombings in Manila 16 months earlier that killed 22 people. Concurrently, in an action similar to that in Afghanistan, the US added about 1,000 more troops to its already bulging military there to train the Philippine military in counter terrorism tactics.

The Philippine government signed a peace agreement with the country’s largest Muslim rebel group in late March, 2014.

That agreement hopes to bring an end to 40 years of armed conflict in Mindanao that has killed at least 120,000 people and displaced more than two million. Many who have died were considered the elite, the cream of the crop of the nation.

The agreement grants largely Muslim areas of the southern Mindanao region greater political autonomy in exchange for an end to armed rebellion, but it will not end all violence in a part of a country long plagued by lawlessness, poverty and Islamist insurgency. Other insurgent groups have vowed to keep fighting against the Christian regime. The region is also home to the Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim extremist network with international links that the Philippine army is fighting along with American support. To date this agreement has not worked.

In fact experts believe the Islamic State is poised to attempt to create a caliphate in Southeast Asia. For instance in the Philippine region of Mindanao, especially the city of Marawi, the Maute group, which stems from a violent Islamist movement called the Moro National Liberation Front had been quite active recently though recent, unconfirmed reports contend it has been, at least temporarily, neutralized in that area.

In fact, we have learned that as many as half of the city’s 200,000 inhabitants had fled because of the violence imposed by this group. The Moro Front have sought independence for decades with the hope of creating an independent Islamic state. And, this group has pledged allegiance to ISIS. Although the Philippines is a majority-Christian country, the region of Mindanao, where Marawi is situated, has a strong Muslim presence and has long been home to violent Islamist groups seeking to create an independent Islamic state.

We finally note that the influence of ISIS has spread throughout Southeast Asia in recent years, with more than 60 groups in the region pledging allegiance to the self-declared caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS.

We shall continue to watch these developments closely

Hindus versus Buddhists

In Sri Lanka separatist Tamil insurgents, who are mostly Hindus, had been fighting against the Sinhalese majority, who are mostly Buddhists, for greater political autonomy in the eastern and northern provinces, where the Tamil population – a Hindu people – is concentrated.

In 1956 just as (then) Ceylon was celebrating the 2,500 anniversary of Buddha’s attainment of Nirvana, Solomon Bandaranaike, a member of a prominent Sinhalese Christian family with close ties to the British, became the lively, leftist prime minister. One of his first acts was to make Sinhala the new nation’s official language, thus offending the Hindu Tamil minority. In the Tamil north, the new Sinhalese script was defaced, and in the Buddhist south, monks organized angry sit-ins. Three years later Bandaranaike was murdered by a Buddhist priest. In 1983, frustrated Tamil politicians walked out of Parliament, and more radical groups began a guerrilla insurgency that had since claimed thousands of lives. The situation continued to deteriorate until, in 1986, it exploded. Sri Lanka used to be called pear-shaped. Tear-shaped would be more appropriate now.

The Hindu Tamils, who make up 13 per cent of the population, believe they have suffered in jobs, education, land distribution and justice at the hands of the 75 per cent Buddhist Sinhalese majority.

On the other hand, the Sinhalese too, have the outlook of a minority. Time and again the argument is heard: “We are but 12 million people alone in this world. No one else speaks our language, shares our culture. Who else is the guardian of us but Buddha? And, here we stand on a small island staring north at 50 million Tamils.” So, to the Sinhalese it is not just the Tamils of Sri Lanka who are a threat but also those to the North in India, across the 18 mile (30 kilometer) Palk Strait.

Through the end of 1999, at least 60,000 people had died in this religious-based conflict.

In 2001, a suicide bomber, attributed to the Tamils, shattered Sri Lanka’s first-ever War Heros day, killing Cabinet Minister for Industrial Development C.V. Gooneratne as he walked among supporters in his parliamentary district of Ratmalana in Colombo, as well as 20 other people. 53 others were injured.

In early May, 2009 UN officials, speaking with the German Press Agency DPA on condition of anonymity, gave ‘conservative’ estimates that 7,000 and even possibly 8,000 people had been killed since the end of January in what many hope, were the final days of this deadly religious-based conflict. Subsequently, in late May, the Sri Lankan government declared victory over the Tamils. At least 80,000 people have been killed in this 26-year conflict, which also caused more than a quarter of a million refugees.

Peace was shattered on this tear-shaped island during the important Christian religious holiday (Easter) in April 2019. Christian churches and areas inhabited principally by Christians were attacked by Islamists. More than 250 were killed and at least 500 wounded by at least nine suicide bombers of a domestic Islamist terror group named National Thowfeek Jamaath. Sri Lankan authorities said an international terror group (ISIS) likely inspired and supported this obscure local Islamist group in carrying out this series of bombings. While anti-Muslim bigotry has swept the island in recent years, fed by Buddhist nationalists, the island has had no history of attacks by Islamists until now.

Until the eighteenth century, the territory that is now Thailand was ruled by various groups including Malays, Khmer, Mon, Burmese, Ayutthaya, as well as Thais. The history of contemporary Thailand began in 1782 when the capital was established at Bangkok by the Thais under King Rama 1. Over the next century, borders were in flux and territory was lost and gained in conflicts and treaties with neighbors. For as long as 7 centuries Buddhism had been the primary religion and in 1782 became the state religion.

However, in the mid 1940’s in the south where some 80% of the population was composed of Muslims of Malay heritage the Muslims began to demand to be allowed to use Shari’a law, speak Malay languages, and practice their religion and ethnic culture freely. They also demanded self-rule.

Thus began the rise of violent Islam as the local Malay Muslims were all too often incited by outside international jihadist forces. This emergence of a violent Islamism as the principal ideology of the insurgency in southern Thailand has thus been viewed by many as a break with the tradition of its earlier moderation.

This difference in Thailand’s deep southern provinces, namely Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, has caused the death of nearly 5,000 people since 2004. They continue to fight to separate from the northern Buddhist Thai state, targeting Buddhist civilians, as well as Muslims working with the government. At the same time, Thai authorities are accused of arbitrarily detaining and torturing Muslims.

A recipe for violent conflict which has continued.