Hugh Fitzgerald: Pope Francis, Bangladesh, and “Inter-Religious Harmony” (Part Two)

LllIt’s not only  the Hindus in Bangladesh who have endured Muslim violence. Buddhists and Christians too have been victims of Muslim mobs. There are fewer than 600,000 Buddhists left in Bangladesh, almost all of them living in the Chittagong Hills Tract, the last surviving remnant of Buddhism in what was once an entirely Buddhist and Hindu land. This tiny group has been subject to repeated attack by Muslims over many years. Most recently, 25,000 Muslims took part in the  2012 “Ramu violence,” which refers to a series of attacks on Buddhist monasteries, shrines, and houses of Buddhist inhabitants. Muslim mobs destroyed 12 Buddhist temples and monasteries and 50 houses in reaction to a tagging of an image depicting the desecration of a Quran on the timeline of a fake Facebook account under a Buddhist male name. (The actual posting of the photo was not done by the Buddhist who was falsely accused; it appears to have been the work of a Muslim.) The violence later spread to the Cox’s Bazar District and the Chittagong District where Buddhist monasteries, Sikh Gurudwaras and Hindu temples were targeted for attacks. Inter-religious harmony?

This year, there have been the usual attacks, with a Buddhist monk hacked to death here, a few temples destroyed there, but not the mass violence by local Muslims against Buddhists seen in 2012. The steady stillicide of attacks, however, are enough to keep the small Buddhist community in Bangladesh in a state of permanent terror, for the Buddhists know that Muslim mobs can be whipped up over anything, including fake Facebook postings put up by Muslims pretending to be Buddhists, or Hindus.

As for the Christians, who constitute 0.3 percent of the population of Bangladesh, they, too, have been set upon by Muslims. A Christian man was murdered here, a Christian pastor had his throat slit there, a Christian church was attacked by Muslims. Year after year, a steady drip of murders and occasional destructive mayhem, just enough to keep the Christians in a state of permanent anxiety, or even terror.

“Bangladesh’s religious minorities have been facing attacks since the 2014 national election. During the elections, minority-dominated villages were the worst-attacked places, where individuals and groups associated with pro-Islamist parties looted and burned properties and residences owned by members of Hindu, Christian and Buddhist religions in different parts of the country. Some political parties deliberately ‘used the religious sentiments of ordinary people to intensify communal and religious tensions and polarizations for political advantages,” a pastoral solidarity team of the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) was told by representatives of different religious groups in Bangladesh.”

“Members of the solidarity team were told that minorities in Bangladesh live in the midst of terror and fear. Extremist violence has been a recurring problem in the country, where religious minorities are intimidated, threatened, assaulted and killed by Islamic extremists’ intent on silencing dissenting voices.”

Does the Pope know what has been happening, continuously, for decades, to the “members of Hindu, Christian and Buddhist religions in different parts” of Bangladesh? Does he realize that the Muslims of Bangladesh have repeatedly attacked members of all three faiths, their houses, their temples, their churches? If he does not know anything about this, he is ignorant beyond belief. If he does know, then what explains his ludicrous praise of Bangladesh’s “inter-religious harmony”?

What if, instead of declaring that “inter-religious harmony” already exists in Bangladesh,  a palpable falsehood that does no one any good, Pope Francis were to say something else, such as “we will be visiting Bangladesh, to discuss with people of goodwill and of all faiths how best to encourage inter-religious harmony”? That’s a very different statement. It neither praises nor blames. It should be well-received by the secularist prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, of the Awami League. Even Pope Francis, in one of his lucid intervals, when he is not fulsomely praising Islam, should be willing to give it a try.

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Thorsten

6 years ago

“Inter-Religious(?) Harmony” 40/2, https://quran.com/5/38-40

… to allah’s (sharia) ‘law’ https://quran.com/5/48
vs. ‘wicked’ 8/37 Art. 1; 2, 2 German Basic law (Constitution)

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Nefarious420

6 years ago

The pope only cares about Roman Catholics, not Christians or any other faith like Jews, Buddhists, Hindus as apostates/Heathens./pagans. No wonder this pope is so in love with Islam.

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Jackie Puppet

6 years ago

Reply to  Nefarious420

I don’t think he even cares about Catholics.

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Mahou Shoujo

6 years ago

Reply to  Nefarious420

There is no evidence that he is overly concerned with Christians, his primary focus is on socialists and muslims.

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poetcomic1

6 years ago

Bangladesh is notorious for kidnapping non-Muslim girls and forcing them to convert and marry Muslims. This is rampant and unrelenting in Pakistan as well.

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Rob Porter

6 years ago

Reply to  poetcomic1

Tell this to dimwit Secretary of State Rex Tillerson while he supports the ‘Rohingya Muslims’ – a fabricated name for people who really just ‘Bengali Muslims’ – who started the present conflict in Myanmar with multiple murderous attacks in August 2016. Tillerson and his disgustingly treacherous State Department don’t want want the “credible evidence” of Muslim savagery, so accuse Myanmar’s military of atrocities. Simultaneously there is no condemnation from Tillerson’s State Department regarding the Muslim terror to which Christian and Hindu minorities are subjected in Bangladesh. The State Department is making of America an enemy of non-Muslim countries, right now trying interfere in Hungary’s domestic affairs. This State Department is nothing less than an Obama State Department and Donald Trump needs to wake up to it’s treachery. I hope that Prime Minister Viktor Orban will instruct the arrest and incarceration of State Department officials who visit his country. Hopefully they will beat the hell out of them for good measure.

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IzlamIsTyranny

6 years ago

Reply to  Rob Porter

I like your idea for treatment of US State Dept. personnel in Hungary, but aren’t consular staff State Dept. officials or a subsidiary of State?

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Mahou Shoujo

6 years ago

There is no point in paying any attention to this pope, he is not interested in Christianity, only the propagation of islam and socialism.

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Rob Porter

6 years ago

Reply to  Mahou Shoujo

The man is a raving fool, and an embarrassment the the Catholic Church, yet the expected resistance to such an ass of Pope fails to materialize. Catholics are so locked up in the notion that this guy is virtually another St. Peter that they seem in a state of paralysis rather than telling this witless fool to get stuffed and shove off back to Argentina. What a mess the Vatican has become at a time when decent leadership is so desperately needed.

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Mahou Shoujo

6 years ago

Reply to  Rob Porter

Leadership is desperately needed, but will not be forthcoming, it is now, more than ever, for Christians and Catholics the read the New Testament then deal with issues accordingly. This waiting to be told what to do is the downfall of Christianity, the obvious does not have to be defined.

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joanofark06

6 years ago

And there’s these websites,here in the US, that are just loving and caring enough to show us, “oh, the poor, poor, pitiful darlings”…like this joke of VOA, supposed to be “Voice Of AMERICA”, but you’ll find more pro islam/muslim articles, than an article about what we need to do to help this country. Such as this:

Tensions Follow Rohingya Refugees to United States (notice they won’t say “muslims”)

https://www.voanews.com/a/tensions-follow-rohingya-refugees-to-united-states/4059082.html

And you just gotta know, how much the British government loves them, so let’s just feel sooo bad, for the starving “people”, and show 100 pictures, of how their suffering (BUT, notice all the NICE clothes, the women and all their “gold jewelry” their wearing, and the men with Iphones, and nice watches! ).

The 100 most powerful images of the Rohingya Muslim refugee crisis

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/100-most-powerful-images-rohingya-muslim-refugee-crisis-1648607

I say we haven’t brought enough of those poor, poor people over here yet. We need to keep bringing them over here, wouldn’t Trump agree? (sarc/off) I wouldn’t know, I haven’t heard him speak about the ones, he’s already had brought over here!

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aebe

6 years ago

Following the partition of India to give islamites their own land , why are any muslims allowed in India , and why have Christians and others remained in the lands set aside for islamites ?

Validate your 2nd Amendment Rights.. … Carry

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Alleged-Comment

6 years ago

Ignore Genesis 16:12 at your own peril. You are bringing a hornet’s nest on your soil. Don’t be fooled by all the donkeys they are bringing. It’s not for farming.

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Pantalones

6 years ago

I think the Muslims fake these fb postings to use as an excuse to go on the rampant.

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