Ashin Wirathu - a Buddhist monk's fight against Islam

Time, 1 July 2013.

Anti-Muslim monk preaches hate: Ashin Wirathu, TRT World - Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, 8 September 2017, YouTube, duration: 1.50 minutes. 10 million views as of 27.12.25.

Abstract: Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu was involved with the Myanmar Buddhist nationalism 969 Movement from 2001 as it sought to remove the threat of Muslim infiltration in the country and the creation of an Islamic state with Sharia law, leading to pogroms against the dominant Buddhist faith and minority Christians. Despite being jailed between 2003-2012, Wirathu maintained a leadership role in the movement through the use of social media, and was involved in military action against the Muslim Rohingyans of northern Burma. This gave rise to worldwide outrage over atrocities and accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide by the military and Buddhists, and a refugee crisis during 2017 in which up to a million Rohingyans were forced to flee to Bangladesh. This nearby country, though small, is noted for its large population, over 90% of whom are Muslim.

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969 Movement flag.

Contents

Introduction
A Buddhist Monk
The Face of Buddhist Terror
Comments
References

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1. Introduction

Myanmar (formerly Burma) is a south east Asian country that shares a western border with Bangladesh. The population is primarily Buddhist, with a relatively small Muslim population (officially 4.3%, but closer to 10% according to Muslim leaders) and a Christian population around 6.3%. Since the early 2000s there has been a great deal of political turmoil in the country, with an ongoing element of that turmoil being the status of the Muslim population and the perceived threat it posed to the local, largely Buddhist population. Surprisingly, a Buddhist monk - Ashin Wirathu - since 2001, led opposition to this perceived Muslim threat. To the local population the threat was very real, as nearby Bangladesh had the world's fourth largest Muslim population and Islamic terrorism was on the rise by then.

Islamic insurgency in Burma / Myanmar had a history, especially since the end of World War II. For example, according to a Google AI search on the terms - History of Islamic terrorism in Burma (27 December 2025), the following information is available:

Post-Independence Insurgency (1940s-1950s): Shortly after Myanmar gained independence in 1948, a rebellion began in northern Rakhine State, with militants known as "Mujahid" fighting for the rights of Muslims. This insurgency was largely suppressed by the government, with a ceasefire reached in 1954.

Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) (1970s-1980s): Following the 1962 military coup, which increased repression against minorities, new movements emerged. The RSO was formed in the early 1980s as a more radical faction aiming to fight for rights.

Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO) (1990s): Formed in 1998, this group was a loose alliance of earlier separatist groups, including the RSO.

Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) (2012-Present): Formerly known as Harakah al-Yaqin, this group emerged in 2012 following severe anti-Muslim riots.

In this post-2000 fight the Buddhist monks were joined by the Myanmar military and a large number of the general population. In opposition, as noted above, was the declared Muslim terrorist group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (2012-present), an affiliate of the infamous Taliban (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan). Whereas Muslim terrorism has been on the rise around the world since the early twentieth century, so-called terrorism or genocide against a Muslim population such as the Rohinyga has been rare, if not unique. The West's response had been tepid, seeking to appease an aggressive ideology and a population approaching two billion in a world of eight.

Historically, Europe and the Middle-east at the time of the initial rise of Islam in the 7th century AD was largely Christian. It has fought a loosing battle against Islamic aggression over the fourteen centuries since then, with the most famous instance involving the creation of militia led by Catholic priests and monks during the period known as the Crusades, between the 11th and 13th centuries. Therefore, the idea of religious fighting back against the ideology of Muhammed was not new. As the Koran and other Islamic texts called for world domination through the imposition of Islamic states and Sharia law, this resulted in the substantial loss of Catholic majorities and democratic government across large sections of the Middle East and other former non-Islamic countries, as far east as Asia and west as Spain, Austria and the Balkans.

The Buddhist monks of Myanmar were not alone in their efforts during the 20th century to fight back against Muslim dominance, in the wake of large scale immigration and infiltration from countries such as nearby Bangladesh with a large Muslim population of over 90% of the total. Buddhists throughout Asia had since the 13th century also faced Mongol hordes which had adopted Islam as their faith. The Islamic presence in Myanmar actually dated back to the 9th century AD, and the first Mongol invasion of the 13th century. It continued through to the time of the British Raj and India / Pakistan / Bangladesh, such that a large diaspora and refugee Muslim population settled in the northern part of the country during those years and at one stage was dominant in the capital Rangoon, Burma's largest city. By the 1960s "all Muslims were increasingly seen as foreign elements unwelcome in the country" (Yeger 1972).

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2. A peaceful monk / A nationalist fighter

Ashin Wirathu (b.1968) is a Theravada Buddhist monk and teacher. At the age of 14 he became a monk, and in 2001 was involved in the 969 Movement, a Buddhist nationalist organization opposed to what they saw as Islamic expansion in Myanmar. The numbers represented the following:

9 - the attributes of the Buddha
6 - the six special attributes of his Dharma (teachings)
9 - the nine special attributes of the Buddhist Sangha (community).

Wirathu was a prominent spokes person for 969 and, as a result, in 2003 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison, though released by a new regime in 2012.

What is Rohingya crisis by Ashin Wirathu, Nation First, 14 September 2017, YouTube, duration: 3.10 minutes. Interview recorded circa 2002.

As Wirathu noted in the aforementioned interview:

Whether we live peacefully together or not is not up to the Burmese people. It depends on the Muslims. They are devouring the Burmese people, destroying Buddhism and Buddhist order, forcefully taking actions to establish Myanmar as a Muslim country, and forcefully implementing them. If they don't do these things, then we can be peaceful..... Muslims are like African Carp - they breed rapidly, have violent behaviour, and eat its own kind and other fishes. They also destroy the natural resources and the beauty underwater. Evan though they are the minority, our entire race has been suffering a great deal under the burden of the minority. The majority Burmese have not intruded, corrupted or abused them, but we have been suffering under their burden. That is why if there are as many Muslims as there are Buddhists, Myanmar can never be at peace. (Ashin Wirathu c.2002)

This rather gloomy scenario has been proven time and time again since Muhammed first began preaching back in 613AD, with a focus on destroying Jews and Catholics, though non-believers - referred to as Infidels - are also targets, thereby including Buddhists and those who follow other spiritual and religious beliefs and philosophies.

The Burmese monk who preaches hate towards Muslims, Quartz, 6 November 2016, YouTube, duration: 2.36 minutes.

The demonisation of Wirathu was global, and remains so to the present day, largely due to the fact that any critical assessment of Islam is greeted with howls of Islamophobia, though the use of the term here is totally inappropriate and merely used to shut down and censor debate. The action by the military and Buddhists of Myanmar during the early 2000s was in many ways similar to those by Israel and some European countries in the 2010s and 2020s in aggressively pushing back against the trend towards mass migration from Islamic countries into the West, and the pursuit of Muslim enclaves therein operating according to Sharia law. Great Britain is perhaps the most prominent example as of late 2025.

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3. The Face of Buddhist Terror

Time magazine, 1 July; 2013

His face as still and serene as a statue’s, the Buddhist monk who has taken the title “the Burmese bin Laden” begins his sermon. Hundreds of worshippers sit before him, palms pressed together, sweat trickling silently down their sticky backs. On cue, the crowd chants with the man in burgundy robes, the mantras drifting through the sultry air of a temple in Mandalay, Burma’s second biggest city after Rangoon. It seems a peaceful scene, but Wirathu’s message crackles with hate. “Now is not the time for calm,” the 46-year-old monk intones, as he spends 90 minutes describing the many ways in which he detests the minority Muslims in this Buddhist-majority land. “Now is the time to rise up, to make your blood boil.”

Buddhist blood is boiling in Burma, also known as Myanmar — and plenty of Muslim blood is being spilled. Over the past year, Buddhist mobs have targeted members of the minority faith. The authorities say scores of Muslims have been killed; international human-rights workers put the number in the hundreds. Much of the violence was directed against the Rohingya, a largely stateless Muslim group in Burma’s far west that the United Nations calls one of the world’s most persecuted people. The communal bloodshed then spread to central Burma, where Wirathu lives and preaches his virulent sermons. The radical monk sees Muslims, who make up at least 5% of Burma’s estimated 60 million people, as a threat to the country and its culture. “[Muslims] are breeding so fast and they are stealing our women, raping them,” he tells me. “They would like to occupy our country, but I won’t let them. We must keep Myanmar Buddhist.”

Such hate speech threatens the delicate political ecosystem in a country peopled by at least 135 ethnic groups that has only recently been unshackled from nearly half a century of military rule. Already some government officials are calling for implementation of a ban, rarely enforced during the military era, on Rohingya women’s bearing more than two children. And many Christians in the country’s north say recent fighting between the Burmese military and ethnic Kachin insurgents, who are mostly Christian, was exacerbated by the religious divides.

Radical Buddhism is also thriving in other parts of Asia. This year in Sri Lanka, Buddhist nationalist groups with links to high-ranking officialdom have gained prominence, and monks have helped orchestrate the destruction of Muslim and Christian property. And in Thailand’s deep south, where a Muslim insurgency has claimed some 5,000 lives since 2004, the Thai army trains civilian militias and often accompanies Buddhist monks when they leave their temples to collect alms, as their faith asks of them. The co-mingling of soldiers and monks — some of whom have armed themselves — only heightens the alienation felt by Thailand’s minority Muslims.

Although each nation’s history dictates the course radical Buddhism has taken within its borders, growing access to the Internet means that prejudice and rumors are instantly inflamed with each Facebook post or tweet. Violence can easily spill across borders. In June in Malaysia, where hundreds of thousands of Burmese migrants work, several Buddhist Burmese were killed — likely in retribution, Malaysian authorities say, for the deaths of Muslims back in Burma.

In the reckoning of religious extremism — Hindu nationalists, Muslim militants, fundamentalist Christians, ultra-Orthodox Jews — Buddhism has largely escaped trial. To much of the world, it is synonymous with non-violence and loving kindness, concepts propagated by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, 2,500 years ago. But like adherents of any religion, Buddhists and their holy men are not immune to politics and, on occasion, the lure of sectarian chauvinism.

When Asia rose up against empire and oppression, Buddhist monks, with their moral command and plentiful numbers, led anti-colonial movements. Some starved themselves for their cause, their sunken flesh and protruding ribs underlining their sacrifice for the laity. Perhaps most iconic is the image of Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese monk sitting in the lotus position, wrapped in flames, as he burned to death in Saigon while protesting the repressive South Vietnamese regime 50 years ago. In 2007, Buddhist monks led a foiled democratic uprising in Burma: images of columns of clerics bearing upturned alms bowls, marching peacefully in protest against the junta, earned sympathy around the world, if not from the soldiers who slaughtered them. But where does social activism end and political militancy begin? Every religion can be twisted into a destructive force poisoned by ideas that are antithetical to its foundations. Now it’s Buddhism’s turn.

Mantra of Hate

Sitting cross-legged on a raised platform at the New Masoeyein monastery in Mandalay, next to a wall covered by life-size portraits of himself, Wirathu expounds on his worldview. United States President Barack Obama has “been tainted by black Muslim blood.” Arabs have hijacked the U.N., he believes, although he sees no irony in linking his name to that of an Arab terrorist. Around 90% of Muslims in Burma are “radical bad people,” says Wirathu, who was jailed for seven years for his role in inciting anti-Muslim pogroms in 2003. He now leads a movement called 969 — the figure represents various attributes of the Buddha — which calls on Buddhists to fraternize only among themselves. “Taking care of our religion and race is more important than democracy,” says Wirathu.

It would be easy to dismiss Wirathu as an uneducated outlier with little doctrinal basis for his bigotry, one of eight children who ended up in a monastery because his parents wanted one less mouth to feed. But Wirathu is charismatic and powerful, and his message resonates. Among the country’s majority Bamar — or Burman — ethnic group, as well as across Buddhist parts of Asia, there’s a vague sense that their religion is under siege, that Islam has already conquered Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Afghanistan — all these formerly Buddhist lands — and that other dominoes could fall. Even without proof, Buddhist nationalists fear that local Muslim populations are increasing faster than their own, and they worry about Middle Eastern money pouring in to build new mosques.

Since Burma began its reforms in 2011, with the junta giving way to a quasi-civilian government, surprisingly few people have called for holding the army accountable for its repressive rule. This equanimity has been ascribed to the Buddhist spirit of forgiveness. But Burma’s democratization has also allowed extremist voices to proliferate and unleashed something akin to ethnic cleansing. The trouble began last year in the far west, where clashes between local Buddhists and Muslims claimed a disproportionate number of Muslim lives. Machete-wielding Buddhist hordes attacked Rohingya villages; 70 Muslims were slaughtered in a daylong massacre in one hamlet, according to Human Rights Watch. The communal violence, which the government has done little to check, has since migrated to other parts of the country. In March, dozens were killed and tens of thousands left homeless as homes and mosques were razed. Children were hacked apart and women torched. In several instances, monks were seen goading on frenzied Buddhists.

In late March, the transport hub of Meikhtila burned for days, with entire Muslim quarters razed by Buddhist mobs after a monk was killed by Muslims. (The official death toll: two Buddhists and at least 40 Muslims.) Thousands of Muslims are still crammed into refugee camps where journalists are forbidden to enter. I was able to meet the family of 15-year-old Abdul Razak Shahban, one of at least 20 students at a local madrasah who were killed. Razak’s own life ended when a nail-studded plank was slammed against his skull. “My son was killed because he was Muslim, nothing else,” Razak’s mother Rahamabi told me, in the shadow of a burned-out mosque.

Temple and State

Dreams of repelling Islam and ensuring the dominance of Buddhism animate the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), Sri Lanka’s most powerful Buddhist organization whose name means Buddhist Strength Army. At the group’s annual convention in February in a suburb of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, more than 100 monks led the proceedings, as followers clutched Buddhist flags, clasped their right hand to their chest and pledged to defend their religion. Founded just a year ago, the BBS insists that Sri Lanka, the world’s oldest continually Buddhist nation, needs to robustly reclaim its spiritual roots. It wants monks to teach history in government schools and has called for religious headscarves to be banned, even though 9% of the population is Muslim. Said BBS general secretary and monk Galaboda Aththe Gnanasara Thero at the group’s annual meeting: “This is a Buddhist government. This is a Buddhist country.”

Hard-line monks, like those in the BBS, have turned on minority Muslims and Christians, especially since the 26-year war against the largely Hindu Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam insurgency ended four years ago. After President Mahinda Rajapaksa, a conservative, was elected in 2005, Buddhist supremacist groups became more powerful. In recent months, their campaign of intimidation has included attacks on a Muslim-owned clothing store, a Christian pastor’s house and a Muslim-linked slaughterhouse. Despite monks’ being captured on video leading some of the marauding, none have been charged. Indeed, temple and state are growing ever closer in Sri Lanka, with a monk-dominated party serving as a coalition member of the government. In March, the guest of honor at the opening ceremony for the BBS-founded Buddhist Leadership Academy was Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the President’s brother, who said, “It is the monks who protect our country, religion and race.”

Alms in Arms

In Thailand’s deep south, it’s the monks who need help — and in their desperation some have resorted to methods contrary to Buddhism’s pacifist dogma. The southern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat used to be part of a Malay sultanate before staunchly Buddhist Thailand annexed the region early last century. Muslims make up at least 80% of the area’s population. Since a separatist insurgency intensified in 2004, many Buddhists have been targeted because their positions — such as teachers, soldiers or government workers — are linked to the Thai state. Dozens of monks have been attacked too. Now the Thai military and other security forces have moved into the wat, as Thai Buddhist temples are known, and soldiers go out each morning with monks as they collect alms. “There’s no other choice,” says Lieutenant Sawai Kongsit. “We cannot separate Buddhism from guns anymore.”

Wat Lak Muang, in the town of Pattani, is home to 10 Buddhist monks and around 100 soldiers. The sprawling compound’s main stupa has been taken over as an operational command center for the Thai army’s 23rd battalion, with camouflage netting wrapped around the central base of the holy structure. Each year, thousands of Buddhist volunteers receive training at this wat to join armed civilian militias charged with guarding their villages. Prapaladsuthipong Purassaro, who was a monk for 16 years and now tends the temple, admits that when he wore monastic robes, he owned three pistols. “Maybe I felt a little bit guilty as a Buddhist,” he says. “But we have to protect ourselves.”

If Buddhists feel more protected by the presence of soldiers in their temples, it sends quite another signal to the Muslim population. “By inviting soldiers into the wat, the state is wedding religion to the military,” says Michael Jerryson, an assistant professor of religious studies at Youngstown State University in Ohio and author of a book about Buddhism’s role in the southern Thailand conflict. “Buddhists will never think we’re Thai people,” says Sumoh Makeh, the mother of a suspected insurgent who, with 15 others, was killed by Thai marines in February after they tried to raid a naval base. “This is our land but we are the outsiders.” After all, Muslims too are running scared in the deep south. More of them have perished in the violence than Buddhists, felled by indiscriminate bombings or whispers that they were somehow connected to the state. (By proportion of population, however, more Buddhists have died.) Yet monk after monk tells me that Muslims are using mosques to store weapons, or that every imam carries a gun. “Islam is a religion of violence,” says Phratong Jiratamo, a marine turned monk. “Everyone knows this.”

It’s a sentiment the Burmese bin Laden would endorse. I wonder how Wirathu reconciles the peaceful sutras of his faith with the anti-Muslim violence spreading across his Bamar-majority homeland. “In Buddhism, we are not allowed to go on the offensive,” he tells me. “But we have every right to defend our community.” Later, as he preaches to an evening crowd, I listen to him compel smiling housewives, students, teachers, grandmothers and others to repeat after him: “I will sacrifice myself for the Bamar race.”

The Buddhist spirit of forgiveness, though, still exists in the unlikeliest of places. In 2011, Watcharapong Suttha, a monk at Wat Lak Muang, was doing his morning alms, guarded by soldiers, when a bomb detonated. The lower half of his body is covered in shrapnel scars. Now 29 and disrobed, Watcharapong is still traumatized, his eyes darting, his body beset by twitches. But he does not blame an entire faith for his attack. “Islam is a peaceful religion, like Buddhism, like all religions,” he says. “If we blame Muslims, they will blame us. Then this violence will never end.”

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4. Comments

In light of events at Bondi Beach, Australia, on 14 December 2025, when innocent people were killed and maimed by two Islamic State Muslim terrorists, Ashin Wirathu can be considered either a courageous hero and fighter for peace, or an evil terrorist. In the view of the present writer, who adheres to the teachings of both Jesus Christ and Buddha, he is the former. The question therefore needs to be asked: How can one condone the genocidal treatment of the Rohingya Muslims? The answer is: It can't be condoned. And therein lies the problem facing the world in dealing with the "jihad of the sword" ideology of Muhammad's Islam. It has to be fought, tooth and nail, because that is how Muslims are fighting it. Yet it is very difficult for the democratic West and Buddhist East to act in a similar manner. We are told that Islam is a religion, yet any reading of the Koran will show the Christian and the Buddhist that it is otherwise. It therefore must be treated as a dangerous, barbaric ideology which truly threatens the very existence of Western open, free and democratic societies. It also specifically threatens without compassion Jews and Christians. It even treats with disdain its own, especially women and those who stray in any way from the commands of Muhammed and those who have sought to interpret and implement his teachings, in the name of God. The present writer rightly fears Islam, because it has shown over more than fourteen centuries how brutal and inhumane it can be and is. The fact that it continues to teach this ideology in 2025, without change, shows that it is not a religion of peace, love and compassion; but rather an ideology of fear, hatred, revenge, carnal pleasures, misogyny, racism and inhumanity, to name but a few of its traits.

Peace be with you all

Om mani padme om

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5. References

Anti-Muslim monk preaches hate: Ashin Wirathu, TRT World - Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, 8 September 2017, YouTube, duration: 1.50 minutes.

Facebook removes Myanmar monk's page for 'inflammatory posts' about Radical Islamists, Scroll.in, 27 February 2018.

How did Facebook destroy the people [Rohingyans] of a country [Myanmar]?, World Vista, 20 January 2025, YouTube, duration: minutes. Comment: Deals with the 2017 military and Buddhist attacks on the Rohingya Muslim people of Myanmar and the resultant refugee crisis. The is a Turkish post, translated into English.

Rohingya rebels wound six Myanmar soldiers, state media says, TRT World - Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, 7 January 2018, YouTube, duration: 2.33 minutes.

The Face of Buddhist Terror, Time magazine, New York, 1 July 2013.

What is Rohingya crisis by Ashin Wirathu, Nation First, 14 September 2017, YouTube, duration: 3.10 minutes.

Wikipedia, 969 Movement, Wikipedia, accessed 27 December 2025.

Wikipedia, Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, Wikipedia, accessed 27 December 2025.

Wikipedia, Ashin Wirathu, Wikipedia, accessed 27 December 2025.

Wikipedia, Crusades, Wikipedia, accessed 27 December 2025.

Wikipedia, Islam in Myanmar (Borneo), Wikipedia, accessed 27 December 2025.

Wikipedia, Myanmar, Wikipedia, accessed 27 December 2025.

Wikipedia, Rohingya genocide, Wikipedia, accessed 27 December 2025.

Wikipedia, Taliban, Wikipedia, accessed 27 December 2025.

Yegar, Moshe, The Muslims of Burma: a Study of a Minority Group, Schriftenreihe des Südasien-Instituts der Universität Heidelberg, Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1972.

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Last updated: 27 December 2025

Michael Organ, Australia

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