Islamophobia in Myanmar: the Rohingya genocide and the ‘war on terror’

Abstract

This article analyses the Rohingya genocide of August 2017. The accusation of genocide has been denied by the state of Myanmar, but what is demonstrated here is how the phenomenon of Islamophobia – anti-Muslim racism – informed, sanctioned and culminated in a genocide whose consequences are ongoing. Islamophobia has generally been understood to relate to the ‘othering’ of Muslims in settler societies and the nations of the global North, as documented by critical race, postcolonial and feminist scholars, with much of the current discourse on it structured around the ‘war on terror’. But increasingly, it has also come to encompass systemic racism and anti-Muslim violence in the global South, with, in Myanmar, the ‘war on terror’ used to sanitise more recent violence against the Rohingya. This article examines both structural Islamophobia, and the Islamophobia of private actors in Myanmar, in particular the powerful Buddhist extremist movement. It demonstrates that the co-dependent relationship between structural and private Islamophobia since military rule in Myanmar, in the absence of a strong and unified resistance, contributed to the genocide. Moreover, the troubling logic used to defend state-sponsored violence and killing in Myanmar bears a number of similarities to Islamophobic trajectories in other spaces of the global South in the context of the ‘war on terror’.

Introduction: Centering Islamic Studies in Asia

“…A significant legacy of this Orientalist framing today is the way in which many of these same premises undergird contemporary anti-Muslim exclusionary movements across Asia. In places as far-flung and diverse as Chechnya, India, Myanmar, and China, Muslim minorities are consistently accused of being inherently anti-national, a threat to the existence of nation states, and a problem that must be solved (Bakali 2021;Roberts 2020). The enduring claims that Islam is foreign to Asian culture, and that Muslims are predisposed to violence, are fundamental assumptions that shape these discourses.…”

The Rohingya refugees: a conceptual framework of their psychosocial adversities, cultural idioms of distress and social suffering

“…Moreover, the former democratic government is also accused of turning a blind eye to their fate. The author also suggests that the neglect of provision of healthcare to Rohingya predominant areas, and the restriction of their reproductive rights was perpetuated by unfounded fears of ‘Islamisation’ of what is otherwise a Buddhist majority nation (Bakali, 2021). Stories from fleeing refugees stand testament to this grim ground reality.…”