DIFFICULT TIMES FOR MYANMAR MUSLIMS
Muslim minority celebrates holy month at a time when new laws banish old custom of harmony with Buddhist majority
Country’s Muslim minority marks Ramadan under a cloud as new laws threaten old conventions,
YANGON // Huddled under umbrellas to escape a monsoon downpour, dozens of Muslims stood in line at a Yangon mosque for a small portion of rice and curry to break their Ramadan fast. Many would normally have gone to pray at Islamic schools that for six decades – most of them spent under Myanmar’s former military government – doubled as a place for Muslims to gather for worship. But last month the madrassas in eastern Yangon were closed down by a Buddhist nationalist mob, one of a growing number of raids by resurgent hardliners intent on silencing the maligned Muslim minority.
“We have faced more discrimination over the past few years,” said Hussein, who used to pray at the schools. Muslims make up between 3 per cent and 4 per cent of Myanmar’s population, including the Rohingya minority from western Rakhine State, but the religion traces its roots in the country back centuries.
Now many are feeling unwelcome in their own homeland. “When I was young there was no discrimination.
“We were very friendly ( with Buddhists), so we would eat at their homes and they would eat at ours,” said Hussein, who like many of Myanmar’s Muslims goes by only one name.
“Now we live in this country and we are not free to practise our religion.”
Aung Htoo Myint, secretary of the mosque in Yangon’s impoverished Thaketa township, said they had struggled to accommodate the hundreds forced to join their congregation after Islamic schools were closed. Many from the mainly Muslim neighbourhood braved the monsoon rains to pray together in the street when this year’s holy month of Ramadan began, but local authorities swiftly banned those gatherings.
They have since launched legal proceedings against three people who attended a prayer session, arguing that the gathering threatened “stability and the rule of law”.
Bo Gyi, a teacher at the madrassas, said they had been given no information on when the
Myanmar is facing criticism over how it treats its Muslim population
schools would reopen nor what would happen to the 300 children who studied there.
“We have written letters to the president and Yangon chief minister as well,” he said. Myanmar has faced growing criticism for how it treats Muslims, who now encounter restrictions on who they can marry and even how many children they can have under the country’s 2015 race and religion laws. Tensions have simmered since 2012 when sectarian violence erupted in Rakhine, killing around 200 people, mostly Rohingya Muslims, and driving tens of thousands into displacement camps.
The young civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi has struggled to contain anti-Muslim sentiment since militants claiming to represent the Rohingya attacked police posts late last year.
Since then, the hardliners have become increasingly vocal, shut- ting down Islamic events, forming a political party to stand in the 2020 elections and clashing with Muslims on the streets of Yangon.
Police have arrested ringleaders behind the violence, while the country’s top Buddhist body has banned prominent the ultranationalist group Ma Ba Tha – which responded by simply changing its name.
But ordinary Muslims fear they are now becoming targets in their own country. Haroon, 57, a father of three who has spent his whole life in Yangon where he works selling chapattis, said he was increasingly worried about the nationalists.
“There is only one group creating this situation,” he said, unwilling to say the name Ma Ba Tha out loud. “If that group disappeared completely, everything would be peaceful.”