When I posted a review of a new Churchill-Gandhi dual biography on Amazon last fall, several Indian nationals made negative review comments, all variants on the “sainted, can do no wrong” claims about Hinduism. Well, as carnage in Sri Lanka shows, the Hindu-religion driven Tamil Tigers, inventors (yes, them, not Muslims) of suicide bombings, are anything but nonviolent.
That’s why Chris Hitchens’ “God is not Great” is the best of the “new atheist” apologetics books.
(Oh, you Buddhists, you shouldn’t be so smug. Although Hitchens points out that Gen. Tojo and other Japanese war criminals worshipped at Shinto shrines, japan has strong Buddhist elements, too.
None of this is to excuse the less-than-savory actions of Sri Lanka’s ethnic Sinhalese majority government over the decades. That said, that government theoretically most represents the Buddhist religious majority of the island, further reason to tell adherents of the other great Eastern religion to not be so smug about themselves.
Nor should the devotees of the Dalai Lama.
Yes, Beijing is trying to wipe out both Tibetian Buddhism and Tibetian ethnicity behind a wave of Han Chinese migration to/resettlement in Tibet.
But, that said …
Before Beijing’s takeover, the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan lamas ruled the country as the equivalent of a Western European feudal religious holding, like the archbishopric of Cologne or something similar.
No comments:
Post a Comment