One of China’s highest-ranking Buddhist monks quit as the head of the country’s Buddhist association on Wednesday after facing a government investigation over accusations of sexual misconduct.

The abbot of Longquan Temple on the outskirts of Beijing, who is also a member of the Communist Party’s top political advisory body, has denied accusations of harassing and demanding sexual favours from several nuns.

The Buddhist Association of China said in a statement on its website that it had accepted Master Xuecheng’s offer to resign from the chairmanship and other posts on Wednesday, without elaborating on the reasons.

China’s religious affairs administration launched an investigation following accusations levelled against the abbot in a document prepared by two former monks at the monastery.

Xuecheng issued a denial on his Weibo microblog account, saying the allegations stemmed from “fabricated material” and “distorted facts”.

The case is one of the most prominent to have arisen since the #MeToo movement began to gain momentum in China.

The Chinese #MeToo-style movement came in December last year and the hashtag #MeToo has so far appeared more than millions of times on Weibo, and while issues like sexual assault have traditionally been brushed under the carpet, the movement is changing mindset among the younger generation.

A Sri Lankan court on Wednesday handed a six-year jail term to a Buddhist monk accused of inciting violence against Muslims, holding him guilty of contempt just months after he was convicted of intimidating the wife of a missing journalist.

The monk, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, leads the hardline Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) or “Buddhist Power Force”, which government ministers and Muslims have accused of stirring up violence against Muslims and Christians, allegations he has denied.

The court sentenced him to six years’ rigorous imprisonment over a 2016 incident when Gnanasara interrupted a court hearing on the abduction of the journalist, Prageeth Eknaligoda, in which military intelligence officials were accused.

He shouted at the judge and lawyers because the military officials had not been given bail, and threatened Eknaligoda’s wife.

“The convict intentionally committed the offence to undermine the judiciary,” Preethi Padman Surasena, the president of the court of appeal, said in delivering Wednesday’s judgment, adding, “Found guilty of all charges beyond reasonable doubt.”

The monk was convicted on four counts of contempt of court, receiving terms of four years each on the first and the second counts, six years on the third and five for the fourth, all to run concurrently.

A BBS official told Reuters the group would appeal against Wednesday’s ruling.

“We feel there is an attempt by interested parties to have judicial process targeting Gnanasara, therefore, though we do not agree with the judgment, we accept the sentence, and we will appeal,” said Dilantha Vithanage, the group’s chief executive.

Gnanasara, who is being treated in hospital for an ailment, was not in court for the ruling. He has been on bail since filing an appeal against a conviction in a separate case on June 14.

In that case, he received two concurrent jail terms of six months, a fine of 1,500 rupees ($9.39), and a compensation payment of 50,000 rupees ($313) for having threatened the journalist’s wife, Sandhya Eknaligoda.

Since 2014, the monk has faced accusations in cases regarding anti-Muslim violence, hate speech, and defaming the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

That year Gnanasara signed a pact with Myanmar’s Ashin Wirathu, who once described himself as “the Burmese bin Laden”, in what the duo called a bid to counter regional conversion efforts by Islamists.

($1=159.7000 Sri Lankan rupees)

Eleven boys from a football team rescued from a flooded Thai cave in a drama that gripped global audiences were ordained as Buddhist novices on Wednesday in memory of a volunteer diver who died during their rescue.

Dressed in white robes, the boys and their 25-year-old coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, arrived at the Wat Phra That Doi Tung temple in Thailand’s northern province of Chiang Rai, amid light rain and fog.

They listened to Buddhist chants before being given saffron robes in an emotionally-charged ceremony broadcast live on Facebook by authorities. They had had their hair shaved a day earlier in preparation to become novice monks.

“Their lives will change now,” Manit Prakobkit, an official of a regional cultural group, told media. “This experience will help them to appreciate their parents and give them a taste of Dhamma.”

The group will spend nine days living at another Buddhist temple, adhering to the teachings and precepts of Buddhism, Thailand’s main religion.

The stay will fulfil a promise the boys’ families made for their safe return, as well as honour the memory of diver Samarn Kunan, 38, the only casualty in the operation to save the group after monsoon rains trapped them in the cave.

The international rescue operation wrapped up successfully on July 10, when the last of the group was brought to safety from inside the flooded Tham Luang Cave in Chiang Rai.

The twelfth team member, fourteen-year-old Adul Sam-on, is Christian and was not ordained.

At the temple on Wednesday the boys helped each other put on the new robes, at a ceremony attended by their relatives and Samarn’s wife, Valeepoan Kunan.

The ceremony ended with attendees and worshippers using umbrellas to snare packets of coins scattered into the air, a custom meant to signify that the novices forswear worldly treasure.

The boys and Ekapol had gone to explore the cave complex on June 23 when they became trapped. They survived for nine days on water dripping from rocks before divers discovered them on a muddy mound.

Their dramatic rescue has piqued the interest of as many as 12 film production companies, including two foreign and four Thai firms, the government said on Wednesday. The remaining six are joint ventures of Thai and foreign firms, but there were no further details.

The government has set up a panel to ensure the factual accuracy of films about the rescue, it said on Tuesday.

There were no related copyright issues, as the story was “public knowledge”, Thai culture minister Veera Rojpojanarat said in a statement. “Therefore, anyone can produce movies, videos, and animations of it,” Veera said.

]]> 7528 https://www.faith-matters.org/why-was-a-buddhist-man-attacked-and-accused-of-being-an-isis-terrorist/ Mon, 14 Dec 2015 12:31:40 +0000 https://religiousreader.org/?p=1514 On a July evening in Plymouth, Jak Burgess, 20, boarded a bus heading towards the city centre with friends, and sat next to a Buddhist man of Sri Lankan origin. Within seconds, Burgess accused him being a member of ISIS who intended to bomb the bus. An accusation that turned to violence in a paroxysm of racist rage. Perturbed, the bus driver stopped the vehicle, and helped the Buddhist man downstairs. His attacker followed. And his tone grew more aggressive when the Buddhist man refused to shake his hand. A police appeal soon bore positive results. And Jak Burgess admitted the racially aggravated charge. He then failed to attend his sentencing hearing earlier this month. Now Plymouth Magistrates’ Court have issued a warrant for his arrest. The question remains: how do you account for this incident? One explanation concerns racialisation. It is in the assumption of Muslim identity based on ethnicity. Racialisation also impacts white converts to Islam. This owes in part to their expressions of religiosity. In a broader sense, religious conversion creates a fundamental shift in how a person views the world. A study of British converts to Islam published in 1996 found that it created an identity [...]

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Buddhist monks in Dhaka, Bangladesh are distributing food parcels to Muslims this Ramadan.

Outside the Dhammarajika Monastery, in the Basabo neighbourhood, monks distribute hundreds of iftar parcels.

Suddhananda Mahathero, the monastery’s head monk told the AFP:

“Buddhism taught us that serving humanity is the ultimate religion. We are feeding the poor Muslims who cannot afford to buy proper meals to break their fast”.

Some individuals travelled several kilometers on foot to cue for food. When the AFP observed, over 300 Muslims sought food parcels.

A measured police presence ensures peaceful transactions.

Muslims in Bangladesh colour the majority of the country’s religious makeup (86.6 per cent). The noted Buddhist minority mainly occupies the southern regions (near the border with Myanmar).

In 2012, in the southeast of Bangladesh, Muslims protested a blasphemous image on Facebook. Rumour spread that the individual responsible was Buddhist. In response, protesters burnt at least four Buddhist temples and 15 homes of Buddhists. As some sought to ease community tensions, Amnesty International condemned the violence.

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A Buddhist was mistaken for a terrorist as he meditated to a sacred Tibetan text aboard a Paris plane.

Alarmed passengers notified staff and Portuguese actor Heitor Lourenco, 47, found himself under arrest.

Lourenco told SIC television, “Police told me that I had been denounced as a terrorism suspect aboard the plane because I was reciting the Koran aloud, that I was reading a text involving words ‘death’ and ‘bomb’”.

In reality, the text contained Tibetan characters and a timer to calculate meditation time. Lourenco accessed it via his tablet device.

Police detained Lourenco for six hours before uncovering his acting credentials. Officers confirmed his Buddhist beliefs via Wikipedia.

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