14 Matthew J. Walton and Susan Hayward nine of the sangha. Thus, Burmese Buddhists occasionally use “969” as shorthand to refer to the Triple Gems. The logo of the 969 movement includes a stone pillar flanked by three lions, meant to represent the ancient pillar of Emperor Ashoka, a third-century BCE ruler of the territory now known as India who is commonly associated with Buddhism (Arai 2013). The movement imagines “969” as a symbolic counter to the number 786, a numerological representation of “Bismillah ar-Rahman arRahim” (“in the name of Allah”) and a shorthand for Islam used among some Muslims in Asian countries. The number 786 has a practical purpose, as Muslim restaurants display a 786 sticker to indicate 969 is a symbolic counter to to customers that they serve halal 786, shorthand for Islam among food, although it also functions as a more general notification that some Muslims in Asian countries the business is Muslim-owned. In response to this, the 969 movement distributed stickers for their followers to designate businesses as Buddhist-owned, and encouraged followers to “Buy Buddhist.” Behind this campaign may lie resentments about the economic success of some members of the Myanmar Muslim community, who historically comprised the mercantile class and so enjoyed financial success. The Emergence of MaBaTha Despite the tendency for analysts to overstate both its coherence and its unity, 969 was always a decentralized movement held together by a common symbol and some roughly defined tenets. Since the beginning of 2014, other groups have formed that are pursuing complementary goals, but with more targeted political strategies and more centralized organization. The most prominent is the Organization for the Protection of Race and Religion, founded at a large conference of monks convened in Mandalay in January 2014 (Radio Free Asia 2014c). The Burmese name for this group is A-myo Batha Thathana Saun Shauq Ye a-Pwe, or MaBaTha for short. The very name of MaBaTha indicates the way in which its originators see Burmese ethnic, racial, and national identity as bound up in Buddhism: a-myo is a variant on lu-myo, which is alternately understood as “ethnicity” or “race”; batha, in this case, refers to