22 Matthew J. Walton and Susan Hayward Religious and political leaders have also employed “defense of the sasana” arguments in contemporary democratic contexts in order to justify bloody, anti-democratic policies, particularly violence against non-Buddhist religious groups perceived as a threat to Buddhism. In contemporary Sri Lanka, some nationalist monks exhorted the Sinhala Buddhist–led government to press the prosecution of the war against the Hindu and Christian Tamil insurgency group the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), using imagery that invoked the legacy of Dutthagamani (the war was brutally won by the government in 2009). They were following in the footsteps of the controversial Sinhalese monk Walpola Rahula, who, in legitimizing monastic participation in politics in the 1970s, also commented approvingly on the belief of Dutthagamani’s arahant advisors that “the destruction of human beings [for the purpose of protecting the religion] was not a very grave crime” (Rahula 1974). The “protection of the sasana” argument does not need to be explicit in cases like Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Myanmar, where the identity of the Buddhist majority effectively overlaps with the national identity. Calls to “defend the motherland” in these countries might appear to be simply nationalistic, yet the long-standing connection in Buddhist political thought between the integrity and strength of the state and the health of the religion suggests that many people view these conflicts through a religious lens. Recent incidents of thousands of Buddhist monks marching in antiMuslim protests across Myanmar reinforce the idea that the purification of the state and the protection of the sasana are coterminous processes. The 969 movement’s “Buy Buddhist” campaign urges Myanmar’s Buddhists to strengthen the sasana against expansionist Islam by patronizing only Buddhist-owned and -operated businesses; its logic suggests that one must protect Buddhism by economically punishing local Muslim populations and driving Islam completely out of the country. According to U Wirathu, the movement “is about protecting the religion, but also protecting the nation, the race, the country. It’s not just about protecting the sasana, but protecting the country.” This rhetoric reinforces the notion that the well-being of the religious and political communities are inextricably intertwined.23 The argument for the defense of the sasana is compelling and difficult to refute since no Buddhist can afford to be accused of failing to defend the religion. The recent conflicts in Myan-