76 This picture, like many others, seeks to undermine the religion and create fearful and misinformed perceptions of Islam as a religion of ‘rape, beheadings and burning people alive’, which augment the fear incited by world event such as the November Paris attacks by ISIS. Unbalanced communication feeds into the process of othering by objectifying Muslims and reducing them to these incorrect statements and stories. This process ignores the dignity of the target group - whom many people never encounter face to face; arguably, that group are eventually perceived as an abstract idea based on words and rumours, rather than as people in the community. It is one of hate speeches most serious consequences for the Muslim community in Myanmar: the dehumanization of a group based on their religion, used as a means to permit persecution. Social Media and Hate Speech in Myanmar Now we have established an understanding of how hate speech attracts an audience on social media, how it can spread the fear of Muslims as the subordinate Other, and the harm it can have on Muslim’s right to live as equal citizens, I will turn my attention to the situation in Myanmar to evaluate how hate speech has become an issue of 76 Stop Islamization of the World, available at: https://www.facebook.com/SIOTW/?fref=nf [November 2015]. - 37 -