M.MAS 1/12/17 practices or beliefs might be a hallmark of a tolerant and flexible religiously plural society, but this is not the case if the tolerance is not mutual; recent events suggest that similar flexibility is not displayed toward jokes or comments about Buddhism. 59 Second, local accounts of riotous violence that attribute instigation and participation to “outsiders” or political machinations can be challenging to interpret. On the one hand, such claims should not be casually dismissed as conspiracy theories. Cases like the July 2014 riots in Mandalay, which were later found to have been deliberately instigated, bear out much of these concerns, though the ultimate motivations of those involved remain opaque. It is also hard to look at Case Study 1, in which some individual or group appears to have systematically and deliberately attempted to foment tension and distrust, and not conclude that similar machinations were afoot. The other three cases, meanwhile, also involved individuals and groups who were working hard towards ends that risked escalating those particular conflicts into something larger. This is not to say that the outcome they desired was a riot—but it is understandable that those in the immediate area would look at such events and conclude that there are those who desire further violence. This dynamic is even more prevalent in other areas where we have done research, where individuals appeared to work in coordinated ways to plan and implement riots that did occur. Though we made no detailed study of such claims they sound strikingly similar to the “institutionalized riot systems” Brass described and, insofar as violence in Myanmar is potentially organized in a systematic fashion, anyone working towards peace must engage with this potential directly. But, perhaps just as important, these case studies show that the mere presence of this suspicion— whatever the empirical reality—can be an effective counter argument leveraged by those seeking to promote peace, since it can encourage people to be sceptical of claims made by those seeking to escalate conflict. On the other hand, even if inter-religious violence is instigated deliberately, it is also the case that there are many others who join in, support, or at least tacitly condone it. The insistence that violence is primarily a function of conflicts in the larger political transition (or triggered and conducted by “outsiders”) can thus obscure deeper problems. In a general sense, this can inhibit efforts to honestly engage with discriminatory or exclusionary attitudes towards religious minorities—Muslims as well as other non-Buddhists. And in a more specific sense, claims by residents of locales in which riots occurred that it was not “their own” who committed acts of violence can be an obstacle to assigning culpability for particular actions. Finally, preventing riotous violence is not the same thing as promoting peace. We can find useful guidance from Johan Galtung’s classic distinction between “negative” and “positive” peace: “negative peace which is the absence of violence, absence of war—and positive peace which is the integration of human society.” 60 The cases here entailed work to avoid some forms of violence, but this work is not necessarily mutually exclusive with violence in other forms. Those interviewed in every case, for 59 One recent example is Ma Ba Tha’s vehement response to a portrayal of the Buddha wearing headphones by a bar owner with dual UK-New Zealand citizenship and two of his Burmese employees, mounting a public campaign for prosecution that resulted in sentences of two and a half years with hard labour. To be clear, the purpose of this comparison is not to suggest that Buddhists should not have been insulted by the image of the Buddha in headphones. It is merely to point out that (minority) Muslim populations in Myanmar might be forced into tolerating insults about their religion (that others might think are simply jokes) because they are not in a position to complain, knowing that their best chance of avoiding violence is to maintain a low profile. See Reuters, “Burma Jails New Zealand Bar Manager over ‘Insulting’ Buddha Images,” The Guardian, March 17, 2015, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/17/burma-jails-new-zealand-bar-manager-over-insulting-buddhaimages. 60 Johan Galtung, “An Editorial,” Journal of Peace Research 1, no. 1 (1964): 1–4, doi:10.1177/002234336400100101; see also Johan Galtung, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167–91. 21/24