134 C. ORJUELA religious radicalisation, local misunderstandings and strategies to fight prejudices. A Colombo-based organisation had brought together local civil society representatives of diverse religious backgrounds. The assembly of saffron-clad monks, bearded or veiled Muslim delegates, young activists and experienced leaders provided another illustration of efforts to work for peace.1 These events – and many similar ones – took place amidst an upsurge of hate speech and inter-religious violence in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Organisations led by Buddhist monks who framed Islam as a key threat against Buddhism had gained influence from 2012, and mosques, Muslim-owned property and individuals had been attacked on numerous occasions. The two countries are ethnically and religiously diverse Buddhist-majority states, where Muslim minorities make up 4–10% of the population. In Myanmar, the targeting of Muslims came in the wake of a shift from military rule to partial democracy, while in Sri Lanka Muslims emerged as a target for Buddhist nationalists after the defeat of a Tamil separatist insurgency. Scholars have recently put much effort into understanding this upsurge of radical Buddhist nationalism (see Holt 2016; Walton and Hayward 2014; Crouch 2016; Gravers 2015; Schonthal and Walton 2016; Haniffa 2016a; van Klinken and Thazin Aung 2017; Frydenlund 2018). This article turns the focus to the civil society mobilisation that has emerged to counter the messages of hate, protect minority rights and prevent violence.2 The article draws on social movement theory as it enquires into this countermovement’s composition, activities and challenges. By analysing movement–countermovement dynamics, the article contributes to a deepened understanding of peacebuilding in religiously framed conflicts, and of the conditions for peace movements in an age of religious radicalisation and online activism. Based on interviews with civil society representatives and religious leaders in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, complemented with secondary sources, the study finds that although the peace movements are considerably weaker and largely reactive to and restrained by the radical Buddhist movements, they constitute important counter-voices. The article shows that the opposing movements interact and shape each other in several arenas, of which social media is a particularly important one. The next section introduces the idea of social movements and countermovements, and relates this to the literature on religious conflict and peacebuilding. Thereafter follows a note on methods and data. The main part of the article analyses the mobilisation of social movements in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, starting with a description of the radical Buddhist groups. Civil society attempts to counter them are then analysed, drawing attention to the diversity of actors and activities. Thereafter, dynamics between the two movements are discussed, before the paper sheds light on the online encounters between the movements. A concluding section discusses how movement–countermovement dynamics can enhance our understanding of religiously framed conflicts and peacebuilding. Movements and countermovements in religiously framed conflicts Over the last few decades, religion has come to play an increasingly central role in conflicts and political violence (Toft et al. 2011; Svensson 2012; Juergensmeyer 2017). The number of armed conflicts over religious issues has increased substantially since the 1970s, and Islamist conflicts make up a large share of religious-issue conflicts (Svensson and Nilsson 2017, 11–12). Islamist actors have since the attacks on the US in 2001 come to be framed as