M.MAS 7/22/15 A: According to [what I hear from] other people, I am worried that ISIS will affect us, and in our country we have many Muslims. When I see they [ISIS] cut peoples’ heads off, it will be a problem if this comes to us. Some of my friends tell me, if they see Muslims, they are scared of them even though they might not have [plans of cutting peoples’ heads off] in their mind. It is like seeing the news about that and then having fear when looking at these people [Muslims in Myanmar]. Q: You mention, you are feeling scared, when did you start to feel like that? A: It happened after seeing that news and the Rakhine problem. Since then the news always pops up about it. I am worried that ISIS’s actions will affect the world or will affect our country.40 This is the shift that makes a generalized threat specific; when the Other is made fearsome, any Other that one encounters is potentially dangerous. In the context of such a sense of threat, beholding a Muslim is thus to see not a person but the embodiment of a threat; a body that, whatever is known about it as a neighbor or even friend, always contains the potential for aggression and danger and thus must always potentially require or deserve violence. Jonathan Leader Maynard has described arguments like these as an ideology of threat that, in many other times and places, has played an important role in justifying mass violence. This ideology of threat, Maynard notes, is often partnered with a sense of virtuous self-defence, in which violence may be normatively allowed or even required.41 This paired sense of threat and self-defence showed through in our interviews. The woman we spoke with at the Ma Ba Tha office in Lashio, after all, told us she does everything she can to warn other Buddhists about the ‘horror’ of Islam. In our work with youth activists, as well, Maynard’s research has been a valuable teaching tool that has helped us to analyze discourses about conflict in everyday conversation, popular media, novels, music and film, social media, and religious teaching. In sessions analyzing such discourses in each city, the young activists generated a host of examples illustrating the relationship between a conception of threat and virtuous self-defence. ‘Killing a Kalar42 is only half a sin,’ one participant noted, quoting a popular book. ‘Taking action to protect your own race is complying with Buddha’s teachings,’ noted another participant, quoting a Buddhist leader. When the groups from all six cities came together to share and reflect on what they had learned, we took a collective vote on those ideologies most common, influential, and worth focusing on in activist work. These ideologies of threat and virtuous self-defence were, without controversy, voted as most salient. It should be no surprise, then, that perpetrators of anti-Muslim riots have been described shouting both ‘Muslims, be gone’ and singing Myanmar’s national anthem43 or shouting, ‘We are Buddhist martyrs.’44 This not to say that explaining such incidents can be reduced to the rhetorical statements of participants. Collective violence is a process; large-scale violence such as riots – let alone pogroms or genocide – are not singular events that spontaneously erupt or explode, but moments in extended periods of mass 40 Woman, 34, Christian, Karen, Mawlamyine, March 2015 MLM MSPT 11. Leader Maynard, “Rethinking the Role of Ideology in Mass Atrocities.” 42 The word kalar, which can simply mean ‘foreigner’ but is currently associated with people who appear to be from South Asia, has acquired strongly derogatory connotations in many situations and in cases like this has come to signify anyone who is foreign, has darker skin, or is Muslim. Debate within Myanmar about use of the term is strong and ongoing, with many who would say that it is not a pejorative term. In this case, the term is used to define a potential object of violence; that the word itself implies disregard for the persons so classified is clear. 43 Than Naing Soe and Si Thu Lwin, “Curfew Announced after Rumour Sparks Violence,” The Myanmar Times, July 4, 2015, http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/10890-curfew-imposed-in-riot-hit-mandalay.html. 44 Thomas Fuller and Wai Moe, “Buddhist-Muslim Mayhem Hits Myanmar’s No. 2 City,” The New York Times, July 3, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/04/world/asia/buddhist-muslim-mayhem-hits-myanmars-no-2city.html. 41 12