8/12/22, 11:01 AM Intolerance, Islam and the Internet in Burma - New Mandala Muslim responses Campaigns against Rohingya and Muslims on social media have existed since the Internet became available in Burma in 1999. But these intensified in November 2011 when Cho Tu Zal (allegedly the first person to do so) highlighted BBC’s 2010 article on Rohingya. While Rohingya activists have been consistently lobbying western governments for support, Burmese Muslims, with few exceptions, have been silent on the racist campaign. Although frustrated and humiliated, they hoped that it would fade away sooner or later as democratic reform proceeds and that the reform would allow them to address the issue through the parliamentary process. The lack of action is partly because the Muslims are politically too weak and immobilized during the past decades. While Islamophobia is growing in the country partly as a result of statesponsored campaign against Muslims in the past three or four decades, the Muslim communities have failed to reach out to the Buddhist majority and foster better relations or address the majorities’ concerns. Moreover, the Muslims have not been able to address the issue of confusing South Asian cultural traditions with Islamic religion, which helps sustain the majority’s view of Muslims as aliens. While politico-religious extremism is not an issue, the communities have not been able to address the Muslims’ hypersensitivity to issues such as handling pork or address everyday community relations, in which Muslims appear ill behaved. Emerging youth groups have been trying, but their actions have been ineffective due to the lack of financial and human resources. Most importantly, perhaps, although Burmese Muslims do not seem to be enthusiastic about supporting Rohingyas’ status as an ethnic group of Burma, they are not able to make visible the distant between themselves and the Rohingya, as they doubt that anti-Rohingya campaign is also an anti-Muslim one. In other words, the idea of Muslim brotherhood is not relevant to the relationship between Rohingyas and Burmese Muslims; they are not completely antagonistic to each other either. Likewise, although religiously motivated terrorism is not a significant issue in Burma, the Muslim communities have been unable to act on some Rohingya https://www.newmandala.org/intolerance-islam-and-the-internet-in-burma-today/ 7/11