Deconstructing Buddhist Extremism: Lessons from Sri Lanka

Deconstructing Buddhist Extremism: Lessons from Sri Lanka

Blog Article

This article argues that it is not Buddhism, per se, but rather Buddhist extremism, that is responsible for violence against relevant out-groups.Moreover, it suggests that the causes of Buddhist extremism, rather than being determined solely by textual and scriptural justifications for out-group violence, are rooted instead in the intersection between social psychology and theology, rather than organically arising from the latter, per se.This article unpacks this argument by a deeper exploration of Theravada Buddhist extremism in Sri Lanka.It argues that religious extremism, including its Buddhist aluminum lotion variant, is best understood as a fundamentalist belief system that justifies structural violence against relevant out-groups.

A total of seven of the core characteristics of the religious extremist are identified and employed to better grasp how Buddhist extremism in Sri Lanka manifests itself on the ground.These are: the fixation with maintaining identity supremacy; in-group bias; out-group prejudice; emphasis on preserving in-group purity via revlon colorstay lip liner plum avoidance of commingling with the out-group; low integrative complexity expressed in binary thinking; dangerous speech in both soft- and hard-modes; and finally, the quest for political power, by force if needed.Future research could, inter alia, explore how these seven characteristics also adequately describe other types of religious extremism.