Today what is happening to Muslims in Myanmar (Burma) amounts to " a genocide ". In the 1960s a Burmese Muslim called for "secularism", the separation of religion from the state. "In Burma, it is the Muslim community that has carried the banner of secularism and opposed government attempts to specify a state religion. U Rashid, a respected member of the Burmese cabinet in the early 1960s and a leader of Muslims, opposed the prime minister's attempt to make Buddhism the state religion. He questioned whether, in view of the religious pluralism that characterized contemporary Burmese society, a state religion could serve to integrate and unite the nation: 'As a Muslim, I believe there should be no compulsion in religion. Everyone should be free to adopt and practice the religion he likes. As a Muslim, I do not and indeed cannot object to or oppose anything that Buddhists and persons professing other religions may do for their own religion. All I can a...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51