Source: Reuters
The city of Mandalay in northern Myanmar is a Buddhist religious centre so crowded with temples, monasteries and monks that they can sometimes seem innumerable.
Much easier to count is the number of Mandalay Muslims standing in Myanmar’s historic general election on Nov. 8. That would be one.
Khin Maung Thein hails from an obscure little party and runs his campaign from a cluttered, two-story home that doubles as the family printing business.
As the sole Muslim candidate in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city and a stronghold for Buddhist extremists, he is treading where giant rivals won’t dare.
Not even the front-running National League for Democracy (NLD), led by the hugely popular Aung San Suu Kyi, is fielding a Muslim candidate in Mandalay – or, indeed, anywhere else.
NLD leaders told Reuters they fear antagonising a Buddhist ultranationalist group called Ma Ba Tha, which is led by monks and wields huge influence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
Ma Ba Tha says Islam is eclipsing Buddhism and has called for a boycott of Muslim businesses and a ban on interfaith marriages.
Muslim candidate Khin Maung Thein speaks during an interview with Reuters in Mandalay October 5, 2015. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
Scores of Muslim candidates have been disqualified and voting rights removed from hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar.
Experts say marginalising Muslims could reignite religious unrest, embolden Buddhist radicals and undermine the credibility of what many people hope will be Myanmar’s first free and fair election in 25 years.
Only a dozen or so Muslim candidates are now running nationwide, mostly from Khin Maung Thein’s party, the United National Congress (UNC).
That this muhammadan candidate even thinks of contesting in an area said to be the hotbed of Buddhist radicalism shows that there is more tolerance there than can ever be in any such place under muhammadan control.
It will be interesting to read such an expose on a similar minority candidate in Turkey which is reputed to be secular but is now becoming more extremist.