ABSTRACT
In the contemporary world the meeting of buddhism and Islam is most often imagined as one of confrontation. Indeed, if anything is known about this ‘clash of civilizations’ it is that muslims destroyed the last vestiges of buddhism in its homeland of India.1 and although this was not really the case historically,2 the idea of muslim persecution of buddhism was recently vividly revived in the popular imagination when the Taliban destroyed the ‘idolatrous’ statues at bamiyan. This wanton act of destruction seemed to readily confirm the narrative that buddhist historiography has maintained for centuries, which claims the demise of buddhism was solely the fault of muslims rather than their own failure to secure imperial support or distinguish buddhism from the amorphous category of hinduism in an age of tantra and bhakti. moreover, the negative view of Islam that permeates the buddhist tradition also neatly coincides with contemporary notions about these two traditions. namely, Islam is bad and violent, while buddhism is good and peaceful, a view readily apotheosized in our media-saturated culture by the iconic images of the scowling and menacing osama bin laden on the one hand, and the jolly and benevolent dalai lama on the other. of course, such views are nothing new.3 as a range of scholars following in the footsteps of edward said have shown, the Western ‘construction’ of buddhism and Islam in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries followed two distinct paths: while buddhism was held up as a rational, post-enlightenment
1 This is the common view in both popular and academic literature, see, for example, lawrence sutin, All is Change: The Two Thousand-Year Journey of Buddhism to the West (new york, 2006), pp. 45-6; and Jonathan s. Walters, Finding Buddhists in Global History (Washington, 1998), pp. 45-6.
