ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the liminal space between non-violent and violent Buddhist extremism in Myanmar/Burma, using the cases of the Saffron Revolution of 2007 and the ongoing anti-Rohingya protests as examples, with a focus on the role of the Burmese Buddhist monks participating in these incidents. After having explained that Buddhist extremism actually is “a thing”, and that Buddhist non-violence is not always an absolute value but a prima facie duty that can be overridden by more pressing issues (such as the defence of Buddhism and/or a Buddhist society). Schmid’s category of “not-violent” situated between “non-violent” and “violent” will be introduced to illuminate the liminal “grey” space between the “white” of non-violence and the “black” of violence. Finally, it will be argued that the process behind the transition from principled non-violence (of monks) to pragmatic “not-violence” (of monks) to blatant violence (of their lay followers) can be defined, in the terms of Terrorism and Political Violence Studies, as “stochastic violence”: the public vilification of Muslims by extremist monks results in a statistically heightened probability of the outbreak of anti-Muslim violence. This cannot, however, be directly linked to the monks involved and thus comes with “plausible deniability” for them.
