Word: buddhists
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...votes of the displaced, and their families in the Tamil-majority north, could play a decisive role in a tight contest. Rajapaksa and Fonseka could split the majority Sinhala Buddhist vote, leaving Sri Lanka's Tamil and Muslim populations with powerful leverage. (Those who have been displaced during Sri Lanka's long conflict are overwhelmingly Tamil and Muslim.) President Rajapaksa's supporters have already begun their election work in the north, and the opposition is likely to follow suit. The vote will be a referendum, not just on who gets credit for winning Sri Lanka...
...addition to training some students to be Christian ministers—a program that was one of Harvard’s original goals—Gyatso says that the Divinity School is developing a Buddhist ministry curriculum to complement its Christian counterpart...
...Forty other Sai Khao citizens have banded together as a unit of a village militia called the Or Ror Bor. Nearly all of the 25,000-strong Or Ror Bor operating in the three provinces are Buddhist, and their corps was inspired by no less an authority than the Queen of Thailand. In late 2004, after three Buddhists were brutally beheaded by militants, Queen Sirikit gave an impassioned speech advising the military to teach villagers how to defend themselves with firearms. Facing the cameras, she announced that even she "would learn to shoot guns without my glasses...
...guns proliferate, there are also worrisome signs that some Buddhists are straying from a defensive posture into vigilante justice. In June, 11 Muslims were shot dead by a posse of gunmen while praying at the al-Furqan mosque in Narathiwat province. Official speculation first centered on Muslim radicals turning against their own. Later, though, police issued an arrest warrant for a Buddhist militiaman from the neighboring village, where a rubber tapper had been killed the day before...
...With the violence showing no signs of dissipating, Buddhist civilian militias patrol potentially dangerous street junctions or congregate in temple grounds where they peer through monsoon downpours with shotguns at the ready. One morning at the temple of Chang Hai Tok village in Pattani province, a batch of Iron Ladies, outfitted all in black, runs through military exercises. Surveying the training from behind a trio of Buddha statues, 60-year-old abbot Pracharoonkittisophano shrugs his shoulders when asked whether women twirling rifles, along with a shooting range behind his sleeping quarters, elicits any spiritual discomfort. "Guns are normal things...