We hear the religious jerk wads railing against one religion or another…..Muslim on Christians, Jews on Muslims, Christians on other Christains….they call they names and some even incite violence toward other religions…….and through all this bullsh*t there is one shining light…..and that light is the sereneness of Buddhism……a religion that teaches inner peace and love…….a religion that I could depend on to be above the typical religious crap……

My day went straight to Hell after reading an article in the UK’s The Guardian………

His name is Wirathu, he calls himself the “Burmese Bin Laden” and he is a Buddhist monk who is stoking religious hatred across Burma.

The saffron-robed 45-year-old regularly shares his hate-filled rants through DVD and social media, in which he warns against Muslims who “target innocent young Burmese girls and rape them”, and “indulge in cronyism”.

To ears untrained in the Burmese language, his sermons seem steady and calm – almost trance-like – with Wirathu rocking back and forth, eyes downcast. Translate his softly spoken words, however, and it becomes clear how his paranoia and fear, muddled with racist stereotypes and unfounded rumours, have helped to incite violence and spread misinformation in a nation still stumbling towards democracy.

“We are being raped in every town, being sexually harassed in every town, being ganged up on and bullied in every town,” Wirathu recently told the Guardian, speaking from the Masoeyein monastery in Mandalay where he is based.

“In every town, there is a crude and savage Muslim majority.”

Wirathu says part of his concern with Islam is that Buddhist women have been converted by force and then killed for failing to follow Islamic rules. He also believes the halal way of killing cattle “allows familiarity with blood and could escalate to the level where it threatens world peace”.

Wirathu openly blames Muslims for instigating the recent violence. A minority population that makes up just 5% of the nation’s total, Wirathu says Burma’s Muslims are being financed by Middle Eastern forces: “The local Muslims are crude and savage because the extremists are pulling the strings, providing them with financial, military and technical power,” he said.

Analysts warn that Wirathu’s seeming freedom to preach as he pleases – in addition to his influence over other monks, who have also started preaching against Islam – should be taken as a wake-up call to the rest of the world. “If a similar hate movement like Burma’s ‘969’ movement – which spreads hate speech and hate symbols – [existed] specifically against, say, the Jews in Europe, no European government would tolerate it,” Burmese activist and London School of Economics visiting fellow Maung Zarni said.

In a chilling sermon last month, Wirathu warned that the “population explosion” of Burma’s Muslims could mean only one thing: “They will capture our country in the end.”

And just like his namesake, this “Burmese Bin Laden” made a brazen call to arms: “Once we [have] won this battle, we will move on to other Muslim targets.”

Of all the world’s religions I thought Buddhism was above this sort of thing…..I guess there is NO religion that is above these petty little issues….but this from a Buddhist monk?