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WILLIAMCHU
PATIENCE. SeeParamita(Perfection)
PERSECUTIONS
Buddhism has been the object of persecution through-
out its history. While this often involved direct reli-
gious persecution (e.g., persecution at the hands of
dominant iconoclastic religions because of the devo-
tional focus on the BUDDHA IMAGE), if one investigates
the context of any particular episode, one may detect
nonreligious factors that led to, allowed for, or exac-
erbated persecution. Such factors include the role of
Buddhism in authorizing secular power and acting as
the potential and actual supporter of political rivals;
the power of Buddhist institutions as wealthy land-
owners, including the suspected and actual use of
fortresslike monasteries as banks or armories; the in-
volvement of monastic groups in warfare, including
militarized monks and MONASTIC MILITIAS; Bud-
dhism’s role as a mediator of political views at the
grassroots level; Buddhism’s international dimension
and potential representation of foreign rather than na-
tional interests, along with its emphasis on PILGRIM-
AGEwithin and beyond national boundaries; the fact
that important sacred sites, objects of devotion, or es-
teemed religious leaders could develop into rival foci
of power or could reflect local rather than national in-
terests; and Buddhism’s traditional role in EDUCATION,
making it the source of potentially conflicting views
and independent thinking. The fact that it is possible
to draw selectively on aspects of Buddhism to affirm
virtually all types of governance and political ideology
has also contributed to its continued entanglement in
power struggles in the huge transformations that have
swept the modern world.
In some cases, persecutions were aimed against the
representatives of the religion itself—the institutions,
texts, sacred sites, or people. At other times, persecu-
tions were waged against groups with which Buddhism
overlapped or was coterminous.Bamiyan
The relative roles of religious persecution and the
broader factors listed above can be hard to identify.
Let us take by way of example the well-publicized
attack on the remaining traces of Buddhism in
Afghanistan, the demolition in BAMIYANby the Tal-
iban in March 2001 of the two colossal Gandharan
Buddha statues from the third and fourth centuries
C.E. Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel
described this act as an internal religious affair, stat-
ing that “false idols” should be destroyed according to
Islamic teachings. While some Islamic scholars point
out that Islam does not prescribe the destruction of
idols, and some demonstrate that the images of Hin-
duism and Buddhism are not idols in the sense in-
tended in the Qur’an, iconoclasm within Islam can be
based both on the injunctions on Muslims not to wor-
ship idols and on repeated historic precedents, start-
ing with Muhammad’s destruction of the images
around the Ka’ba. A 1996 Taliban ruling against idol-
atry prohibited portraits in public places. Neverthe-
less, since the Bamiyan statues had been standing for
centuries in a predominantly Muslim country, since
some Islamic powers have advocated tolerance toward
sacred objects of other religions, and since the Taliban
had as recently as 1999 identified the statues as part of
the pre-Islamic heritage of Afghanistan rather than as
current objects of idolatry, one must look for further
causes underlying this event.
In addition to the reactionary Islam represented by
the Taliban, there are two other significant factors. One
is the Taliban’s long-standing suppression of the Haz-
ara community in the region of Bamiyan. The other is
the international isolation of the Taliban—only Pak-
istan recognized the Taliban’s right to govern. In ad-
dition, in February 2001 the United Nations imposed
new sanctions on Afghanistan for harboring terrorists.
The importance of the Bamiyan statues for world her-PATIENCE