Free Republic

At the entrance to Thaungtan village there’s a brand new sign, bright yellow, and bearing a message: “No Muslims allowed to stay overnight. No Muslims allowed to rent houses. No marriage with Muslims.” The post was erected in late March by Buddhist residents of the village in Myanmar’s lush Irrawaddy Delta region who signed, or were strong-armed into signing, a document asserting that they wanted to live separately. Since then a couple of other villages across the country have followed suit. Small but viciously insular, these “Buddhist-only” outposts serve as microcosms of the festering religious tensions that threaten Myanmar’s nascent...

Ever since 9/11, every time some place or another on the planet has been struck by a major jihadist act, the mainstream media have reliably come out with stories about “backlash” against Muslims. Not accounts of actual backlash, mind you, but pieces in which various academics, public officials, Muslim leaders, and other sensitive souls have been described as wringing their hands over the dreaded possibility that some of us boorish infidels might respond to this latest action by going on the warpath against innocent Muslims. If these “backlash” articles have been such a staple of post-9/11 journalism, it’s obviously because...