Johan Elverskog: How Buddhist & Muslim Stereotypes Conceal The Real History

Johan Elverskog, history professor and chair of religious studies at Southern Methodist University, talks to Tricycle editor and publisher James Shaheen about common misconceptions about the history of Islam and Buddhism, which are often rooted in stereotypes. Elverskog debunks the assertion that the Mughal invasions were the sole cause of Buddhism’s waning on the subcontinent, a long-held narrative often used to justify Islamophobia.

Transcript

Hello,

And welcome to another episode of Tricycle Talks.

I'm James Shaheen,

Editor and publisher of Tricycle,

The Buddhist Review.

Today,

I'll be chatting with Johan Elverskog,

History professor and chair of religious studies at Southern Methodist University.

Professor Elverskog is also author of several books,

Including the subject of today's talk,

Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road,

Which explores how two of the world's great traditions interacted and helped to shape one another on the ancient trade route.

We'll be focusing on the off-sighted historical claim that Islam and the Mughal invasions during the 12th through 16th centuries were largely responsible for the decline of Buddhism on the Indian subcontinent.

It's a claim Professor Elverskog takes some issue with while challenging commonly held stereotypes about both religions.

Johan Elverskog,

Thank you so much for joining us.

I want to say how much I enjoyed your book,

Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road,

And especially because it does so much to clear up so many historical misconceptions.

So I'd like to start with those misconceptions.

Can you explain a little bit about how people have traditionally accounted for the demise of Buddhism on the Indian subcontinent?

Johan Elverskog Well,

Thank you very much for your kind words.

And thank you for inviting me to be part of this discussion and having the article or the excerpt published in the latest issue of Tricycle.

And as the issue kind of lays out,

Which is basically the introduction of the book,

Is the standard story that everybody knows and it's found in academic monographs to travel brochures is the story of Nalanda and the Turkic Muslim Buddhist destruction of it in the beginning of the 13th century.

And I think a lot of people know that story.

And when I call it out and say that it's not necessarily happened the way that everyone claims that it is,

They think that I'm denying that Muslims did not destroy Nalanda.

And that's specifically not what I'm doing.

What I'm trying to point out is that this one story has come to encapsulate more than a thousand years of Buddhist Muslim history.

And so whenever this encounter is brought up,

Everyone says,

Well,

As we all know,

Muslims destroyed Buddhism,

End of story.

And so what I wanted to use with the story of Nalanda is to say that this is,

It was a horrific event,

But it's not the whole picture.

You know,

As I point out,

The history is filled with a lot of grays and shadows and things like that.

But we are a storytelling species and we love to have cause and effect.

And,

You know,

Monocause explanations are nice,

But they don't really tell the whole picture.

So what I start with in the Nalanda story is,

Okay,

So this did happen without a doubt,

But what else happened?

And so that's kind of where it starts.

I mean,

What I like to point out is I'm not the first person to make this argument.

I mean,

One of the most famous scholars of Islam was Marshall Hodson,

Who wrote the famous magnum opus,

Three volume,

The Venture of Islam.

And he was the first one who pointed out that this story of Nalanda was deeply problematic.

And if you don't mind,

I'd like to read what he wrote.

Sure,

Go ahead.

And he said,

Probably Buddhism did not yield to Islam so much by direct conversion as by a more insidious route,

The sources of recruitment to the relatively unaristocratic Buddhism.

For instance,

Villagers coming to the cities and adopting a new allegiance to accord to their new status turned now rather to Islam rather than to an outdated Buddhism.

The record of the massacre of one monastery in Bengal,

Combined with the inherited Christian conception of Muslims as the devotees of the sword,

Has yielded the widely repeated statement that the Muslims violently destroyed Buddhism in India.

Muslims were not friendly to it,

But there's no evidence that they simply killed off all the Buddhists or even all the monks.

It will take much active revision before such assessments of the role of Islam,

Based largely on unexamined preconceptions,

Are eliminated even from educated mentalities.

So he wrote that in 1977,

And now we're 40 years down the line,

And we're still dealing with the same issues.

And so that's what the book tries to do.

What actually happened when Buddhists and Muslims met each other?

Right.

So could you talk a little bit more about other factors that played into the decline of Buddhism in India and Western Asia?

Yeah,

I mean,

I mean,

If anybody's interested in what a great book that came out recently was by Giovanni Verardi,

And it's called hardships of the downfall of Buddhism in India,

And he has a long list of explanations of why it happened.

One of the main reasons was the Gupta dynasty ruled from the third to the sixth century,

Basically attacked Buddhism and supported Hinduism.

They destroyed the famous Nagarjundakonda.

There was also the emergence of married monks.

There was doctrinal debates between the Buddhist and the Brahmin,

Shaped by the theists,

Pasupathas and the Bhagavatas.

And then there's all these political divisions between the Brahmanic kingdoms of the Deccan and the territories controlled by the Buddhists.

And so all of this was happening within India.

You know,

Another common explanation is that Buddhism was kind of melding,

Particularly in the tantric forms of Buddhism was melding into the larger Hindu practices.

On top of all of this,

There was a lot of economic and this is one of the things that I look at extensively in the book is the economic situation that had split apart the sub-Asian continent into three kind of economic zones.

And so,

You know,

Buddhists were moving more to the towards the east,

And you know,

Muslims were taking over the west.

And so both of these traditions continue to thrive in their own spheres on this frontier borderland area.

But that one episode of things going haywire is what we all focus on.

Darrell Bock You know,

There are a lot of people in this country right now who are angry with those they'd consider to be Muslim apologists.

So in response to your article,

Surprisingly,

Perhaps not surprisingly,

Some of our readers have leveled that charge against you.

How would you respond to that?

David Schoening Yeah,

One of the comments that I found particularly interesting was,

You know,

Somebody put,

You know,

I have a distinguished professor title,

And they,

You know,

Put that in quotes,

And then said,

Oh,

Well,

Great,

He gets his money from the Saudis.

So they're kind of combining,

You know,

Islamophobia with anti-intellectualism.

You know,

There's really nothing to say.

I mean,

If somebody wants to say that I'm supporting ISIS,

Or getting my salary from the Saudis,

Which is all completely ludicrous.

I mean,

The fact of the matter is,

I mean,

Everybody needs to realize that every religion is a work in progress,

Right?

You can't put it in a bubble and say,

You know,

Islam is x.

Whatever you say about Islam,

At that particular point in time,

At that particular cultural space in that particular theological orientation,

It's one thing.

How it is somewhere else at a different point in time is going to be something different.

And so that's one of the main things I stress in the book is that there's never been this kind of monolithic two forces of Buddhism and Islam.

Such a thing never existed.

And we like to use those in introductory textbooks and,

You know,

Categorizing the human experience.

But it really misses how religion functions.

And so I hope that anybody who making those claims,

They would,

You know,

Read the book,

Think about what I've said,

Look at the sources,

And if they can find other sources that counteract what I think is what actually happened,

I'll be more than happy to have a discussion.

But throwing out these kind of Islamophobic statements,

And you know,

Anti-intellectualism,

Etc.

I don't think there's much point in engaging with those kind of discussions.

Why do you think this reductionist narrative persists that the Muslims simply swept in and wiped out Buddhist culture overnight?

Well,

It was,

You know,

Again,

As I pointed out before,

We like to have very easy answers,

You know,

Where do we come from?

Well,

You know,

The Bible tells us,

Well,

God created us and we go from there.

And then of course,

If you kind of push back,

There's a lot of other reasons that probably explain why we were here.

And the story of,

You know,

The Muslims came in and destroyed Nalanda,

And that was the end of the show is a very simple story.

It's very,

You know,

And it also fits all of our stereotypes of,

You know,

Particularly now in the modern world that Buddhism is the,

You know,

The peaceful,

Rational,

Scientific,

You know,

In tune with,

You know,

Modern physics and,

You know,

Medical theories and all the rest of it.

And Islam,

On the other hand,

Is of course,

You know,

Backwards and primitive and violent and burka-clad women,

Etc.

,

Etc.

So it fits all these perfect stereotypes.

And it's a very simplistic story.

And the fact of the matter is,

This story was initially concocted by Buddhists themselves,

You know,

In order to explain their failure of,

You know,

Why they lost,

You know,

India.

And the important thing to understand is that,

You know,

This happened in India,

At the same time Buddhism was exploding in other parts of Asia.

So it's not like Buddhism disappeared.

And even in South Asia,

I mean,

Buddhism continued to thrive.

I mean,

Under Muslim rule for centuries,

We have all these inscriptions of,

You know,

Even in Afghanistan up to the 11th century of Buddhist communities being supported.

We have evidence,

I mean,

All the way to the 17th century that Buddhists were active in India.

So the whole idea that they,

You know,

Came to an end in the 13th century is just wrong.

But again,

It fits these kind of paradigms.

And so when Buddhists created this kind of historiographical narrative,

You know,

In order to explain their own failure,

Whichever – it was a theological,

Economic,

Political,

Environmental,

Whatever,

They give one reason.

Muslims did it.

I mean,

As I point out in the book is that this was adopted by,

You know,

The Hindus later to explain their situation.

It was adopted by the British Raj.

And then in the 19th century,

It was continued in,

You know,

The Western kind of creation of Buddhist modernism.

And so it fits all of these easy,

You know,

Standard narrative tropes.

It has the stereotypes,

It's simplistic,

And it explains everything.

But again,

As I was trying to point out,

It's far more complicated.

Yeah,

You know,

I think in each of those cases,

It's interesting to ask whom does it serve?

And in the case of the British Raj,

How did it serve them to say it was the Muslims who had done it?

The British,

When they came into India,

The people who are working on this colonial period,

One of the major things that they instituted was kind of the categorization of India,

That there were Hindus on one side and Muslims on the other.

And basically,

It was this kind of divide and rule strategy.

And so within this context,

I mean,

Again,

A lot of people who work on mobile period or Muslim period,

They look at there was a lot more,

You know,

Multiculturalism and pluralism or whatever kind of terms you want to talk about it.

And the Raj broke this apart in order to justify their own colonial rule.

And so as a result,

You know,

The Muslims,

You know,

Became the bad guys that quote from Marshall Hodson points out,

You know,

Christian West has always kind of,

You know,

Justified itself,

You know,

The whole classic Orientalist argument of Edward Said,

The whole Christian West is,

You know,

Built on the idea that they're better than the Muslim East.

And so when they go into India,

The Muslims are the bad guys,

And they were the ones who the British Raj had to defeat.

I mean,

They defeated,

You know,

The finally the moguls in 1857.

And so they were the bad guys,

They were the ones in power.

And so again,

It fits this paradigm of,

You know,

The Muslims are the bad guys,

You know,

Look what they did to Nalanda,

You know,

And again,

It was the British who discovered all these Buddhist monuments.

And so again,

It fits this whole larger colonial project of,

You know,

Putting the Muslims as the bad side.

And of course,

This has been adopted by,

You know,

Hindu fundamentalists today,

And all the horror shows that are happening in India.

Pete Perhaps I was naive,

But I was at first surprised by the fierceness of some of the responses and the anger that it aroused.

And I wonder,

Have you received much pushback from the academy?

Or is this pretty much the academic consensus?

David Schoenbrod No,

No,

The consensus is basically my argument.

You know,

I don't know if it confirms anything.

But I mean,

You know,

The book won the,

You know,

Best book from the American Academy of Religion,

Which is the,

You know,

The leading scholarly community of religion studies scholars,

I mean,

So they recognize this was good work.

But again,

It pushes all these buttons that everybody wants to cling to,

You know,

Muslims are bad,

Buddhists are good.

And then when you kind of challenge it,

People,

You know,

React.

And I think the larger context of this,

Of course,

Is when you think about what's happening in Burma,

You know,

Buddhists have been kind of going for 150 years that we're righteous,

We're good,

We're the best religion on the planet.

And then now you have to deal with genocide.

And so maybe some of this anger is,

You know,

Dealing with the fact that,

Well,

Now you have to explain yourself,

You know,

Was Buddhism as great as you always thought it was?

And historically,

Of course,

No,

Every religion is a bloody mess.

And so Buddhism has not avoided that.

And scholarship over the last 30 years made that abundantly clear,

I mean,

Looking at misogyny and violence and etc,

Etc.

And so,

You know,

Maybe that's why this kind of anger is there.

I mean,

We live in Trump's America,

So there's anger all around.

Right.

Now,

I was surprised because I had that sense that the academic consensus was that that was a rather simplistic narrative.

And it was why I was so taken with it,

Because you explained it so clearly and cleared up,

As I said,

When I began so many misconceptions.

You're listening to James Shaheen In Conversation with Johann Elverskog.

You can find Johann's feature article,

When the Monks Meet the Muslims,

In the spring 2018 issue of Tricycle,

The Buddhist Review.

Also in this issue is Jungen-based journalist Joseph Friedman's,

Who is the Real Aung San Suu Kyi?

Five Takes on Myanmar's Controversial Political Leader,

Whose Silence Amid Violence Against Burma's Rohingya Muslim Minority has Drawn Worldwide Condemnation.

Visit tricycle.

Org to read these and other articles.

Watch our monthly feature films.

Interact with some of today's most compelling teachers in our monthly Dharma Talk series.

Or download one of our ebooks on Buddhist teachings.

Now,

Let's return to the conversation with James and Johann.

So you say something that surprises a lot of people that Buddhism and Islam in many ways can be very much alike.

And this again,

Runs counter to people's impressions,

Or maybe I should say stereotypes of Buddhism and Islam.

You know,

In what ways are they alike historically?

Yeah,

I mean,

I use that term and I know it's caused endless headaches ever since I wrote this 10 years ago,

Because everybody picks it up.

And again,

Because it challenges all these stereotypes.

And again,

You know,

The larger aim of the project was to challenge these stereotypes.

And again,

You know,

Buddhists are good,

Muslims are bad.

That's,

You know,

The standard narrative that everybody follows.

And then again,

When you look at the historical,

I mean,

I'm using,

You know,

The Buddhist Muslim encounter to build on this and you know,

And the religion is changing.

And,

You know,

And again,

The organizing principle of the book is that each chapter looks at one function of human experience.

I mean,

So the first chapter looks at how do Buddhism and Islam deal with economics,

You know,

And basically comes down to the fact that both of them are prosperity theologies.

And this largely explains how incredibly successful they were,

You know,

Dynamic,

Expansive religion,

You know,

Taoism didn't do it.

Hinduism didn't do it,

You know,

Why did these two succeed?

Well,

Both of them are tied into,

You know,

Large imperial states of resource and,

You know,

Economic extraction.

And this is tied into Buddhist theology.

I mean,

And then,

You know,

And then it goes on to the second chapter,

Which looks like understandings,

You know,

How do they conceive of each other,

And both of them,

You know,

Have negative views,

But a lot of them have positive views.

But more importantly,

They also do a lot of borrowing of each other.

And so like,

You know,

Like the Kali chakra Tantra,

Which famously has the Shambhala myth,

Which,

You know,

Prophesies is that in the future,

Muslims will take over the world and then you know,

The 25th ruler of Shambhala will ride out with the Buddhist army and annihilate everybody and usher in the Buddhist Golden Age.

These kind of simplistic,

You know,

Not simplistic,

But these conceptualizations show one way that the Buddhist responded,

But at the same time,

The whole cosmological structure of the of the Kali chakra Tantra is based on Neoplatonic thought that they got from the Muslims.

So here's this kind of great,

You know,

Encounter,

You know,

They hate the Muslims,

But they're adopting their whole kind of intellectual system in the process of this,

You know,

And then the third chapter,

You know,

It does the same thing with visual culture,

Looking at the development of the portraits of Muhammad,

You know,

Again,

That's a big issue in recent years.

And the fact is that,

You know,

There was a tradition of portraying Muhammad and I look at,

You know,

What was the Buddhist role in doing that,

I think was very important.

And so again,

You know,

And then the final chapter looks at food.

And so these are all things that,

You know,

All people deal with,

And all religions do it.

And so by saying that,

You know,

These religions are the same,

You know,

When you look at economics,

You look at food,

You look at art,

There are a lot of similar parallels.

And that's what I was trying to do.

You know,

You also mentioned that they were both religions initially of the cosmopolitan elite.

Can you say something about that?

Yeah,

That ties into this kind of prosperity theology.

I mean,

Both of these traditions,

You know,

Developed in particular moments in time.

I mean,

In the Buddhist case,

It's the so called Axial Age,

Where these massive social,

Economic,

Political transformations happening from 600 to 300 BCE.

And,

You know,

These are the larger urbanization,

Introduction of iron,

Growth of larger states,

And then most importantly,

The introduction of money.

And many scholars have shown,

Particularly people like Gregory Shopen,

That Buddhism was kind of the religion that promoted,

If you want to call it capitalism and individualism,

And,

You know,

Go out and make your money,

As opposed to other traditions,

Which kind of,

You know,

Did the conservative and said,

No,

Let's not support this social mobility and transformation,

Most famously Hinduism in that regard.

And the same thing happened with Islam.

Islam came out of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula,

Tribal society,

You can still use that term,

You know,

And then it expanded as this,

You know,

Massive empire that tied together,

You know,

Three continents in one kind of economic system.

And so Islam and Buddhism had to deal with these economic realities.

And both of them promoted this kind of cosmopolitan,

Urban capitalist or merchant elite.

And so these were a lot of the followers of the tradition.

At the same time,

Again,

Talking going back to the question of like,

How are they the same?

In both traditions,

They glorified the production of wealth and getting money and all the rest of it.

They also have radical critiques of it.

And so Buddhism famously,

You know,

Has the institution of the monks,

But the lady on the other hand,

Are not doing what the monks are doing.

And,

You know,

It seems that Islam stressing the value of money.

And there's a famous line of one of the mobile rulers who says that,

You know,

The best thing for a Muslim to be is a merchant and make money.

And that's been part of the Islamic tradition forever.

But at the same time,

Islam is very much geared to helping the poor has a very powerful message of equality.

So both of the traditions are both simultaneously supporting this kind of cosmopolitan urban capitalist and how that's anachronistic to use with this kind of money making elite.

And so,

You know,

Again,

The point that I raise in the book is that Buddhism ran that show for 1000 years.

And then when Islam came in,

They took over and you know,

The cosmopolitan elite for multiple reasons,

Converted to Islam.

Right.

You mentioned that that in many ways,

The conversions were a very vital point in the success of Islam.

Yeah,

But it goes in various ways.

I mean,

We also know Buddhists,

You know,

Moved around.

I mean,

Some Muslims came,

Some of them opened the doors to the to the city.

And,

You know,

We have records that Buddhists were the ones who traded and sold goods with the Muslims.

And Muslims,

They were the ones who could talk with the Buddhists,

They were they were on the same page,

They wanted to build this kind of laissez faire economy.

And so there was a lot of back and forth between these two traditions in the earliest connection.

But I mean,

Again,

With the conversion,

I think,

You know,

I mean,

I use the line from Peter Brown,

The famous historian of Christianity in the late antique period,

And he says,

You know,

The stories of Christianization are the most incorrect when they provide a monolithic explanation.

And so he's saying,

You know,

He has the great,

You know,

Line where we're like little boys on the seashore looking at the waves coming in to break down the castle.

And so,

You know,

It's kind of like when we talk about,

You know,

Islam coming in,

We say,

Oh,

Right,

Here comes Islam,

Everything else is dead.

Everybody becomes a Muslim.

And that,

Of course,

Is not what happened.

I mean,

Many Buddhists moved,

As I talked to them moved into Central Asia,

A lot of them moved towards the east towards Kashmir and Tibet,

Other ones moved south,

And other ones,

You know,

Converted.

And again,

Why they converted is,

Is probably as many reasons who the people who converted.

So I think it's important to understand that it's far more complicated than just this,

You know,

Islam shows up,

And everything changes.

Right.

I want to go back for a second to your statement that,

You know,

Within Buddhism,

There was this glorification of wealth in a similar way to Islam.

I'm just wondering,

Though,

If you could say a little bit more about how one squares the Buddhist ideal of renunciation with,

On the other hand,

Glorification of wealth creation,

Was it simply the separation of the laity and the the monastics?

Um,

That's one very large,

Important factor.

And I think in the West,

I think when a lot of people think about Buddhism,

The first thing that pops in their head is a monk.

And you know,

And again,

In the way that Buddhism has developed in the West,

What you know,

People do as Buddhist,

Particularly meditating,

That was an exclusive practice of monastics,

And even a very,

Very,

Very small elite core within the monastic elite.

And,

You know,

I mean,

I was,

You know,

Looking at an article about the demographics of Buddhist communities in the medieval period.

And,

You know,

I mean,

In Southeast Asia,

The numbers are about 1% of the Buddhist population was monastic.

So 99% are the laity.

And so one of the things that I want to stress in all my work is if we're going to talk about Buddhism,

Or Buddhist history,

We have to include the other 99%.

And in that regard,

You know,

One of the things I mean,

The Buddha was very much,

You know,

Kind of a genius in social engineering,

And he's the one who created the monastic tradition.

He said,

You know,

These are the people who are doing the really important work seeking enlightenment,

Transcending desire,

And,

You know,

Breaking the bonds of karma.

But at the same time,

He was very,

You know,

Rational and recognizing that,

You know,

Not a lot of people wanted to do this,

It's very,

Very hard,

It takes 9 million lifetimes to achieve it.

It's for the very hardcore,

You know,

Morally righteous people who can do this,

And what are the other people going to do.

And so you know,

This is the tradition of the relics,

There's all these rituals,

And etc,

Etc.

But,

You know,

Tied into that is the production of merit,

Right?

And how do you produce merit is you transform financial capital into merit,

You know,

Building monasteries,

Supporting monks and all the rest of it.

So at the same time,

He again,

As I mentioned before,

He's very much supporting this kind of economic expansion that happens in this Axial Age period.

At the same time,

He radically critiques it as the fundamental problem of all suffering and desire and etc,

Etc.

I'm fascinated with this notion that Buddhism and Islam and their exchange influenced and helped to shape each other so much.

Can you give us a few favorable examples of cultural exchange between the two?

Well,

I mean,

I mentioned some of the earlier ones,

I mean,

I really like this,

The Kali Chakra one,

Which,

You know,

Again,

Has this,

You know,

Iconic story,

Which kind of like captures the Nalanda story at the same time,

That the Buddhists will come and destroy all the Muslims.

But again,

The whole kind of cosmological and astrological organization of the text is a result of this.

You know,

I think the development of the Portraits of Muhammad within,

You know,

Ilhanid Iran is a very great example.

Other ones that I very much like is the transmission of paper.

You know,

Buddhists gave that technology to the Muslim world,

As many people pointed out,

It's very fortuitous that it did actually happen,

Because,

You know,

You can't have a tradition that's focused on the book,

If you don't have access to it.

So as many people pointed out,

With the rise of Protestantism,

It was very fortuitous that the printing press was around.

And it's the same with Islam,

That paper came in from China,

Or on the paper,

Paper Road,

As Jonathan Bloom has called it.

And then also tied into that is the transmission of printing technology.

I mean,

Again,

There's always the missing piece,

You know,

Talk about,

Well,

There's printing in China,

And then there's Gutenberg,

What happened in the middle?

Well,

They're Muslims,

They didn't do anything.

But again,

You know,

We had all this evidence that Buddhists did actually transmit all of these printing technologies to the Muslim world.

So there's three that I think are pretty important.

I'd like to bring this into the present for a moment and discuss Myanmar if we can,

And the persecution of the Rohingya Muslim minority there.

Do you think the violence is in any way fueled by the role that the Muslim plays in the Buddhist imagination?

Is it in any way related to the historical trends you talk about?

I think it's definitely a part of it.

I mean,

I've never been to Burma myself.

And as you pointed out,

I'm not a Burma specialist.

But I mean,

I've spent a bit of time in Thailand,

Just over the border,

Of course,

Thais and Burmese don't necessarily see eye to eye on many things.

But I mean,

In Thailand,

There's a lot of monasteries that have iconographic representations of the destruction of the land.

You know,

It is kind of like you can point to it,

This is what the Muslims do.

And so that's certainly in the background.

It's part of Buddhist historiography and has been for the last thousand years.

So I'm sure it's part of the 969 or Mahabharata's kind of,

You know,

General discourse.

But as people who work on Burma are more pointing out,

A lot of this stuff really has to do with kind of like global Islamophobia.

I mean,

All of the tropes that they use,

You know,

Muslims have too many kids,

Etc,

Etc,

Is really part of this,

You know,

Modern Islamophobia.

And so a lot of the arguments that they use,

You know,

It can be,

You know,

The alt right here,

Neo Nazis in Germany,

They're using the same kind of language.

I mean,

It's all part of this internet discourse and all the rest of it.

At the same time,

Buddhism,

Or Buddhist in Burma can also point back and say,

Well,

Look what happened at Nalanda.

And so this,

Again,

Revives the whole story all over again,

Much like the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas did.

Here we go again.

And so I think even though I'm not sure if they do use it in their discourse,

But it definitely fits the paradigm of what the arguments that they're making that they have to defend the Buddhist nation of Burma from these Muslims who have too many kids,

And they're trying to,

You know,

Convert us to Islam,

Etc,

Etc.

Right,

The characterization of Muslims in Burma right now is identical to the far right elsewhere.

So I was just wondering about that,

Because it seems to fit so nicely into the whole narrative.

So is there anything else that you'd like to say about the book or what you were hoping to accomplish?

Because it truly is a wonderful book.

I advise all of our readers to take a look at it.

What were you thinking when you wrote this book?

What effect did you hope that it would have?

Did you guess that it would go beyond the academy?

Dr.

David Obama was running for president,

But who knew what was going to happen?

And a lot of it was about my own personal thing was,

You know,

Critique of what was going on in Iraq critique what was going on in Afghanistan,

Just like the toxic Islamophobia that was going on.

But as I talk about in the book,

That was,

You know,

Kind of the immediate impetus,

But I've been interested in this question since I was a teenager going back to my fascination with with the beat writers,

And particularly Brian Gison,

Who had,

You know,

In the 50s was already mixing and matching Arabic calligraphy and Chinese calligraphy,

Which is kind of the the seed that was planted in my mind more than 30 years ago.

You know,

Again,

As with any book,

I was talking to my academic colleagues,

And I had like three larger arguments that I was making about,

You know,

Buddhism,

Area studies,

Models,

And how to think about religion.

I mean,

I had a hope that it would go beyond the academy or anything.

Many academics always have that hope.

And I'm very happy that it did.

And hopefully people will read it,

Especially people who,

You know,

Accuse me of gaslighting and all the rest of it,

That they can read it,

See the evidence that I that I have in there.

And if they have other evidence that counteracts my larger argument,

I'd be more than happy to engage with it and talk about it.

And so that's how academia moves forward.

Yeah,

You know,

I think my guess is that in part,

It went beyond the academy,

Because it was prescient and ever more relevant given the Islamophobia that seems to be gripping the West right now.

So it seemed elucidating.

And although it is 10 years old,

Or a little bit older,

I think it's more relevant,

Perhaps now than it was back then.

How's your thinking evolved since then?

Um,

That's a great question.

I think I've been buried in all these other projects,

I haven't had time to really go back and think about it.

But invariably now,

I mean,

With the disaster,

And it started with Sri Lanka,

And all the rest of it.

And then now what's happening in Burma,

It always keeps circling back.

And,

You know,

I just keep going back to these initial arguments that we need to move beyond these kind of very simplistic stereotypes that drive this kind of toxic atmosphere and also a genocide.

I mean,

This kind of dehumanization is built,

I mean,

As a kind of piece in Tricycle says,

We need better stories.

And in order to challenge these,

You know,

Very simplistic than the lambda story in particular,

We need to really understand what did happen.

And again,

If you go read the book,

There was an enormous amount of back and forth between Buddhism and Buddhism changed as a result of meeting Muslims,

Muslims changed as a result of meeting Buddhists.

And so it's not all violence.

And so again,

If we can understand that,

Hopefully,

I have enough martial enough material in order to make the argument,

But I think I do,

You know,

Then we can have a more sensible discussion.

I just like to thank you again for your contribution and for your wonderful book and I hope our readers give it a chance and pick it up and read it.

It's called Islam and Buddhism on the Silk Road.

Johan Alberskog,

Thank you so much for joining us on Tricycle Talks.

Thank you very much.

You've been listening to Tricycle Talks produced by Paul Ruist at Argo Studios in New York City.

Let us know what you think of this podcast.

Write us at feedback at tricycle.

Org.

I'm James Sheehan,

Editor and publisher of Tricycle,

The Buddhist Review.

Thank you for listening.