Conflict as an opportunity

Tatsushi Arai is an independent scholar of conflict resolution from Japan and an associate professor of peacebuilding and conflict transformation at the School for International Training (SIT) Graduate Institute in the United States. Mr Arai has extensive practical experience in diverse conflict-affected societies, including Myanmar. Here he gives his views on Myanmar’s interreligious conflicts and the proposed interfaith marriage law.

Religious differences play a significant role in Myanmar’s intercommunal conflicts. How can these conflicts be overcome?

The most important long-term effort to overcome these conflicts is to facilitate sustained humanising dialogue between Myanmar’s diverse religious communities and within each community. This dialogue must take into consideration not only religious differences, but also the role of nationalism, ethnicity, gender, seniority, socio-economic class, urban-rural divides and regional differences. These are all interconnected causes of the religion-inspired conflicts.

What concrete steps can we take to initiate a dialogue like this?

Two kinds of activities are especially important to carry out interreligious dialogue in Myanmar. The first is the establishment of inter-religious peacebuilding committees. We have seen a good example of this in Mandalay in the aftermath of the recent communal violence. These committees can proactively verify the accuracy of potentially harmful rumours, become a bridge-builder between opposing groups and help create a safe space for conciliation dialogue between conflict parties.

The second suggested activity is to identify and share useful methods of interreligious dialogue across regions. One simple and useful approach that I have used in different ethnic Burmese communities is a role reversal between people of different religious backgrounds. This approach asks Buddhists to place themselves in Muslims’ shoes and Muslims to place themselves in Buddhists’ shoes. Hindus, Christians, and others can adopt the same method and adjust it to meet their unique needs. Once people are placed in different roles, I ask members of each group to discuss and present what they think is the most beautiful aspect of the religion to which they were assigned. After group presentations, all dialogue participants will then be asked to represent their own religious identities, form discussion groups based on their real identities, and answer the same question as before in the presence of the other religious groups. Interfaith dialogue of this nature can be done in communities, classrooms and workplaces throughout Myanmar.

What is your opinion on the proposed interfaith marriage law?

I have met many prominent Buddhist and Muslim leaders and learned their perspectives on this subject. I see the serious concerns on the part of the Buddhist leaders advocating the law. However, I do not see why and how the proposed bills on religious conversion, marriage, monogamy and population control, with a clause on the punishment of violators, could possibly resolve the social roots of their concerns. In other words, I recognise a significant gap between the means and ends that the law’s proponents have in mind.

What then should be done to address the underlying issues that concern advocates of these laws?

Let us take the stated objective of population control as an example and illustrate how the principle of conflict resolution applies to the social context in which the marriage law has been debated. To begin with, to the best of my knowledge, there is no conclusive evidence to demonstrate that either polygamy or interreligious marriage per se is responsible for excessive population growth. On the other hand, there is well-established evidence to show that poverty and lack of education drive population growth, especially when these social factors affect girls and their mothers.

Given this empirical understanding of the issue, I wonder what would happen if we reallocate the significant resources and political capital spent on the marriage law campaign to well-organised, multi-year initiatives that dramatically expand basic education and reduce poverty, starting with the regions in which interreligious marriages have been a serious issue.

Once a significant portion of the previously uneducated population receives basic education, and once opportunities for livelihood development expand, young girls and their families can make better choices about their marriages and their religious practices.

Finally, and most fundamentally, senior religious leaders on both sides must come face to face to openly discuss the historical roots of their unprocessed fears about the other side’s threatening presence, and encourage their community members to do the same at the grassroots level.