Buddhist monk calls UN expert 'whore' over Muslim support
Source: France 24
A prominent Burmese monk has been castigated by both the international community and fellow Buddhists for calling a female UN representative campaigning for the rights of minority Rohingya Muslims a “whore”.
Buddhist monks protest against visiting UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar Yanghee Lee in Rangoon.
Nationalist monk Ashin Wirathu, who is known in Burma for his loose tongue, devoted a diatribe to human rights rapporteur Yanghee Lee, who is battling to highlight the plight of the country’s stateless and isolated Rohingya Muslims, up to 140,000 of which have been displaced by ongoing violence in the poor western state of Rakhine.
“We have already made [our] Race Protection Law public. But this bitch, without studying [the legislation], kept on complaining how it is against human rights,” the Democratic Voice of Burma quoted him as saying.
“Just because some loud-mouthed women say so,” he continued. “Can this bitch be from a respectable background?”
Read more: http://www.france24.com/en/20150121-burma-buddhist-monk-un-expert-whore-anti-muslim-wirathu/
Well, so much for equanimous, pacifist Buddhism!
I hope his fellow monks manage to get a muzzle on Ashin Wirathu PDQ. He sounds like a real misogynist dick!
= new reply since forum marked as read
minority there as well.
My allusion to "peaceful" Buddhism was meant to be a bit sarcastic.
Should have added this, 
, I guess.
Religions generally don't do well when they're in the political majority.
It goes against a major tenet of Buddha's 8-fold path, which is the bit about "right speech." Right speech is supposed to help quell the disturbed emotions in others, to use reason when arguing points of disagreement, and to basically do no harm. He definitely needs to go sit down and meditate on right speech.
There are many different forms of Buddhism, just as there are many different Christian denominations. Burmese Buddhists are primarily Theravada, which is the "little vehicle." Theravadans focus on their own individual and personal liberation from suffering. The vast majority of Buddhists around the world, China, Japan, Mongolia, Tibet, are Mahayana Buddhists, or of the "greater vehicle." Mahayana Buddhists focus on compassion and helping others, who are suffering to be happy. BTW: traditionally, women in Buddhists societies have been 2nd class citizens just like everywhere else and in every other religion that isn't matriarchal. The Dalai Lama and the Karmapa have and are doing a lot to raise the status of women within that tradition. I don't know that much about Chinese and Zen Buddhists, but probably they have their heroes too that are working to raise the status of women also.
Let's hope that Ashin Wirathu will regret his words and apologize. Many leading Buddhist teachers are already reading him the riot act. 
