Muslim protesters torch Buddhist temples, homes in Bangladesh

[AsahinaKimi]

35. Here is a quote from an article ~Buddhism and Violence.

There is a knee-jerk assumption that if an individual or group self-identified as Buddhist commits an act of violence, Buddhism must be the cause. This is unvarnished bigotry, of course. Since Buddhism unequivocally condemns hatred and violence, blaming Buddhism for violence makes no more sense than blaming any other attribute one could assign to the perpetrators, such as race or ethnicity.

Sometimes people self-identified as Buddhist do violent things. When this happens, does it mean these individuals would never have been violent if they hadn't been exposed to Buddhism? Or does it mean Buddhist teachings just didn't sink in?

In southern Thailand Buddhist laypeople and monks are sometimes attacked and slaughtered by Muslim extremists. Some Buddhist laypeople have formed anti-Muslim militias, and even monks arm themselves sometimes for self-protection. Does this mean that if none of these people were Buddhist, it would never in a million years occur to them to form militias or carry arms in response to very real threats? That makes no sense, but some people (ahem) seem to think that's the case.

http://buddhism.about.com/b/2012/06/21/buddhism-and-violence.htm