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Myanmar
This Week in AsiaPeople

In Myanmar, relationships between Buddhists, Christians and Muslims is taboo. For these couples, love found a way

  • Negative perceptions of mixed marriages are instilled in the Buddhist-majority country through schools and institutions
  • Until last year, a government school poem read: ‘We hate mixed blood, it will make a race extinct’

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Interfaith couple Julie and Rocky. Photo: Emily Fishbein
Emily Fishbein
When Khine and Min announced their engagement in Yangon, Myanmar, few were in favour. Some of Khine’s friends told her that as a Buddhist woman, she should not marry a Muslim man; others warned her that Min’s proposal was part of a Muslim plot to take over the country. Her family didn’t need to give a reason.

“[There was] already a common understanding about Muslims as bad guys. It was obvious that I was not allowed to marry a Muslim man,” said Khine, 30, who requested the use of pseudonyms for herself and Min, 43.

It was obvious that I was not allowed to marry a Muslim man
Khine

As Myanmar began its transition to democracy in 2011, ultranationalist Buddhist monks, with support from the military, gained increasing influence. One of their main platforms has been focusing on a perceived threat of Muslim expansion “swallowing” the country’s Buddhist identity.

In 2012, the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman allegedly by Rohingya Muslim men in Rakhine State led to widespread violence in the state capital, Sittwe, and the confinement of more than 100,000 Rohingya Muslims in camps, where they still reside.

By 2013, the 969 Movement, led by nationalist Buddhist monks, had emerged and gained mainstream popularity. In addition to advocating for Buddhists to boycott Muslim shops, one of the movement’s key platforms was opposing Buddhist women marrying Muslim men.

Despite fears of Muslim expansion, Muslims make up only a small segment of Myanmar’s population. The 2014 census identified just over 1 million Muslims in the country, comprising some 2 per cent of its population, while an estimated 90 per cent of the country’s 51 million people were Buddhist.

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