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We think of Buddhism as a faith of peace, rooted in compassion, patience, and nonviolence. But across South and Southeast Asia today, the robe is being turned into a weapon as radical monks and nationalist movements unleash hatred and war.
In The Robe and the Sword, acclaimed journalist Sonia Faleiro travels from Sri Lanka's riot-scarred towns to the homes of refugees along the Myanmar border to Thailand's fortified temples, uncovering how militant monks have transformed a tradition of nonviolence into a tool of terror. She reveals how Sri Lanka's Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara incited mobs against Muslims, how Myanmar's Ashin Wirathu helped ignite a genocide, and how elements of Thailand's clergy have entrenched military rule.
Through vivid portraits of zealots, survivors, and dissident monks fighting to reclaim their faith, Faleiro delivers an unflinching investigation into the colonial trauma, economic grievances, and political forces fueling a dangerous new extremism. The Robe and the Sword is a searing and indispensable work of narrative nonfiction, urgently needed to understand how sacred traditions are being weaponized, and what is at stake for the future of our in
Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia, Sonia Faleiro, Columbia Global Reports, Paperback, 108 pages, $18.00
Sonia Faleiro is the author of The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing, a New York Times Editor's Choice and finalist for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars, a finalist for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. Her reporting and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, Harper's, Granta, and the Times Literary Supplement. She lives in London, where she is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow and the founder of South Asia Speaks, a mentorship program for emerging writers.
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