Flying in the face of the Western stereotypes about Buddhists, a highly popular monk in Myanmar is using his position to call for persecution of the country’s Muslims, going so far as to deem himself the “Burmese Bin Laden.”

Wirathu is a 45-year old monk, dressing in traditional saffron-colored robes, living in a monastery in Mandalay where he produces DVDs and pieces for social media spreading his bigotry. The monk first rose to prominence in 2001 during a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment and was originally sentenced to 25 years in jail for incitement to violence before being released in Myanmar’s general amnesty granted to political prisoners in 2012.

Since his release, Wirathu has been a key leader in the “969″ movement, a highly nationalist group so named for the nine attributes of the Buddha, his Sixfold Path, and the nine attributes of monkhood. What has followed has been a campaign of harassment towards Myanmar’s Muslim population, including boycotting Muslim-owned businesses and urging Buddhists to only patron Buddhist establishments which more and more frequently display the 969 symbol.

Tensions have reached a breaking point, however, including destroying mosques and inciting mob violence against Muslims. In March, a string of clashes between Buddhists and Muslims left at least 40 dead and 12,000 Muslims displaced from their homes. A Reuters report on the riots that lead to the bloodshed said that the riots and the killing that followed “took place in plain view of police, with no intervention by the local or central government.” Graffiti seen in the aftermath called for “Muslim extermination.”

Wirathu recently spoke to the Guardian, proving he isn’t shy about voicing his opinions towards Muslims and their supposed role in causing the violence in the country. Much like biases against Jewish and other minority faiths in communities around the world, Wirathu’s views are full of unsubstantiated rumors and outright fear-mongering:

Wirathu says part of his concern with Islam is that Buddhist women have been converted by force and then killed for failing to follow Islamic rules. He also believes the halal way of killing cattle “allows familiarity with blood and could escalate to the level where it threatens world peace”. [...]

A minority population that makes up just 5% of the nation’s total, Wirathu says Burma’s Muslims are being financed by Middle Eastern forces: “The local Muslims are crude and savage because the extremists are pulling the strings, providing them with financial, military and technical power,” he said.

Wirathu also places the blame for any violence firmly at the feet of the Muslim community, claiming that any acts his followers have carried out was merely a response to Muslim attacks. In interviews, he refers to Muslims as “Bengalis,” a reference to the widespread belief in Myanmar that members of the ethnic minority Rohingya population are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The Burmese government does little to stop discrimination towards the Rohingya, a people stripped of Burmese citizenship under a 1982 citizenship law.

Mistreatment of minority Muslims is currently taking place in majority Buddhist country Sri Lanka as well. Groups there — that call themselves names like the Buddhist Strength Force and Sinhala Echo — have stirred up anti-Muslim sentiment but have not produced the same death toll that the preaching of Wirathu has — yet.

The term “hardline Buddhist” may seem like an oxymoron, but it accurately describes the movement currently leading attacks on Muslim communities in South Asia. So far, though, the United States has done little to pressure the governments in question to halt the violence, to the chagrin of human rights activists.

Sri Lanka, where 69 percent of the population is Buddhist, is home to a small community of Muslims who kept a low-profile during the country’s lengthy civil war. Recently, however, a number of hardline Buddhist groups have sprung up, stirring anti-Muslim fervor among the majority Sinhalese ethnic group. These groups — that call themselves names like the Buddhist Strength Force and Sinhala Echo — accused the minority community of producing exam results “distorted to favor Muslims” and claimed that calves had been slaughtered indoors — which is illegal in the country’s capital. Neither claim has borne out, but they have led to mass protests and attacks against Muslims and their communities.

Most recently, a Buddhist monk-led mob in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, swarmed and assaulted a Muslim-owned clothing warehouse on Thursday:

The BBC’s Charles Haviland in Colombo said the monks led a crowd which quickly swelled to about 500, yelling insults against the shop’s Muslim owners and rounding on journalists seeking to cover the events.

Five or six were injured, including a cameraman who needed stitches.

Eyewitnesses said the police stood and watched although after the trouble spread they brought it under control.

Similar persecution is ongoing against Myanmar’s Muslim communities, who make up only four percent of the total population. In the face of spreading violence, also kicked up by hardline Buddhists, Burmese Muslims are fleeing their homes, leaving behind destroyed mosques and shops. At least 40 people have died in the clashes since March 20, as the fighting moves closer to the capital. These most recent attacks have left some 12,000 people displaced from their homes, according to the U.N.

Tomas Ojea Quintana, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on Myanmar human rights, on Thursday said he had “received reports of state involvement in some of the acts of violence,” earning himself a rebuke from the Burmese government. President Thein Sein on Thursday said that his government would use force if need be to clamp down on the violence, but only as a last resort.

The violence against Burmese Muslims in general has found a particular target in members of the Rohingya ethnic group. Stateless due to their status under a 1982 citizenship law, many Burmese believe the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. Because of this, the Rohingya have faced down violence and persecution for years, to the degree that some have called their situation a “genocide.” The group has caught the eye of hacktivist group Anonymous, which is now claiming credit for promoting more awareness of the Rohingya’s plight.

At present, the U.S. has backed President Thein’s call for calm, but not commented on the violence in Sri Lanka, nor taken apparent action to pressure either government to halt the attacks. This echoes previous instances of violence, such as in Sept. 2012, when the State Department urged Bangladesh to keep its borders open as Rohingya fled from Myanmar. President Obama, during his Nov. 2012 visit to Myanmar, called for greater protection of minorities in the country. So far, this call hasn’t not seemed to be heard in Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

(Photo: A destroyed mosque in Okpho, Myanmar. Credit: Ye Aung Thu/AFP/Getty Images)

The President of Myanmar agreed to grant international inspectors unprecedented access to its nuclear material and facilities, signalling a major step forward for the reforming authoritarian pariah state. Right on the heels of President Obama’s visit (part of a broader American attempt to smooth the country’s path to democracy), Myanmarese leader Thein Sein issued a statement announcing his government’s intention to move towards greater nuclear transparency:

Myanmar announced it would sign an international agreement that would require it to declare all nuclear facilities and materials. Although it would be up to Myanmar to decide what to declare, it could provide some answers concerning its acquisition of dual-use machinery and its military cooperation with Pyongyang that the U.S. and other nations regard as suspect. …

David Albright and Andrea Stricker of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based nonproliferation group, said in an analysis it was a “remarkable decision.” “This latest move by Burma is extremely positive for its ongoing push for openness about the nuclear issue and for building confidence and transparency with the international community,” they wrote.

As recently as 2010, some analysts had worried that Myanmar was following in North Korea’s footsteps and attempting to insulate itself from foreign pressure to reform by acquiring a nuclear weapon. There is some evidence that Myanmar had plans to build a nuclear weapon in 2006. While this most recent agreement is not an ironclad guarantee that Myanmar is abandoning any nuclear ambitions, it is good evidence that the military junta that still controls most of the government is serious about reforming. It’s also a success for President Obama’s stated goal of limiting the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide.

Though the military government violently put down monk-led protests as recently as 2007, the government held parliamentary elections this April that brought long-suffering opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi into the legislature. The American sanctions-and-diplomacy approach is widely credited with playing a role in the military’s decision to take steps, however tentative, towards a more democratic political system. According to the New York Times, the Obama administration‘s “series of cautious [diplomatic] moves…have significantly eased tensions between the United States and Myanmar.”

Since 1962, a repressive military junta ruled the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar. But, since 2010, an initial bubbling of hope emerged in the isolated and impoverished nation that the system would begin to open up. In the past several months, reforms came a lightening-quick pace. The West, including most notably the U.S., ramped up engagement to meet Myanmar’s positive steps forward.

Neither process is complete. While the U.S. pledged to restore diplomatic ties with Myanmar, sometimes known as Burma, appointing an ambassador will take time, and most of the sanctions against the country remain in place. Nor have Myanmar’s reforms yet been solidified into sustainable, concrete accomplishments. The two tracks, however, are not mutually exclusive: “[T]he United States will meet action with action,” said Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, announcing the new ambassadorship. “Based on the steps taken so far, we will now begin.”

Now a right-wing Member of Congress wants to bring it all to a screeching halt. In a statement released Friday, House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) called on the administration to end all talks with Myanmar. She said:

I am distressed that the Administration is prematurely and publicly discussing any major concessions to the Burmese regime, such as nominating an Ambassador. Any concession to the dictatorship would be grossly premature. The world needs to see that the upcoming April elections are not the same kind of sham that we saw in 2010. [...]

I call on the Administration to immediately cease talks with the ruthless tyrants in Burma until the junta has been replaced with a duly elected, democratic government that respects human rights and civil liberties.

While, in the statement, Ros-Lehtinen raises legitimate concerns — for example that the ceasefire with one of the ethnic insurgencies is not nationwide and might not hold — her prescription doesn’t reflect the direct connections between the gains toward reform that have so far occurred and the Obama administration’s engagement.

While the reform project in Myanmar kicked off in 2010, the flood of actions undertaken by the government in the past several months have followed rigorous U.S. engagement that began in early Autumn. In October, the U.S. special envoy to Myanmar Derek Mitchell, who was only appointed in August, made his second visit to the country in less than two months. Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin reported in October that the administration’s policy was one of cautious engagement and waiting for concrete steps from the Junta before concessions are made. That process has yielded at least a few advancements such as prisoner releases.

Yesterday, Rogin reported that appointing an actual ambassador will take time. That gives the U.S. wiggle room to ensure further reforms are made and that those already gained are implemented and not walked back.

And while the caution is well advised, the gains do seem to have some legitimacy. One previously repressed dissident and Nobel Laureate is expected to run for a parliamentary seat. And the Daily Beast’s Ron Gluckman, who’s been travelling to Myanmar for nearly two decades, reported in December that “most here believe the reforms are genuine.”

The reforms in Myranmar are connected directly to continued and vigorous U.S. engagement — a term that appears again and again in the “guiding principles” of the administration’s foreign policy. But Ros-Lehtinen, with her ideological opposition to the policy and the administration, seems to want to throw it all away in favor of waiting until all the reforms are carried out and a “duly elected, democratic government that respects human rights and civil liberties” is in place — a process that could take years. Her stance epitomizes Voltaire’s famous phrase that the “perfect is the enemy of the good.”