The Muslim schoolteacher who joined Burma?s martyrs... "Being a Muslim in a country where 87 percent of the population is Buddhist, and where the military government regularly practices ultra-nationalism and uses religion as a political tool, means joining the underprivileged at the bottom of the pile. The fight for liberty is the fight for peace. And like peace, liberty is indivisible —U Razak, June 1947 Muslims in Burma regularly suffer social and religious discrimination. Burmese Buddhists commonly call them, Kala, a derogatory term for South Asians and also used insultingly to describe westerners. While some consider the term abusive and degrading, there?s general acceptance that it takes on a sense of honor, respect and lovingkindness when it?s used in the form Kalagyi (Big Kala), to describe independence hero Abdul Razak. U Razak rose from the position of headmaster of Mandalay Central National High School to become minister of education and national planning in Burma?s pre-independence government. His career was brought to a brutal end at the age of 49, when he was gunned down by assassins on July 19, 1947, together with independence leader Gen Aung San and seven other cabinet members and colleagues. The nine murdered leaders are commemorated annually on the country?s Martyr?s Day. Mandalay, where U Razak taught, is a center of Burmese Buddhist faith and culture. Yet U Razak, of ethnic Indian-Burmese origin, was fully accepted by the community..."