"...Myanmar has been the site of serious conflicts between Buddhist and Muslim communities, particularly in Rakhine State where at least 146,000 persons have been displaced since the first riots in June 2012. This violence has prompted international organizations dedicated to early warning of mass violence to issue alarms, but the dynamics of this conflict are understood differently in Myanmar. In May, three Nobel laureates called violence and persecution of Muslims in Myanmar ?nothing less than genocide.” A few days later, U Zaw Aye Maung, the Rakhine Affairs Minister for Yangon Region, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying, ?if genocide was taking place in Rakhine State, then it was against ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.” Such a statement is not simple intransigence in the face of external criticism. It illustrates a conception of victim and violator that is diametrically opposed to the one made visible in international discourse. In Myanmar?s domestic context, such a conception is closer to the norm than otherwise. Other state authorities use similar rhetoric. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, meanwhile, told the BBC in October 2013, ?Fear is not just on the side of the Muslims, but on the side of the Buddhists as well. There?s a perception that Muslim power, global Muslim power, is very great.” Over the last seven months, we have been conducting a ?Listening Project? seeking to understand how people talk about concerns for their local communities and country. In this research, conducted across six regions in Myanmar, we have regularly noted discourses that construct Muslims as an existential threat, in which Buddhism is vulnerable and needing protection lest Islam supplant it as the majority religion. Fear of a Muslim takeover is based on a conception of Islam as intrinsically violent, justified with arguments that are strikingly reminiscent of discourses common in the United States and other countries since September 11th 2001. People regularly raised examples of alleged violence by Muslims in Myanmar as well the actions of ISIS and Al Qaeda. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was pilloried by non-Burmese observers for her 2013 interview, but in situating domestic fears in a global context she was descriptively accurate. Fear in Myanmar is not (only) of a small minority within Myanmar, but of a global threat felt to be both surrounding the country and growing within it..."