Are feelings of mutual admiration blossoming between two headline-grabbing, anti-Muslim factions: one in England, one in Myanmar?
Wirathu, the soft-spoken but sharp-tongued face of Myanmar’s 969 movement, has told the Times of London that his organization aims to imitate the English Defence League or EDL, a movement that recently made headlines by launching angry street protests after two hardline Muslim men hacked a British soldier to death in a London street.
“People give me various names: the Burmese bin Laden, the bald neo-Nazi… we would like to be like the EDL. Not carrying out violence but protecting the public,” the well-known Buddhist monk told reporter Richard Lloyd Parry.