Bhattacharjee 10.3389/fpos.2024.1144493 to the Rohingya minority’s support of the British government during Myanmar’s struggle for independence from British rule. The researcher termed this situation as “the enemy discourse,” which is one of the main reasons behind the “stateless identity” of the Rohingya Muslim minority. As long as members of the international community do not grasp the roots of the current violence in the Second World War and how it is implicit in the Rohingya language, they will be unable to design appropriate strategies to solve this current political and humanitarian predicaments. against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar have been revived as part of the country’s legalization of the “war on terror”. The researcher argued that the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO), Arakan Rohingya Islamic Front (ARIF), Rohingya Patriotic Front (RPF), Rohingya Liberation Organization (RLO), Itihadul Mozahadin of Arakan (IMA) are some radical Rohingya organizations that are presently very dynamic on the border areas of Myanmar-Bangladesh. These extremist organizations have demanded the fundamentalist idea of establishing a separate Islamic state which is a significant threat to the Myanmar government. Moreover, several significant Buddhist extremist movements in Myanmar, private sector Islamophobia and structural Islamophobia in Myanmar were responsible for the statelessness of the Rohingya minority. In particular, it reveals that due to the lack of a well-coordinated and united opposition to the military regime in Myanmar, institutional and private Islamophobia collectively led to genocide since the beginning of military rule (Bakali, 2021). In the light of the “war on terror,” the annoying argument employed to justify state-sponsored brutality and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar shares some features with Islamophobic tendencies in some southern parts of the world (Sri Lanka, India, China, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan), a term that refers to the global battle against terrorism. Thus, the statelessness of the Rohingya community is exacerbated by religious fundamentalism, Islamic terrorism, and Islamophobia, which are distinct factors. The doctrine of Islamic terrorism Unlike the Rohingyas, who are Muslim minority communities, the majority of Myanmar’s population is Buddhist. The Rohingyas were treated inhumanely by the mainstream Buddhist population of Myanmar when the government refused to recognize them as Burmese citizens. Moreover, Rohingyas are consistently hated, humiliated, and treated as subhuman by most of the Buddhist political elites and leaders of Myanmar. The Buddhist spiritual fundamentalists claimed and trusted that Rohingya Muslims might control the Rakhine’s Buddhist culture and society. The Rohingyas, in their view, represented a threat to the Buddhist faith, culture, and lifestyle as well as a gateway to the “Islamization of Myanmar” (Wolf, 2015). This cultural difference leads to ferocious and inter-religious hostilities. The researcher argued that the government of Myanmar and political leaders feared “the doctrine of Islamic terrorism.” Ideologically driven terrorist attacks or movements, notably religiously-inspired ones, perpetrated by individuals and terrorist groups that amenably announce Islamic motives for their activities are referred to as “Islamic terrorism.” The military-dominated Myanmar government is using the concept of “Islamic terrorism” to justify the recent genocide against the Rohingya ethnic minority. Accordingly, the government targeted the Rohingya minority community for their religious identity, which differs from the Buddhist religious belief, identity, tradition, and culture. Hence, religious identity was one of the main reasons behind the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Religious fundamentalism is an additional cause for the statelessness of this community. In this section, the researcher examine the August 2017 genocide against the Rohingya minority, claiming that the ethnic cleansing in the Rakhine state was, therefore, primarily motivated by religious identity. Even though the Myanmar government has categorically refused the allegations of genocide, this case shows how the phenomena of Islamophobia or anti-Muslim racism inclined, permitted, indorsed, and terminated in a genocide whose effects are still being felt today. According to critical race theorists (Khaled Beydoun, Nasar Meer, Brian Klug, Iman Attia, and Fanny Müller-Uri), postcolonial scholars, and feminist thinkers, Islamophobia is usually believed to be associated with the “othering” of Muslims in settler communities and countries of the global north (United States, Australia, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Germany), with much existing discourse focusing on the subject of the “war on terror” (Bakali, 2021). Islamophobia has been identified in Muslim media as “honor-based violence,” with coverage of terrorism-related films, media representations about terrorist attacks and obstructed conspiracies, news reports, and stories about Muslims involved in domestic violence or gender-based violence. However, it is increasingly being used to describe structural racism and antiMuslim violence across the southern countries of the world and other aspects of social injustice (Alsultany, 2012). The recent atrocities Frontiers in Political Science Foreign interests in the Rakhine state Rakhine is a very resourceful state. It is located near the Bay of Bengal and filled with oil, gas, coal, and many other valuable minerals. Thus, the Myanmar government always supports Rakhine Buddhist fundamentalists for safeguarding their benefits. While the interest of the Buddhist group was at risk, then conflict eventually started. During the conflict period, the Myanmar government condemned the Rohingya community, including other brands of Buddhist groups. Thus, this geographical aspect is liable for the growth of inter-communal, interethnic, and inter-religious conflicts in the Rakhine state (Wolf, 2015). Although Rakhine is resourceful, it is one of the most underprivileged regions of Myanmar. Due to the resourcefulness of Rakhine, the anti-Muslim movement exists in this state. Myanmar’s government is always interested in establishing its control over the resources of Rakhine. But the government is unwilling to take steps for developing the structures and other amenities within this state. Currently, the economic openness process is getting maximum attention from national and global viewpoints. For this reason, countries like China and India are trying to establish economic zones by taking different massive projects such as “The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor,” “Kaladan Multi-modal Transit Transport Project,” “The Belt and Road Initiative,” etc. The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CEMC) connects Yunnan via the Mandalay by developing a high-speed rail and new road network from Yangon and Kyakphyu (Rakhine coast) and forming new industrial zones. The massive project under this corridor also involves the expansion of the Kyakphyu seaport and the formation of a Special Export Zone (SEZ). However, the broad 08 frontiersin.org