Burma Muslim Congress
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The Burma Muslim Congress (BMC) was a
Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...
political party in Burma (present-day
Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...
).


History

The party was founded around the same time as the
Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League The Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL) was a broad popular front that ruled Burma (now Myanmar) between 1947 and 1958. It included both political parties and trade unions as members. The league evolved out of the anti-Japanese res ...
(AFPFL), which it became affiliated with in December 1945. The party's first president,
U Razak U Razak (Urdu: ; ; , ; also Abdul Razak; 20 January 1898 – 19 July 1947) was a Burmese politician and an educationalist. Of mixed Bamar-Indian ancestry, he was a cabinet minister in Aung San's pre-independence interim government, and w ...
, became president of the AFPFL's
Mandalay Mandalay is the second-largest city in Myanmar, after Yangon. It is located on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, 631 km (392 mi) north of Yangon. In 2014, the city had a population of 1,225,553. Mandalay was founded in 1857 by Ki ...
branch in 1946.Haruhiro Fukui (1985) ''Political parties of Asia and the Pacific'', Greenwood Press, p119 Razak was subsequently appointed Minister of Education and Planning in Aung San's government, a post he held until he was assassinated alongside San.Moshe Yegar "The Muslims of Burma", A study of a minority Group, p75 Following Razak's death, secretary-general U Khin Maung Lat succeeded him as party president. He became a member of the AFPFL Supreme Council, and was appointed Minister of Justice in 1950, a post he held until 1958. A few months after independence in 1948, new Prime Minister
U Nu Nu (; ; 25 May 1907 – 14 February 1995), commonly known as Burmese names#Honorifics, U Nu and also by the honorific name Thakin Nu, was a prominent Burmese people, Burmese statesman and the first Prime Minister of Union of Burma. He was ...
requested that the BMC leave the AFPFL. In response, U Khin Maung Lat decided to discontinue the party's Islamic religious activities and rejoin the AFPFL. In 1954 the AFPFL Supreme Council asked the party to fully merge into the AFPFL and cease to exist as a separate organisation. Although this request was initially refused, the party did merge in 1956. The party was immediately re-established by U Than Myint, who moved it to the left. It joined the National United Front alliance in 1958, but left in 1960, changing its name to Pathi Congress and began campaigning for a separate state for Burmese Muslims, before haemorrhaging support.


References

{{Asia in topic, Islam in Islam in Myanmar Defunct political parties in Myanmar