Myanmar’s mosques remain largely in ruins a year and a half after the devastating March 2025 earthquake, and the main obstacle is not money but the military junta. That is the finding of “Blocked from Rebuilding”, a report released on October 7 by the Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN).
The world tends to know Myanmar’s Muslims only through the Rohingya. Yet Mandalay, Sagaing and central Myanmar are home to centuries-old Burmese Muslim communities, including the Chinese-origin Panthay Muslims, whose historic Panthay Mosque stands in Mandalay. These communities have also faced decades of religious discrimination.
Myanmar’s Mosques: 670 Worshippers Martyred
According to the report, the 7.7-magnitude quake struck on March 28, 2025, as Muslims gathered for Friday prayers. BHRN documented 180 affected mosques and Islamic buildings across 29 townships, and at least 670 Muslims killed when they collapsed. “Myanmar’s military and successive governments spent decades making it impossible for Muslim communities to repair and maintain their mosques,” said BHRN executive director Kyaw Win.
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Seventy Applications, Four Permits
A Mandalay trustee told BHRN that more than 70 mosques had applied, but only four received repair permission, and Panthay Mosque was the only one he knew to have been allowed to rebuild from scratch. In Bone Oh village, no damaged mosque had demolition permission three months after the quake. BHRN found no uniform legal framework, decisions left to local discretion, allegations of payments, and communities still praying in temporary spaces more than a year on.
Sources: Burma Human Rights Network, Progressive Voice
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