Throughout his work for peace in Sri Lanka, Reoch witnessed the rise of Buddhist extremism in South and Southeast Asia and began raising the issue within Buddhist circles in both Asia and the West. He visited Sri Lanka in June 2014 during anti-Muslim riots in the south of the country, one of the worst outbreaks of communal violence in the country’s history.
In March 2014, he was invited to attend a conference on Buddhist Fury, organized by the School of Public Policy of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. It focussed on extremist Buddhist violence being unleashed on Muslim communities in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. He began using his blog on The Huffington Post (UK) to highlight the global threat of Islamophobia.
Reoch’s 2014 address, Seeds of War, Seeds of Peace: Religious Conflict in Today’s World, was streamed worldwide live from Al Akhawayn University (see below). He said: “Victimizing people for their identity is human poison. It waters the seeds of war. Ultimately it leads to genocide. Every incident like this is an attack on the principles of co-existence that are essential if people of different traditions are to live and flourish together.”
In November 2014, he was invited by President Driss Oauoicha of Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, to contribute to its post-graduate Comparative Religion programme for imams. The university’s royal mandate is to promote “the values of human solidarity and tolerance” in the predominantly Muslim nation. The university also invited him to deliver a Presidential Address on the subject Seeds of War, Seeds of Peace: Religious Conflict in Today’s World. A year later, he was invited back to continue to offer meditation practice to the post-graduate imams and to deliver a second lecture: Is Enlightened Society Possible?
In January 2016, he was invited by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs of Morocco to attend a high-level conference on the Rights of Minorities in Muslim Lands, organized jointly with the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies. “We are gathering at a time of rising hatred,” Reoch said in a statement, Our Sacred Responsibility. “But there is a far greater truth, a far greater voice, and far greater numbers of the human family who know that hatred and violence are not the answer to the great challenges we face.”