thbarnes: That’s the Cambodian government’s translation of ក្រសួង​ធម្មការ​និងសាសនា​. The terms ​ធម្មការ​ and សាសនា​ could both be translated into English as “religion.” Unfortunately there are no exact English equivalents for these Khmer words. The term ​ធម្មការ refers more to practices, while សាសនា​ refers more to the institutional sense of a religion. These terms are borrowed from Pali terms that might be more familiar: dhammakara and sasana, respectively. Personally, I think “cults and religion” is an apt enough translation — although, yes, it also strikes my Anglophone sensibilities as “interesting.” If you have a better suggestion, I’d love to hear it.

Rod: Your post glosses over two important issues. First, the hierarchy of Cambodian monks is neither homogeneous nor representative of the larger Cambodian monastic community. It was in fact the office of one particular monk with a lot of authority who wrote this letter. We should be careful not to judge Cambodian monks by the actions of this particular monk just as we shouldn’t judge American Christians by the words of Jerry Falwell.

Secondly, this leadership is very tightly bound with the political elite. Now I don’t know if this reaction was politically motivated — but anyone familiar with Amrita Performing Arts (who produced the rock opera) knows that they are 100% about the preservation of Khmer culture. They have even been endorsed by the king. They presented a modern adaptation on the classic Khmer story of Tum Teav (think Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo is a monk). So what at first glance may look like a knee-jerk response to culture shock might actually have something politically deeper behind it.

(Btw, I happen to be a Westerner who sometimes gets very offended by cultural misportrayals of Buddhism. Not in this case, though.)