All this talk of perpetually peaceful Tibetan monks standing nobly in the face of the evil Chinese reminds me of a related pet peeve I have with respect to how many (not all) Westerners approach things Asian.
When the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life came out with its report on religion in the U.S. a couple of months ago, one notable yet unsurprising finding was that, unlike Hinduism and Islam, most people who identify as Buddhist are home-grown (mostly white) converts, not (Asian) immigrants. There is nothing wrong with that. Buddhism is a proselytizing faith; it is open and welcoming to converts - spreading from its native India, throughout Asia, and now the rest of the world.
Nor is there anything wrong with the fact that Buddhism in the West tends to be different than Buddhism in the East. Everywhere it's spread, Buddhism has been influenced by the local beliefs/cultures. When it came to China, it blended with Taoism and formed Ch'an, which the Japanese call Zen. It also blended with other aspects of Chinese culture to form other schools of Buddhism. When it made it to Tibet, it blended with the native Bun religion and formed Vajrayana or Tibetan Buddhism. So when Buddhism came to the West and was embraced mainly by white intellectuals, it's not surprising that Western Buddhism tends to minimize any reference to what many consider "supernaturalism." And since belief in deity is not necessary for nirvana, it is completely compatible with non-theist positions.
What *does* bother me is the frequency with which I am told by white Buddhist converts that "Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion." Or that "Buddhism is completely rational and devoid of 'supernaturalism,' unlike Christianity." And I'm like, "Really... because I have relatives who are life-long Buddhists, I've been exposed to it since I was a little kid, and from what I've seen their Buddhism is every bit as much a religion as Christianity, complete with the so-called supernaturalism."
And then these people actually have the nerve to argue about this. "You don't understand," they say. "Those gods aren't really gods; they're just projections of the mind." To which I point out to them passages from the Pali scriptures, the oldest known Buddhist scriptures, thought to be the closest to the Buddha's actual life and teachings, and lo and behold, there are devas (gods) mentioned in the stories. (I strongly suspect that most of these Western converts have read precious little of the original scriptures, given that the Buddhism section of most book stores consists of modern writing about Buddhism.) Even still they persist, "Well, you obviously can't take those stories literally."
It is true that one need not take the scriptures literally. It's perfectly legitimate to interpret Brahma's conversation with the Buddha as allegorical, symbolic. But what I want to know is, if you can do that with Buddhist scripture, why can't you do that with Christian scripture? Why do you insist on taking the bible literally and in the process reject it while you feel free to interpret the scriptures of another culture in whatever way you please? And what makes you think you then have the authority to say that your interpretation is correct, suggesting that those Buddhists who actually do believe in a real Kwan Yin or rebirth (for example) are somehow backwards?
Conversion to Buddhism is all very well. Interpreting Buddhism in ways to which you can relate is all very well. But when white converts feel they can "cut and paste" Buddhism but not Christianity, or when they think they can dismiss other interpretations of Buddhism as inferior to their own, that is not "conversion." It is colonialization of someone else's religious culture - taking it and using it for their own purposes. Chalk this up as another example of the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural MISappropriation.
