MANDALAY — Thousands of Buddhist monks gathered in Myanmar’s second largest city on Sunday for an event partly organized by a scandal-hit Thai temple whose abbot is wanted for questioning on money-laundering allegations.

The Dhammakaya temple’s foundation helped organize the mass alms-giving for an estimated 20,000 monks on the runway of an abandoned airport in central Mandalay.
People are worried that Buddhism is in danger,” he said.

In March, Thai police abandoned a three-week siege of the Dhammakaya temple’s complex, which is nearly 10 times the area of the Vatican City and centers around a giant, UFO-shaped golden stupa.

Mandalay is home to the monk Wirathu, the self-styled “Buddhist bin Laden” famous for his anti-Islamic sermons, but there was no sign that he attended the mass alms-giving.
Wirathu is a leading light in Ma Ba Tha, a religious group accused of whipping up anti-Muslim sentiment in Myanmar.