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I N E T E R N AT I O N A L
d n a l i Tha
What is really causing the current ethnoreligious conflict in southern Thailand?
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF AARON GOODMAN
d e l t t e s Un The Kru Se Mosque, the oldest mosque in the region, was damaged in a 2004 shootout between Muslim insurgents and the army
BY IMTIYAZ YUSUF Thailand’s 5 to 7 million Muslims consist of two distinct groups: the largely assimilated “Thai Muslim” population living throughout the country, and the ethnically, culturally, and linguistically “Malay Muslim” communities concentrated in the “Deep South” — the region’s majority population, representing about 44 percent of the country’s Muslims. In 1906, Buddhist Siam (now “Thailand”) annexed the seven Malay Muslim provinces of Patani, Yala, Sai Buri, Yaring, Nong Chik, Raman, and Ra-ngae, which were parts of the independent (but vassal state of Siam) Malay Muslim state of Patani. Siam then dissolved and united the seven provinces into the new subdivision 54 ISLAMIC HORIZONS JULY/AUGUST 2010
of Pattani. Its annexation was strengthened in 1909 by an Anglo-Siamese treaty that drew a border between Pattani and British-ruled Malaya. The British recognized Siam’s sovereignty over Pattani, and Siam relinquished its territorial claim over Kelantan and recognized British control over the Malay states of Perak, Kedah, and Perlis. The name Pattani is actually the Thai derivation of Patani as spelled in the Jawi language. After 1909, Siam embarked upon a centralization policy that was profoundly resented in the Deep South and planted the seeds for the Pattani separatist movement. Initially, this was a royalist movement led by Tengku Mahmud Mahyuddin, a promi-
nent Pattani leader and son of the dissolved sultanate’s last ruler. The leadership role soon passed to the network of Malay ulama and their role as custodians of religion and ethnic tradition. Haji Sulong, an indigenous reformist and political activist educated in Makkah, sought upon his return in 1930 to reform the local Malay Muslim community, brought Malay Muslim nationalist ideas to southern Thailand, and petitioned Bangkok for political autonomy within a federal system, as proposed by the then prime minister Pridi Phanomyong. During World War Two, he led a resistance movement. In 1947, he made seven ethnoreligious demands, six of which dealt with political freedom and the preservation of