The Muslims of Thailand
The Muslims of Thailand

Author: Michel Gilquin

Publisher: Silkworm Books

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Thailand is usually closely associated with Buddhism, but since 1998 the country has been one of the observer members of the Islamic Conference Organization, and senior figures in the present and previous governments have been Muslim. Some 8 percent of the population is Muslim, and in the three southernmost provinces of the country they constitute a majority. Islam is ever more visible in Bangkok, where the demographic increase of Muslims is marked. Michel Gilquin, a sociologist specializing in the study of Muslim societies and a resident of Morocco, examines the origins of Islam in the kingdom of Siam, Muslim integration into the Thai nation, and the effects of globalization and modernity on a mostly traditional and rural community. In particular he considers the weight of history of the old sultanate of Patani on the present-day Yawi-speaking majority in Narathiwat, Yala, and Pattani, and the circumstances leading to "the troubles" which erupted in 2004 and which, alas, continue. Without proposing any solutions, the book explains the background to the present impasse, and considers how far integration of the minority has been, and can be, successful.

Islam in Modern Thailand
Islam in Modern Thailand

Author: Rajeswary Ampalavanar Brown

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1134583893

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book addresses the complexity of Islam in Thailand, by focusing on Islamic charities and institutions affiliated to the mosque. By extrapolating through Islam and the waqf (Islamic charity) in different regions of Thailand the diversity in races and institutions, it demonstrates the regional contrasts within Thai Islam. The book also underlines the importance of the internal histories of these separate spaces, and the processes by which institutions and ideologies become entrenched. It goes on to look at the socio economic transformation that is taking place within the context of trading networks through Islamic institutions and civil networks linked to mosques, madrasahs and regional power brokers. Brown casts this study of private Islamic welfare as strengthening rather than weakening relations with the secular Thai state. The current regime’s effectiveness in coopting these Muslim elites, including Lutfi and Wisoot, into state bureaucracies assists in widening their popular base in the south, in the north-east, and in Bangkok. Such appointments were efficacious in reinforcing the elite’s Islamic identity within a modern, secular, literate, and cosmopolitan Thai culture. In challenging existing studies of Thai Muslims as furtive protest minorities, this book diverts our attention to how Islamic philanthropy provides the logic and dynamism behind the creation of autonomous spaces for these independent groups, affording unusual insights into their economic, political and social histories.

Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand
Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand

Author: Joseph Chinyong Liow

Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 9812309543

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"This is a remarkable piece of scholarship that illuminates general and specific tendencies in Islamic education in South Thailand. Armed with an enormous amount of rich empirical detail and an elegant writing style, the author debunks the simplistic Orientalist conceptions of Wahhabi and Salafi influences on Islamic education in South Thailand. This work will be a state-of-the-art source for understanding the role of Islam and the ongoing conflict in this troubled region of Southeast Asia. The book is significant for those scholars who are attempting to understand Muslim communities in Southeast Asia, and also for those who want deep insights into Islamic education and its influence in any area of the Islamic world." - Raymond Scupin, Professor of Anthropology and International Studies Lindenwood University, USA "Few books address the sensitive issue of Islamic education with empathy as well as critical distance as Joseph C. Liow's Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand. He examines global networks of religious learning within a local Thai as well as regional Asian context by brilliantly revealing the intersections between religion, politics and modernity in an accessible and illuminating manner. Traditional educational institutions rarely receive such sensitive and balanced treatment. Liow's book is a tour de force and mandatory reading for policy-makers, academics and all of those interested in current affairs." - Ebrahim Moosa, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Department of Religion, Associate Director, Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC), Duke University, USA "Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand is Joseph Chinyong Liow's critical attempt to map out the reflexive questioning, locations of authority, dynamics and contestations within the Muslim community over what constitutes Islamic knowledge and education. Through the optics of Islamic education in Southern Thailand, Liow manages to brilliantly portray the ways in which Muslim minority negotiate their lives in the local context of violence and the global context of crisis of modernity." - Chaiwat Satha-Anand, Senior Research Scholar, Thailand Research Fund, Author of The Life of this World: Negotiated Muslim Lives in Thai Society

“We Love Mr King”
“We Love Mr King”

Author: Anusorn Unno

Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute

Published: 2018-10-04

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9814818119

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is an ethnography of the Malay Muslims of Guba, a pseudonymous village in Thailand’s Deep South, in the wake of the unrest that was primarily reinvigorated in 2004. It argues that the unrest is the effect of the way in which different forms of sovereignty converge around the residents of this region and the residents at the same time have cultivated themselves and obtained and enacted agency through the sovereigns. Rather than asking why the violence is increasing and who is behind it, like most scholarly works on the topic, it examines how different forms of sovereignty — ranging from the Thai state and the monarchy to Islamic religious movements, the insurgents and local strongmen — impose subjectivities on the residents, how they have converged in so doing and what tensions have followed, and how the residents have dealt with these tensions and cultivated themselves and obtained and enacted agency through the sovereigns. The phrase “We Love Mr King” or rao rak nay luang inscribed on the decorated, footed tray is one example of how the residents crafted themselves as royal subjects and enacted agency through the sovereign monarch. “This book represents one of the very few locally focussed anthropological studies to be undertaken in Thailand’s Muslim Malay border region since the upsurge in insurgent-driven violence since 2004. Just as noteworthy: the researcher is a Thai Buddhist who succeeded in establishing rapport with his Malay Muslim informants. Unlike most journalistic and academic research in this field based on hit-and-run interviews, Dr Anusorn’s work is founded on sustained in situ observation and participation with the local residents of the hamlet of Guba in Yala Province. Exploring a range of themes including local historical memory and place identification, Islamic practices, cultural rituals, complex local rivalries and violence, and interactions between villagers and military/state officials and projects, Anusorn skilfully highlights the co-existence and tensions between ‘different subjectivities’ in the context of the competing ‘sovereignties’ that inform the world of the villagers of Guba.” — Marc Askew (author of Performing Political Identity in Southern Thailand and Conspiracy, Politics and a Disorderly Border)

Muslim Merit-making in Thailand's Far-South
Muslim Merit-making in Thailand's Far-South

Author: Christopher M. Joll

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2011-11-02

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 9400724853

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume provides an ethnographic description of Muslim merit-making rhetoric, rituals and rationales in Thailand’s Malay far-south. This study is situated in Cabetigo, one of Pattani’s oldest and most important Malay communities that has been subjected to a range of Thai and Islamic influences over the last hundred years. The volume describes religious rhetoric related to merit-making being conducted in both Thai and Malay, that the spiritual currency of merit is generated through the performance of locally occurring Malay adat, and globally normative amal 'ibadat. Concerning the rationale for merit-making, merit-makers are motivated by both a desire to ensure their own comfort in the grave and personal vindication at judgment, as well as to transfer merit for those already in the grave, who are known to the merit-maker. While the rhetoric elements of Muslim merit-making reveal Thai influence, its ritual elements confirm the local impact of reformist activism.

Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand
Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand

Author: Joseph Chinyong Liow

Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9789812309532

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"This is a remarkable piece of scholarship that illuminates general and specific tendencies in Islamic education in South Thailand. Armed with an enormous amount of rich empirical detail and an elegant writing style, the author debunks the simplistic Orientalist conceptions of Wahhabi and Salafi influences on Islamic education in South Thailand. This work will be a state-of-the-art source for understanding the role of Islam and the ongoing conflict in this troubled region of Southeast Asia. The book is significant for those scholars who are attempting to understand Muslim communities in Southeast Asia, and also for those who want deep insights into Islamic education and its influence in any area of the Islamic world." - Raymond Scupin, Professor of Anthropology and International Studies Lindenwood University, USA "Few books address the sensitive issue of Islamic education with empathy as well as critical distance as Joseph C. Liow’s Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand. He examines global networks of religious learning within a local Thai as well as regional Asian context by brilliantly revealing the intersections between religion, politics and modernity in an accessible and illuminating manner. Traditional educational institutions rarely receive such sensitive and balanced treatment. Liow's book is a tour de force and mandatory reading for policy-makers, academics and all of those interested in current affairs." - Ebrahim Moosa, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Department of Religion, Associate Director, Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC), Duke University, USA "Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand is Joseph Chinyong Liow's critical attempt to map out the reflexive questioning, locations of authority, dynamics and contestations within the Muslim community over what constitutes Islamic knowledge and education. Through the optics of Islamic education in Southern Thailand, Liow manages to brilliantly portray the ways in which Muslim minority negotiate their lives in the local context of violence and the global context of crisis of modernity." - Chaiwat Satha-Anand, Senior Research Scholar, Thailand Research Fund, Author of The Life of this World: Negotiated Muslim Lives in Thai Society

The Malay-Muslim Insurgency in Southern Thailand--Understanding the Conflict's Evolving Dynamic
The Malay-Muslim Insurgency in Southern Thailand--Understanding the Conflict's Evolving Dynamic

Author: Peter Chalk

Publisher: Rand Corporation

Published: 2008-06-10

Total Pages: 39

ISBN-13: 0833045342

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Current unrest in the Malay-Muslim provinces of southern Thailand has captured growing national, regional, and international attention due to the heightened tempo and scale of rebel attacks, the increasingly jihadist undertone that has come to characterize insurgent actions, and the central government's often brutal handling of the situation on the ground. This paper assesses the current situation and its probable direction.

The Life of this World
The Life of this World

Author: Chaiwat Satha-Anand

Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is a collection of past articles written over the last 20 years. It includes chapters written by visiting scholars to ISEAS.

Tearing Apart the Land
Tearing Apart the Land

Author: Duncan McCargo

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2015-12-15

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1501702912

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Since January 2004, a violent separatist insurgency has raged in southern Thailand, resulting in more than three thousand deaths. Though largely unnoticed outside Southeast Asia, the rebellion in Pattani and neighboring provinces and the Thai government's harsh crackdown have resulted in a full-scale crisis. Tearing Apart the Land by Duncan McCargo, one of the world's leading scholars of contemporary Thai politics, is the first fieldwork-based book about this conflict. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of the region, hundreds of interviews conducted during a year's research in the troubled area, and unpublished Thai-language sources that range from anonymous leaflets to confessions extracted by Thai security forces, McCargo locates the roots of the conflict in the context of the troubled power relations between Bangkok and the Muslim-majority "deep South."McCargo describes how Bangkok tried to establish legitimacy by co-opting local religious and political elites. This successful strategy was upset when Thaksin Shinawatra became prime minister in 2001 and set out to reorganize power in the region. Before Thaksin was overthrown in a 2006 military coup, his repressive policies had exposed the precariousness of the Bangkok government's influence. A rejuvenated militant movement had emerged, invoking Islamic rhetoric to challenge the authority of local leaders obedient to Bangkok.For readers interested in contemporary Southeast Asia, insurgency and counterinsurgency, Islam, politics, and questions of political violence, Tearing Apart the Land is a powerful account of the changing nature of Islam on the Malay peninsula, the legitimacy of the central Thai government and the failures of its security policy, the composition of the militant movement, and the conflict's disastrous impact on daily life in the deep South. Carefully distinguishing the uprising in southern Thailand from other Muslim rebellions, McCargo suggests that the conflict can be ended only if a more participatory mode of governance is adopted in the region.