Asia-Pacific, Headlines, Human Rights

POLITICS: Moderate Islam – Answer to Insurgency in Thailand?

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 13 2007 (IPS) - Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s prescription of moderate Islam for Thailand’s Malay-Muslim minority may provide the healing balm for the long festering ethnic conflict in the country’s southern border provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani.

Badawi’s message during a three-day visit that ended Tuesday suggests a change in the offing for this community induced by guarantees of support he offered for quelling an increasingly violent insurgency that has gripped the three provinces.

“We are determined to do something to improve the situation in southern Thailand,” Badawi said at a press conference he held along with his Thai counterpart Prime Minister Gen. Surayud Chulanont. “We believe in education for a moderate Islam.”

“It would not be something that would frighten or cause concern to the Muslims in the area,” Badawi said. But he described the present situation as a “threat to peace and security”.

The prospect of Badawi’s ‘Islam Hadari’ (or ‘civilisational Islam’) making headway in the troubled region is being welcomed by moderate voices in southern Thailand. Malay-Muslims have always looked up to Malaysia as the wellspring of their religious, cultural and linguistic identity that is markedly distinct from the Thai-speaking Buddhist majority.

“Islam Hadari will bring the best of Islamic values to help the people face modernity,” Surin Pitsuwan, former Thai foreign minister and a Muslim, told IPS. “I think that is what Muslims should be doing.”

But he warns that the challenge will be daunting. “Moderate views will be difficult to spread, but it is the only way to bring the community back to the rightful path to live peacefully with others.” He adds that the violence has “gone very far.”

Others say that Thai officials in the area will have to be part of the equation if this new religious initiative from across the border is to succeed. It stems from the regular complaints of discrimination alleged by the Malay-Muslims at the hands of officialdom.

“Thai officials have to improve their understanding of the Malay society if Islam Hadari is to succeed,” Worawit Baru, professor of Malay studies at the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani, said in an interview. “Badawi has offered a good start for that to happen.”

Badawi’s campaign for an Islam that promotes goodwill between peoples and cultures and eschews extremism has been praised internationally as a welcome alternative to religious fanaticism. ”Islam Hadari,” Badawi said during a lecture in Japan in December, is “a comprehensive approach to the development of mankind, society, and country based on the perspectives of Islamic teachings and Islamic civilisation.”

The overtures Badawi made during his visit, which began with a round of golf with Surayud on Sunday, also point to a promising turn in the relationship between the two South-east Asian neighbours since the current cycle of violence erupted in January 2004.

Surayud laid the groundwork for this spirit of cordiality soon after he was appointed to lead the government by the Thai military junta that came to power in a mid-September coup. He made repeated visits to the south to apologise to the Malay-Muslims for the violent excesses committed by the Thai state in the past. Such abuse included the death of 78 Muslim boys and men in military custody due to suffocation after being arrested at a demonstration in Narathiwat in October 2004.

Bangkok’s new tone stood in contrast to the abrasive manner of Thaksin Shinawatra, the twice-elected prime minister ousted by the junta in last year’s coup. Thaksin gained notoriety for responding to the violence with an iron fist and for discarding diplomatic norms by openly accusing Malaysia of fuelling the insurgency.

That the Surayud government desperately needs such help from a neighbour has gained more urgency as the violence has failed to subside. At the beginning of October, the death toll in the south stood at around 1,400. By the end of 2006, the body count had risen to 1,943, according to researchers at the Prince of Songhkla University.

Local residents see no respite in this on-going clash between Thai troops and Malay-Muslim rebels. The latter, who claim through leaflets to be fighting for a separate Muslim state of Pattani, have resorted to bullets, bombs and beheadings to get their targets. The majority of the victims have been Malay-Muslim civilians suspected of being sympathisers of the Thai state.

The beheadings, in fact, prompted a strong statement of condemnation by the Islamic Committee of Pattani last week. “Suspected insurgents are trying to cause a rift (between Buddhists and Muslims)” through these “cruel” acts, the group said following the 24th beheading in the over three-year-old clash. The latest victim was Wahap Hayee Abdulwahab, a member of the Islamic committee, who was attacked at the rice mill that he owned, says the Thai state news agency.

The escalating violence is part of a long, simmering conflict going back decades that keeps erupting periodically. The Malay-Muslims have alleged neglect and discrimination since Siam, as Thailand was then known, annexed the three southern provinces in 1902. Till then, they had been part of the Muslim kingdom of Pattani.

Consequently, a solution without Malaysian involvement appears remote, says Zachary Abuza, a South-east Asia terrorism specialist at Simmons College of Arts and Sciences, in Boston. “You cannot reach an end to this conflict unless you get the Malaysians on board,” he told IPS.

“The Malaysians will have more clout in training the local ustaz (religious teachers) and changing the religious curriculum,” he added. “The Thais are not capable of doing that.”