The Muslims are a significant minority group in Thailand. They are the second largest
minority next to the Chinese. Unlike other groups of minorities, the Muslims had their own
kingdom in the southernmost Thailand from which the living history and culture of its people
still lives. The history of the Muslims in the Greater Patani Region,1
which comprises the
four provinces of Satun, Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, has been one of independence
followed by subordination to Siam’s domination and annexation. The prevalent feelings and
thinking among the local Muslims therefore have been dominated by an awareness of
political agitation vis-à-vis the Thai state, from which their culture and religion were
important sources of the political ideology. Politically, the Muslims of the South thus posed
the most challenging task to the Thai government in its attempt to assimilate and
“modernize” them along with the nation’s mainly Thai-Buddhist culture and politics.
It has been a commonplace to speak of the Southern Muslims as one of the major
political problems threatening the security and unity of Thailand, ever since the formation of
the Thai nation-state in the late nineteenth century (see Appendix I), mainly because
resistance and rebellion against Thai government rule were so strong among the Muslim
population. It is necessary to emphasize here that the Muslims are not only a regional ethnic
group in Thailand but, in fact, they are a national group of people. Although the
concentration of the Thai-Muslims is heavily in the southernmost provinces, they constitute
about half of the total population of the Thai-Muslim community in the country, the other
half of the Muslim communities were scattered around various regions of the country, of
which the central region is the most populated. Their relations to the Thai state and society
are rather different from those of the South. Although they are sympathetic to the plight of
the Malay-Muslims of the South, the central Muslims tend to imagine themselves as Thai
national and citizens. This complexity thus gives rise to a diverse and dynamic group of
people who share their particular past and experience with other Thais in forging a unified
and tolerant nation-state.