1) On Islam and Violence in the Muslim South of Thailand

Abstract

This short paper on Chaiwat Satha-Anand examines his approach to the study of violence in the Muslim south of Thailand. Chaiwat’s approach to the study of violence in the Muslim south has been to examine how the Muslim perpetrators of violence in the south use Islam as a tool to justify the violence as well as to win support and sympathy amongst the Thai Malay-Muslim population which has seen itself as discriminated against by the Thai-Buddhist state and state officials. In this sense, Chaiwat provides the only work that looks closely at the use and abuse of Islam in the violent areas of southern Thailand. While older and more recent works have tried to understand the incidence of violence in the south by examining issues of economic deprivation, discrimination and influence of global Islamic jihadi movements, Chaiwat delves deep into the religious psyche of the Muslim perpetrators to understand how their interpretations of Islam have justified their use of violence against the Thai-Buddhist state and its agents with a stated aim to “liberate” the Muslim south from the Thai state.