Hello friends,
With nearly all my maternal family living in Bangkok, and having lived there a while myself, I can assure the doomsayers that this is anything but a "Muslim takeover" of Thailand. Despite a long and fractious relationship with the Muslim Malay sultanates that border it to the south, Thai Buddhists have a pretty good historical relationship with Muslims overall. The troubles in the south (Pattani) derive from legitimate political grievances that have a basis in the Anglo-Siamese treaty of 1910 in which the British recognized Thai claims over Pattani in exchange for Thai recognition of British control of certain other Malay states formerly tributary to Siam.
As some others have said on this thread, the real problem is endemic corruption in the Thai political system itself, which has had a magnified effect on Thailand's minorities such as the Patani Malays. Orderly transitions of power are difficult because of the fiscal-military patronage relationships that are so entrenched. A large part of this problem was caused by American Cold War policy which empowered the Thai military and propped up politicians with an ostensible anti-communist posture. It'll take some time yet for true democratic institutions to take hold, and one of the determinants will be some redistribution of wealth and political power away from Bangkok to the provinces.
And it really should be emphasized again: The problem isn't "Islam;" like any other religion it only becomes a beacon for radicalism when social conditions in its places of practice are in upheaval. History proves this. If our goal is to combat extremists (of any sort), we must look past the rhetoric and address the underlying causes which drive people toward violence as their option -- poverty, lack of education, and lack of basic human rights.
With nearly all my maternal family living in Bangkok, and having lived there a while myself, I can assure the doomsayers that this is anything but a "Muslim takeover" of Thailand. Despite a long and fractious relationship with the Muslim Malay sultanates that border it to the south, Thai Buddhists have a pretty good historical relationship with Muslims overall. The troubles in the south (Pattani) derive from legitimate political grievances that have a basis in the Anglo-Siamese treaty of 1910 in which the British recognized Thai claims over Pattani in exchange for Thai recognition of British control of certain other Malay states formerly tributary to Siam.
As some others have said on this thread, the real problem is endemic corruption in the Thai political system itself, which has had a magnified effect on Thailand's minorities such as the Patani Malays. Orderly transitions of power are difficult because of the fiscal-military patronage relationships that are so entrenched. A large part of this problem was caused by American Cold War policy which empowered the Thai military and propped up politicians with an ostensible anti-communist posture. It'll take some time yet for true democratic institutions to take hold, and one of the determinants will be some redistribution of wealth and political power away from Bangkok to the provinces.
And it really should be emphasized again: The problem isn't "Islam;" like any other religion it only becomes a beacon for radicalism when social conditions in its places of practice are in upheaval. History proves this. If our goal is to combat extremists (of any sort), we must look past the rhetoric and address the underlying causes which drive people toward violence as their option -- poverty, lack of education, and lack of basic human rights.
