Religion and Conflict in Southern Thailand: Beyond Rounding up the Usual Suspects (Report‪)‬

The present conflict in Thailand's far south continues to attract much attention from academics and analysts. While applauding approaches framing aspects of this conflict in the wider context of Thai society that is facing a range of crises, many remain concerned with establishing local connections to global jihadi movements. (1) Such an approach resembles the rounding up of the "usual suspects" ordered by inspector Louis Renault in the closing scene of the 1942 classic movie Casablanca. Anthony Johns likens this to studies of Southeast Asian Islam where the interrogation of the usual suspects has become a routine exercise. While there may be ways to make people talk, there are many more questions to ask and interrogators are capable of putting into suspects' mouths what they want them to say. In short, there is the need to "discover ways and means of moving beyond what has become habitual, of finding new questions to ask and more suspects to round up". (2) This article sets out to achieve a number of goals in the discussion on the role of religion in Thailand's southern conflict since 2004. Before asking new questions of Thailand's southern Malay Muslims, the paper begins by rounding up some "unusual suspects", specifically, the uncivil elements of Thai Buddhism. This approach resembles that of Juergensmeyer's study of religious violence which examines the logic of violence by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists. (3) The article also seeks to develop Imtiyaz Ynsuf's persuasive proposal that the southern violence represents a conflict between the competing exclusive ethno-religious worldviews of Thai and Malay religions.