ARI Working Paper Series

It would appear to be a simple question: Who are the people at the centre of the violent conflict in Thailand’s “three southern provinces”? Judging by the coverage of the issue by the Thai and international media, the statements by the Thai and Malaysian governments, and the work of a large number of academics, particularly those in the field of security studies whose opinions have been widely sought after, most appear to have concluded: “Muslims”. Despite the Thai government’s attempts to characterize the conflict as not a religious one, the mere use of religious labels to represent the actors involved in the conflict make it difficult for the Thai public to imagine it otherwise. Since the conflict has been viewed predominantly in religious terms it is inevitable that the solutions that are offered tend to be based on religious considerations. Yet if the conflict were essentially religious, it begs the question why hundreds of thousands of “Muslims” all over Thailand who reside outside the three southern provinces where the violence has been concentrated have not shown greater solidarity with their co-religionists in their apparent struggle with the Thai state. Why then is this conflict consistently represented today using religious terminology?

This paper is an attempt to present a brief historical background to a number of discourses of identity regarding the people in the region. It assigns particular attention to the struggle between competing discourses of Thai national identity, Malay ethnic identity, Muslim identity, and a more localized identity centred around the memory of the former sultanate of Patani and its associated linguistic and cultural elements.