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Published on September 14, 2007

During Ramadan, followers of Islam everywhere, including in Thailand, will reflect on what it means to be Muslim. During Ramadan, the holiest of the four holy months of the Islamic lunar calendar, all physically mature and healthy Muslims are required to abstain from food, drink, tobacco and any kind of sexual contact between dawn and sunset. Muslims are also called upon during the 30-day period to spend time praying, doing good deeds, and showing generosity and kindness.

There will be plenty for Thai Muslims to reflect on. Since January 2004, a ruthless insurgency and campaign of terror has been perpetrated by people who describe themselves as either Islamic fighters or Malay separatists. More than 2,500 people, most of them unarmed civilians, have been brutally killed, and thousands other injured or maimed for life.

Old grievances of the distant past, such as state-sanctioned discrimination against Muslims, are being cited as justification or a rallying cry for Muslims to take up arms against the Thai state and to go on a rampage of killing innocent victims. Today in modern Thailand, Islam is no longer discriminated against. It is widely and freely practised in all parts of the country, yet killings committed in the name of the religion are being promoted by members of the fanatic fringe as a religious duty.

Certainly it is not fair to blame the whole Muslim community in this country for the atrocities committed by a tiny minority. Most Muslims are peace-loving, law-abiding citizens. But it is not enough for moderate Muslims to ignore what some of their co-religionists are guilty of. It is not enough to insist that Islam does not condone violence, and that the heinous crimes against innocent Buddhists and Muslims alike in the deep South have nothing to do with them.

Such perversion of Islam must not be tolerated. Muslim leaders who consider themselves true to Islam, who form the majority of their faith in this country, must denounce the killings of innocent people. They must also find ways to act collectively and effectively to make change for the better. They should have nothing whatsoever to do with the instigators of violence, who sully the name of Islam.

Good Muslims, particularly in the strife-torn deep South, must engage in serious debate about what has gone wrong within their own communities, many of which have been turned into hotbeds of the most barbaric form of terrorism. Some members of these communities justify the killing of innocents, the mutilation of dead bodies, the slaughter of defenceless women and the elderly. Previous generations of Malay separatist fighters in the deep South never indulged in such senseless and outrageous violence.

It is the actions of a tiny minority of wrong-headed Muslims that chip away at the long-standing social harmony that is the hallmark of Thailand, a country where people of different religious faiths have coexisted peacefully for so long.  Despite some bitter memories and friction, mainstream Thai society and the Muslim community in southern Thailand have, for a long time, shown remarkable tolerance towards one another. But sectarian hatred has reared its ugly head in the deep South and mutual distrust between Muslims and Buddhists has become the norm.

Muslims in other parts of the country already know that, as citizens of this country, there is nothing to hold them back politically, economically or socially if they strive to improve themselves through education and perseverance. The fact that Muslims outside the deep South are well represented at the highest levels of government and in the top tiers of the professions reflects positively on the Muslim community as a whole. Thai Muslims in other parts of the country who are well integrated into mainstream society and get along well with people of other faiths, and those in the deep South, who tend to keep to themselves, should develop a greater sense of fellowship in order to help restore social harmony in the South.

Such facts should be communicated by successful Thai Muslims to their Muslim brothers and sisters in the deep South. Many of them continue to be weighed down by a sense of victimhood and painful memories of the past. To be Muslim and to be progressive, successful and prosperous are not mutually exclusive.