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degrees of autonomy despite being forcefully incorporated into the sphere of
influence of Siamese suzerainty in 1786. On several occasions, leaders of Patani
refused to send required tribute, leading to Siamese recriminations that resulted
in wars between Siam and Patani, which for the latter entered into local folklore
as wars of resistance. 3 This historical legacy is kept alive through oral and local
print history, representative of the tension and mutual distrust between the
central state in Bangkok and the provinces in the south.
Such historical and geopolitical considerations have been further aggravated by
Bangkok’s repeated disregard for local culture, religious identity, and practices
in its administration of the southern provinces. One major point of contention
has been the central government’s reluctance to accord Malay language the
status and legitimacy desired by local communities; another has been the
disconnect between Thai and Malay perceptions of the role and relevance of
Islamic education. For the Malay community of the southern provinces, Islamic
schools have long been seen as a major social and cultural institution, not merely
a repository of religious knowledge. Moreover, it is in the pondok (lit. hut) Islamic
schools, ubiquitous institutions since the late 19th century, that local narratives of
Patani history have been perpetuated and Malay language (in the form of the
Jawi traditional Malay script and the Patani Malay dialect) kept alive. By
contrast, the Thai establishment viewed Islamic schools with great suspicion.
Given their emphasis on religious knowledge, these schools are not perceived to
provide the necessary training required to support the building of a modern Thai
nation-state. More importantly, these schools have been viewed as progenitors of
contrarian views on Thai history, meaning that their staff’s loyalty to the Thai
state has been questioned. Finally, Islamic schools have been suspected to be key
recruitment and indoctrination grounds for the Malay-based separatist
movements. These differences have been amplified by the fact that there is an
intimate correlation between Malay ethnicity and the Islamic religion, to the
extent that Jawi, and not Arabic, is considered the “language of Islam” in the
region. In other words, various policies enacted by the Thai government over the
years to curb Malay cultural and religious expression have contributed to a
mood of resistance against the state.
Resistance to the central state peaked in the 1960s with the formation of
organized armed separatist groups. Among the most prominent were the Barisan
Revolusi Nasional, formed in 1963, and PULO (Pattani United Liberation
3
Surin Pitsuwan, Islam and Malay Nationalism: A Case Study of the Malay-Muslims of Southern
Thailand (Bangkok: Thai Khadi Research Institute, 1985), 33.
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