Yusuf, Imtiyaz (2025) The Muslim ethno-religiouscape of Thailand can be accommodated peacefully. Melbourne Asia Review, 23. E-ISSN 2652-550X
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Abstract
This article examines the situation of Muslims in Thailand, a majority Buddhist nation. Most studies about Muslims in Thailand focus on the ongoing 117 year insurgency, or anti-colonial struggle, against the Thai state in the nation’s south and overlook the presence of the majority of the Thai Muslim community residing in the rest the country. The study of Islam as a religious and identity marker is best understood through the ‘sociolinguistics of Islam’ which explores how language and society intersect with faith in defining the Muslim weltanschauung (worldview). Post-colonial semi-secular states such as Thailand where ethnicities and religions are important identity markers face the challenge of accommodating ethno-religious minorities (just as accommodating religious diversity represented by the presence of the ethno-racial ‘other’ is a major challenge faced by Western democracies). The ethnic, sociolinguistic and religious diversity of Islam in Thailand is reflected in the ethno-linguistic diversity within Thai Islam across the country and also in the duality of its religious discourse conducted exclusively in local Jawi–Malay language in the deep south and exclusively Thai in the rest of the country, as discussed below.
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