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| Southeast Asia |
| Thai Muslim leaders refute jihad explanation for south violence |
| 2004-05-11 |
| Muslim leaders in Thailand had joined to denounce recent violence in the Muslim-dominated south, saying it was not jihad (holy war) but works of "religious outcast," local press reported on Tuesday. Insurgent groups behind the bloody clashes in April were distorting the principle of an Islamic doctrine to mislead Muslim men into fighting against the authorities in the erroneous belief they would go to heaven if killed in action, Waedueramae Mamingji,chairman of Pattani’s provincial Islamic committee, was quoted by Bangkok Post as saying. "The groups are inciting teenagers and young men to view soldiers and police as the enemy whom they must vanquish. Their deaths in the fight would be a sacrifice and they would become jihad warriors," Waedueramae said. More than 100 young men, mostly Muslims, on April 28 simultaneously launched desperate attacks against government places in the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Songkhla. The clashes ended with the government troops taking over the ancient Krue Se mosque holed up by the last batch of insurgents and altogether 113 people were killed in the incident. Despite the government’s repeated declaration that the attacks were neither related to religious conflicts nor international terrorism, local reports running stories indicating the opposite possibility. Many of the insurgents shielding only machetes reportedly shouted slogans such as "Fighting for the God" while carrying out their attacks. It was also reported that families of several killed attackers chose not to bathe their sons’s bodies before funeral ceremonies as local Muslim traditions requiring, indicating they had died fighting a holy war. However, Waedueramae denied Islam would teach followers to die in such a way or to kill others. "These people have been lured to believe that they are under a spell and thus are invulnerable and invisible, so they dare hold knives to fight against guns, and were thus killed." "It’s a pity that young men have lost their lives this way," he said. Thailand’s Central Islamic Committee’s vice chairman Vinai Sama-oon on Sunday also told a gathering of 500 Muslims at a mosque in the south that the Muslims killed on April 28 were not considered jihadis. A jihadi was one who fought against a religious insult or an attempt to expel Muslims from their land, but in Thailand the constitution already eliminated these conditions because it guaranteed the freedom of religion, he said. Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said the latest violence was out of hands of interest groups, Mafia and corrupt politicians, but military and intelligent resources were quoted by local reports as saying there might be separatist groups influence in the violence. Coming under direct rule of Bangkok only in the year 1902, the kingdom’s deep south community, used to belong to several small sultanates, has relatively remote to the central government and a handful separatists have continuously acted in the region. With local separatist movement petering out in late 1980’s, the place has been disturbed by sporadic violence created by a handful of remaining separatists grouped with gangsters engaged in drug dealings, weapon smuggling and money laundry. The region has fallen into spiraling violence since Jan. 4, when armed men simultaneously torched down 20 schools, looted more than 300 weapons and killed 4 soldiers. |
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