“Appeased” Thailand Muslims Show Gratitude With … Bombs

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Source: Reuters News “Karaoke bar bombs wound five in Thailand” via Thailand News.

BANGKOK, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Militants detonated three small bombs at karaoke bars and at a roadside in Thailand’s rebellious Muslim south, wounding five people including two policemen, police said on Sunday.

The latest attack in a nearly three-year-old separatist insurgency occured late on Saturday in the Tak Bai district in the province of Narathiwat, one of three provinces near the Malaysian border where more than 1,700 people have been killed.

This should not be surprising. On Friday, Nov. 3rd, just four days ago, I said:

The imposition of [or offer to impose] Sharia law to appease the Muslims in the Southern provinces will only lead to more violence and more demands for imposition of more Sharia law throughout the rest of the country.

Appeasing the enemy only emboldens them. The act of appeasement implies that the other party has a moral right to their claim, and that you have no moral right to deny the claimant. Appeasement is like offering a bank robber only some of the cash in the vault if he’ll just leave you alone; at this point you’ve surrendered the moral high ground to the thief and he should have no problem with coming back for more … and more … until he gets it all.

Appeasement does not work. This is a fact which which history is replete, along with many millions of corpses to match.

Notice also the targets: karaoke bars (where people sing and enjoy themselves) and policemen. According to Islamic law “It is unlawful to use musical instruments … or to listen to them.” (Except for the tambourine – at weddings, circumcisions, and other times.) Also, “singing or listening to singing is offensive except … at weddings and the like …” The consumption of alcohol is forbidden. For the karaoke bars, that’s three strikes. (I suppose they’ll all be bought by Target.) The policemen do not enforce Shar’ia law and are therefore acceptable casualties.

The target is the enjoyment of life. A life Islamic is a life lived in cast-iron chains, with most opportunities to achieve values and to know joy violently excised from one’s life.

This latest attack is far from the first. There have been far too many violent “incidents.” I have said before – and oddly, I don’t mind repeating myself – that the entire point of the Islamic violence in southern Thailand is jihad for the sake of turning Thailand into an Islamic theocracy.

I won’t just make the claim – I’ll do my best to back it up.

Thailand’s Southernmost Provinces – The Jihad Zones

The map above, giving detail of the provinces involved in the Muslim-caused violence, is courtesy of GlobalSecurity.org. Their history of the violence in the southern provinces is available to you by clicking on the map.
Referring to the Reuters article quoted at the beginning of this post, you can see Narathiwat is at the very southernmost tip end of the country, bordering the Muslim nation of Malaysia. Also frequently involved in Muslim uprisings are the provinces of Pattani and Yala, bordering Narathiwat at the southernmost end of Thailand. There have also been incidents in Songkla, bordering Pattani and Yala.

Why Is There Violence in Thailand’s Southern Provinces?

Many different commentators have blamed the bloodshed in southern Thailand on any number of factors: “sectarian violence,” “separatists,” “activities in a criminal dumping-ground,” and so forth. Wikipedia.org, that venerable “free encyclopedia” roughly worth the exact cost of the paper it’s printed on (think about it for a moment) says this about the situation in Thailand:

The South Thailand insurgency is a separatist campaign centered in the Pattani region, three southern provinces of Thailand, with violence increasingly spilling over into neighbouring provinces and threatening to extend up to the national capital in Bangkok. A long series of conflicts has resulted in over 1200 deaths in the past decade, with more than 1000 occurring since an escalation of violence in January of 2004. In July of 2005 the Prime Minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, assumed wide-ranging emergency powers to deal with the insurgency. In September 2006, Army Commander Sonthi Boonyaratkalin was granted an extraordinary increase in executive powers to combat the unrest.^[1] On 19 September, Sonthi and the Thai military seized power from Thaksin. Despite reconciliatory gestures from the junta, the insurgency has continued.

Misidentification of the Root Cause – Wiki-oopsia

It’s a separatist campaign? Where is the evidence to support this claim? A “long series of conflicts” (performed by? for the purpose of? Blank-out) … “an escalation of violence” (why? who killed whom and for what purpose? Blank-out). The unanswers are nearly unending in their scope. The Wikipedia article falsely states that Army Commander (and practicing Muslim) Sondhi Boonyaratkalin was “granted” executive powers. This is simply not true. Sondhi himself said he had no permission to execute a military coup and seize power. The King of Thailand only “blessed” his action after it was a fait-accompli.

And yet, the Muslim “insurgency” continues. (Why? To what end? Blank-out.)

One should not blindly trust Wikipedia because of its “open source” style of reporting in which any lie or bias or honest mistake can be presented with little or no reference to fact or source. However, its general summary of the historical timeline of violence in the Southern Thai provinces, read judiciously, gives a useful baseline for reference.

Even though the Wikipedia article claims that “separatists” are behind the continually escalating violent attacks (on whom? Blank-out. However, the earliest attacks were on the police.) The Wikipedia article notes:

There was … little overt secessionist agitation until the liberalisation of Thai politics in the 1980s, but separatist groups such as the National Revolutionary Front (Barisan Revolusi Nasional, BRN) survived and maintained a base of support.

And unabashedly follows this with:

Renewed agitation began in the 1990s, led by Malay intellectuals influenced by revolutionary and Islamist ideas from the Middle East. The BRN split into three rival factions, of which the most militant were the BRN Coordinate and the BRN Congress. The BRN Congress is now regarded as the most active group, but there are several others, and competition between these militant groups has helped fuel the insurgency. It is believed that there is now a co-ordinating body called the Pattani United Liberation Organization (Dewan Pembebasan Pattani or PULO), although little is known about the composition or leadership of the various groups.

PULO’s platform is highlighted by its Islamic nationalist goals, calling the Thai presence in Pattani “a colonisation” and an “illegal occupation.” Its stated aims are to secede from Thailand through military and political means, and to create a state named Patani Darul Makrif (Pattani, Land of Good deeds). The PULO flag has four red and white stripes and a blue rectangle on the upper left with a crescent and a star similar to other Malaysian Malay states.

(Emphases in italics are mine.)

Following the lead paragraph, the article attempts to infer a connection between separatist movements from the 1930s and today’s killers, but then goes on to say that almost nothing is known about the leadership and composition of the group (or groups) responsible for the violence beyond the fact that it (or they) have Islamic nationalist goals.

(Putting on my Southern-drawl hat:) “Whale, where I comes from we-uns call thaut Jee-had.” We also say stuff like “If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and looks like a duck, guess what. It’s a gorram duck.” Or at least I do.

Correctly Identifying the Root Cause: Hot on the Trail of a … Clue

So is it true that nothing is known about the leadership and composition of the groups behind the violence? The next referenced article shows why I recommend you never take an open source and/or obviously biased article at face value.

Before becoming hopelessly mired in multicultural political correctness, the UK’s Guardian would occasionally print something incredibly useful about global issues related to Islamic jihad. For example, this 2002 Guardian UK article entitled “The ties that bind terror groups” has some illuminating Islamic insights:

Rohan Gunaratna
Tuesday October 15, 2002
The Guardian

The Bali bombing, the world’s worst terrorist attack since September 11, bears the hallmark of the Islamist group Jemaah Islamiyah – the only Indonesian group that has the intention and capability to conduct a mass casualty attack against a predominantly western target. The group forms a central part of al-Qaida’s south-east Asian network.

Al-Qaida provides the experts, training, and resources to Islamist political and military organisations towards a common goal: the creation of a caliphate or Islamic regime covering southern Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, Cambodia and southern Philippines.
. . .

Jemaah Islamiyah began as a local Indonesian group but expanded in the 1990s into a regional organisation extending from southern Thailand to Australia. Al-Qaida co-opted the co-founders of Jemaah Islamiyah – the late Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Ba’asyir – and provided extensive training and finance. After the death of Sungkar in 1999, Ba’asyir assumed leadership. Despite evidence that Ba’asyir is the political, ideological and spiritual leader of the group, he is allowed to operate openly in Indonesia.

The operational commander of the group, Riduan Isamuddin, alias Hambali, is believed to be hiding in Indonesia. Hambali holds both Jemaah Islamiyah and al-Qaida membership and serves in their shura (consultative) councils. He fought in the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan and built up the al-Qaida/Jemaah Islamiyah network in southeast Asia.

The group is divided into territorial organisations called mantiqis:

· The first mantiqi – or M1 – based in Malaysia, also covers Singapore, and southern Thailand;

· The second, M2, is based in Solo, central Java and covers the whole of Indonesia except for Sulawesi and Kalimantan;

· The third mantiqi, M3, was initially based in Maguindanao, southern Philippines, and also covers Borneo, including Brunei, the east Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah, and Kalimantan and Sulawesi in Indonesia;

· The fourth, M4, covers the island of Irian Jaya or West Papua, and Australia.

(As before, emphases in italics are mine.)

There is a common goal amongst the regional jihadists with whom Al-Qaeda has associated: the creation of an Islamic caliphate in Southeast Asia. This was known in 2002 but somehow this tiny detail did not make it into the Wikipedia article.

This is not to say that the analysis performed by the Guardian’s writer is pristine, either. Its author places entirely too much emphasis on Al-Qaeda’s involvement (as did nearly everyone), because it was widely believed that Al-Qaeda was a “splinter group” which was an exception to the Islamic core beliefs and that it was somehow using the religion to further its goals. That belief was false then and it is false now, borne of a nearly pathological need to dissociate a religion from violent goals and aims. The cause of this misleading approach is primarily rampant multiculturalism but religious apologists play a part as well.

Nonetheless, the Wikipedia article appears to go overboard in trying to whitewash the problem, which began with the killing of policemen and went downhill from there. I’m not going to single out the Wikipedia article as the only erroneous report, though. As this BBC News article shows, even Thailand’s leaders in 2002 were so busy trying to absolve the Muslims that their denials present a veritable paroxysm of blanking-out:

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said he feared more violence in the area, but did not link the attacks on police officers to religion, the Reuters news agency reported.

I’m sorry, was that the same al-Reuters that routinely distorts the news, hires and does not monitor Muslim propagandists to report from all over the Middle East, and refuses to apologize for random acts of photoshopping? Just checking.

“I don’t think religion was the cause of the problems down there because several of the policemen killed were Muslim.”

This quote is actually unattributed in the article but contextually it appears to have been made by (former) Prime Minister Thaksin. I note that in the prior paragraph the reporter appended “he said” to that statement. Why did he not append something like “PM Thaksin added” to this one? Unless, of course, (former) Prime Minister Thaksin didn’t say it, in which case, like a punch-card chad, the reporter just left it hanging.

Or he’s not a very good journalist. Your call. Regardless, beware unattributed quotations.

From the same BBC article:

Interior Minister Purachai Piemsomboon visited the scene of the latest shootings in Sungai Padi, about 800 kilometres (500 miles) south of Bangkok.

He said drug traffickers were suspected as being responsible for the violence.

“They are looking after their own interests, they are motivated only by money,” he said in a television interview.

“This is happening because police are making serious efforts to make arrests over drugs trafficking.” [note: unattributed quotation]
Earlier, police chief General Sant Sarutanond agreed that the separatist groups that plagued the area in the 1980s were not suspected of the attacks.

“It must be a bandit group but not terrorists,” he said.

No-one has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Sungai Padi, in Narathiwat – one of five Thai provinces bordering Malaysia where Muslims are in the majority.

Read judiciously, the BBC report provides three important facts.

1. Police were making arrests related to drug trafficking. (Note: funding for Islamic terrorism routinely relies on drug trafficking – see nearly any honest article on Afghanistan for details.)
2. The Thai government didn’t believe the attack came from a terrorist organization. (At the time they had no reason to think so.)
3. The article notes repeatedly that Muslims couldn’t have had anything to do with the attack even though this was happening in one of five Thai provinces bordering a Muslim nation.

None of the Thai officials of the day were quoted as saying they thought Muslims were behind the attacks. They may have been clueless, or they may have been thinking that a beheading is such an awful way to spend the last moments of your life. However, there still must be an explanation somewhere.

More than just a clue from the US Navy – but did they really intend to have one?

This February 2005 article by Auriel Croissant and from the U.S. Navy’s Center for Contemporary Conflict, while largely 50 pounds of ethnically-suppressed, financially-deprived, politically-subordinated and socially-discriminated bullshit in a 5 pound bag, does manage to hit the nail on the head in several places.

(Please note: the quotations taken from the article are not intended to minimize human rights violations and sometimes tragic mistakes made by Thailand’s government, police, and military, but rather are intended to clearly and unambiguously identify the root causes of those initiating the continuing killings, bombings, and violence in southern Thailand provinces.)

From the article:

Even though Thailand’s south contains fourteen provinces, the great majority of Thailand’s Muslims live in the four southernmost provinces of Satun, Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat. A recent household survey conducted by the Thai government found that over 76 per cent of the population in these four provinces adhered to the Islamic faith.[14] These provinces are also hotspots of recent violence and insurgency, accounting for most clashes and violent incidences in the current wave of unrest.

(Emphases in italics are mine.)

Where I come from this is what we call a “real clue.” Before we chase this real clue let’s take a look at the butcher’s bill as summarized through 2004 in the same article:

Ministry of the Interior statistics show and increase of violence from 2001 on. In 2001 alone, 19 killed policemen and 50 insurgency-related incidents across the three most affected provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat. In 2002, several police stations were attacked when the guerillas seized huge amounts of arms and ammunitions and killed some 50 police and soldiers in 75 incidents throughout the year. In 2003 official sources counted 119 incidents. The latest outburst of violence began on January 2004 when about 30 armed men stormed the army depot in Narathiwat, stealing 300 weapons and killing four Thai soldiers. During the ten months between January and end of October 2004, over 500 people reportedly have been killed in more than 900 insurgency-related incidents, including civilians, police, soldiers, and other government officials.[15] On October 25, 2004, the death of 84 Muslims at the provincial town of Tak Bai, once again elevated the conflict.[16] Recent killings in Songkhla[17] raise fears that violence could spill over into neighboring areas

Not a pretty picture, is it? However, whether deliberately or due to sloppiness, the author (and please ignore for the moment the poor writing and grammar from a writer associated with of one of the U.S. Navy’s prestigious institutes … sigh … ) attributes exactly no one to any defined act, and does not define the acts themselves.
In Croissant’s work all we will find are “insurgents,” “guerillas,” and “armed men” responsible for the violence. Who the hell are these guys??? Boy, they must be a slippery bunch. The activities being summarized were all “incidents,” “outbursts of violence,” armed robberies, and conflicts. Exactly what took place is hard to tell. Several police stations were attacked by nameless guerillas. Did no one have any idea who was involved? Thirty armed men attacked an army depot and stole 300 weapons and killed four Thai soldiers. Did no one have a clue who took the weapons and why? The total absence of knowledge is mind-boggling. Either the author was too sloppy to bother with getting some hard facts, or he simply didn’t want to know. Either way, there are only numbers and little in the way of hard facts.

I note, however, that Croissant observed the death of 84 Muslims “elevated the conflict.” Why did they die? The situation at Tak Bai is important to understand even though Croissant cannot resist cognitive drift and chose not to elaborate on this incident.

The incident at Tak Bai – What Really Happened?

This TIME Asia article gives good detail (if read judiciously) about what happened in Narathiwat near the Tak Bai river. So does this news release from the Thai government. Read both of them, because the TIME author has omitted the police and military points of view, and the official government release leaves out other details.

Here are the main points synthesized from both articles. Note the timeline and the fact that this happened during Ramadan, a period when Muslims fast during the day and only break fast in the evening. Fasting includes rejection of both food and water.

• On Monday, October 25 2004, time unspecified but presumably early in the day, a group of about 500 Muslims “gathered” in a small park across the road from the local police station and demanded the release of six Muslim men arrested and charged, according to TIME, with providing arms to “Islamic separatist fighters” (TIMEspeak for jihadists.). The actual Thai government charges were “false statement with regard to theft of government-issued weapons from community defense volunteers.”
• By 3:00 pm the Muslim mob grew to between 2,000 and 3,000 angry people, including women and children.
• Police informed the crowd that the six men would be released on bail the next day, October 26th, but the mob would have none of it. They were demonstrating, presumably not by singing the Muslim equivalent of “kumbya,” but angrily and testily.
• The TIME author says the authorities were “in no mood to oblige,” as though the rule of law were a whim to be obeyed depending on one’s mood. The police were doing their jobs and were confronted with a dangerous mob.
• The military was called in to support the police. The road was blocked with tanks and military trucks, the crowd faced armed personnel, and the Tak Bai river was behind them. This does not mean the people in the mob could not have simply dispersed and walked away. It does indicate the seriousness of the Muslim mob in that they showed no intent to leave without getting what they came for.
• The police repeatedly tried to negotiate with the mob (i.e., to talk them down and get them to leave). They even brought in one of Narithiwat’s “most senior Islamic figures,” Abdulrazak Ali, in an attempt to defuse the situation. Abdulrazak noted the crowd was under the control of “radicals,” which in this context can only mean radical clerics, since only Islamic clerics could argue the crowd into ignoring another Islamic cleric.
• The mob stormed the police station. The police fired tear gas and used water hoses in an attempt to disperse the crowd. These are nonlethal, if annoying, techniques, but that was pretty much the point.
• “Many men in the group” (the Muslim mob) began throwing bricks and rocks at the police. For the police this is now a situation in which people are openly defying the rule of law by initiating the use of force. It’s not a situation police or military can back down from. Any mob has to know who is in charge when force is used against the police and/or military, or the rule of law simply disintegrates and anarchy takes it its place.
• The police fired into the air and, in some cases, at their attackers. The mob fled away from the police and military and generally toward the river, some hid behind the embankment, and some attempted to swim out to nearby boats.
• Narathiwat’s military chief, Traikwan Kraireuk, believed the boats were manned by heavily armed insurgents. The police and military fired at the boats to keep them away.
• When the smoke cleared at around 4 PM, six protesters were dead and 17 people were injured. Not bad for angry mob management. The TIME article, however, completely fails to note that 14 of the injured were Thai security forces, two critically. This means that six protestors died and 3 were injured. Given the circumstances, this was excellent crowd control. It certainly was not a massacre.
• The women and children were led away. 1,298 men were arrested, ordered to strip off their shirts, were handcuffed behind their backs, and ordered to lie flat on the ground. (Shirt removal means you can’t hide a weapon.)
• Thai TV footage is reported to show some of the captives being beaten and kicked. While this is reprehensible, think about what you as a policeman or soldier would have just experienced: roughly seven straight hours of a tense standoff with a growing, angry mob that just stormed the police station and tried to kill injure those they could. These guys are now tired and pissed. If you don’t want the cops and military to take random shots at you, don’t spend your day pissing them off and trying to hurt them. (This, it may be noted, is what we down South call “common sense.”
• A witness by the name of Vuttichai said that says no one offered the men any water. “It’s [the Muslim fasting month of] Ramadan,” says Vuttichai. “They wouldn’t have accepted it anyway.” [From the TIME article.]
• At this stage, the Muslims are physically exhausted and many of them are probably suffering from dehydration. Why? Any Southerner will tell you it can happen when you have a lot of physical activity in humid conditions (the day was described as “sultry” by the TIME reporter), because the body will sweat excessively during exertion – because the normal evaporation process is not happening and the body is not cooling off normally. This can result in a condition called “heatstroke” where the body’s internal temperature gets too high.
• The soldiers, under limited or no supervision, and with a limited number of vehicles available to haul these criminals, proceeded to lift and stack them into the trucks. One probable reason for the stacking was that a lot of the Muslims were now lying limply on the ground and were reported to not even be able to help themselves get into the truck. The soldiers took the prostrate Muslims and piled ‘em up. Not a good move, soldier. Then again, the soldiers were not likely in a good mood to start with, like the Muslims the soldiers and police were by now quite tired, and now they had to lift a lot of dead weight. The soldiers may have even thought the Muslims were being deliberately passive to make things harder on them.
• Seventy eight Muslim rioters died horribly, as a result of asphyxiation, dehydration, heatstroke, or a combination of these factors (although the TIME article inflates this number to 85, the official count of those dying on the trucks from these causes was 78; your journalism dollars in action). The official Thai government report notes “Autopsy results indicated that suffocation and heatstroke were the most likely cause of death of … 78 detainees.” (Did I mention heatstroke?)

One other important note. This was not a spontaneous outpouring of support for six unjustly accused men who had been randomly snatched off the street by evil, jackbooted government thugs. It was a planned affair, all the way down the line. The Thai government notes:

A press release issued by the Department of Information, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that it was clearly evident that the situation was premeditated and instigated. This was reflected in the turnout by the large number of protesters converging from a number of districts beyond Narathiwat in a very short span of time, together with the number of weapons seized by the authorities. The protesters appeared to have been in a state of intoxication with some kind of stimulant, which was presumably not alcohol. In order to prevent the escalation to greater chaos and political instability and to bring about overall public security and safety, the security forces had no other alternative but to follow step-by-step non-lethal approach to disperse the crowd.

(As usual, emphases in italics are mine.)

As usual the TIME article leaves out the important point that at least some of the Muslims came loaded for bear.

The Tak Bai Incident – A Summary

Up to 3,000 angry Muslims, some of whom were armed, spent a hot, sultry Ramadan day without food or water, demanding the release of six men properly charged with crimes and arrested, and who were to be released on bail the next day. Seeing their demands were not being met, they stormed the police station and attempted to take it by force. Some of the Muslims threw rocks and bricks at the combined police and military presence. The police and military attempted to quell the riot with tear gas and water hoses, but after some of the Thai security forces were injured they fired warning shots and then, as necessary, into the crowd, killing six of the rioters. After stopping the riot the Thai security forces released the women and children and arrested 1,298 rioters, ordering them to strip off their shirts (to avoid having rioters with concealed weapons), then handcuffed them and ordered them to lie down while they gained full control over a dangerous situation. For whatever reason, whether it was callousness, fatigue, poor judgment, short-sightedness, or a combination of all of the above, the Thai security forces ended up piling people like sacks on top of one another in their trucks and drove them to where they would be incarcerated. As a result, some 78 Muslim rioters died horribly, as a result of asphyxiation, dehydration, heatstroke, or a combination of these factors.

As I have said before, if you don’t want to suffer the horrible consequences of war, don’t start one. This was war against the police and military by the Muslims; it was a demand that the government concede to Shar’ia law, under which Muslims can only be imprisoned and tried by other Muslims and infidels are to give back their prisoners – or else.

Tactics of war

Note the tactic from the Thai government press release quoted above:

… [a] large number of protesters [converged] from a number of districts beyond Narathiwat in a very short span of time, together with … weapons seized by the authorities

Now read this article from the Telegraph (UK) about what’s been going on in France. A short snippet:

Michel Thoomis, the secretary general of the hardline Action Police trade union, has written to Mr Sarkozy warning of an “intifada” on the estates and demanding that officers be given armoured cars in the most dangerous areas.

He said yesterday: “We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists. This is not a question of urban violence any more, it is an intifada, with stones and Molotov cocktails. You no longer see two or three youths confronting police, you see whole tower blocks emptying into the streets to set their ‘comrades’ free when they are arrested.“

He added: “We need armoured vehicles and water cannon. They are the only things that can disperse crowds of hundreds of people who are trying to kill police and burn their vehicles.”

We are seeing more and more of this tactic in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods, and if you pay attention to world press releases, you’ll see it again.  It is no coincidence.

Continuing the analysis of the US Navy (Croissant) article

Auriel Croissant, as I said, cannot resist cognitive drift. He discusses separatist groups but fails to identify any that have relevance, rendering that section of the article an exercise in “let’s talk about it so we can ignore it.” He further extemporizes on the problem with distinguishing highly unorganized crime bosses in the area from actual terrorists, noting the drug and arms trade business which is in full bloom in the affected provinces, without managing to note whether a connection might exist or if it is relevant. The drug trade in Afghanistan is a prime example that Croissant surely would have known about – drugs to arms to terrorists. It’s not a difficult connection to make, but if you have ADHD … oh, look! A shiny penny!

Would you like coke with that Croissant?

Having failed to follow the coke (or heroin, or whatever drugs are being plied down there in southern Thailand), Auriel Croissant, a true product of modern university teaching, wanders further down the dead-end path of social, financial, and political “factors” in true Marxian fashion. However, quite surprisingly, he does manage to name the root cause of the violence -before proceeding to ignore it as though he’d already forgotten what he said before he said it.

Islamic schools, Fundamentalism, Jihad

From the same article by Auriel Croissant – here is some real ADHD in action, as he notes and then dismisses the most likely root cause:

The Growth of Islamism

The conventional wisdom holds that “Islam in Southeast Asia has always been defined by tolerance, moderation, and pluralism.”[39] Right or wrong, as almost everywhere in the Muslim world, the past two decades have seen a stronger emphasis of Islamic identity among Thai Muslims. Thailand’s ethnic-Malay Muslims traditionally practice a moderate and syncretic variant of Islam, Sufism—Sunni Islam with a mystical moderate edge. Over the past few decades, however, purist Salafi (and more specifically Wahhabi) teaching has been gaining ground—propelled by donations from charities and benefactors in the Middle East and fostering a greater orthodoxy in many of the increasing number of religious schools. [40]

(Emhpases in italics – when not Arabic words – are mine.)

Wahhabist and Salafi “variants” of Islam preach a strict adherence to the Muhammad’s original intent to spread islam around the globe as elucideated in the Qu’ran and the Hadiths, strict adherence to Islamic law, and above all, jihad as an obligatory duty. Greater orthodoxy means greater consistency – consistent teachings, consistent behavior, consistent demands for Shar’ia law, and continuing jihad.

According to the Ministry of Education, there were more than 500 private Islamic schools in south Thailand in 2004, covering more than 2,000 teachers and 25,000 students.[41] While most are registered with the Ministry of Education, some are beyond official supervision. Funded by private donations and in many cases founded by teachers (ustaz) who themselves have done religious studies in Pakistan and the Middle East, some ponoh became breeding grounds for potential radical Muslims. Separately, according to Thai government sources, in the past 15 years, 2,500 Thai-Muslim students graduated from religious schools in Saudi Arabia, 2,500 more from various Islamic universities in the Middle East and South Asia.[42]

Upon returning home, few of these young graduates were able to find a job and were at the mercy of aid donors from Islamic countries in the Middle East. They ended up as religious teachers in local communities, thereby contributing to the growth of more orthodox and radical versions of Islam, such as Wahhabi and fundamentalist Islam. Politically radical young ustaz and their students became protagonists of the movement of Umna-ism in southern Thailand. This resulted in an expanded pool of disconnected youth that became prime targets for recruitment by the extremists. Inspired by the noticeable expansion of both radical Islamism and the transnational activities of the mushrooming number of radical Islamist organizations as well as by the Thai Government’s assistance to the US war on terror after 2001, they became a spearhead of Islamist revival in the south.[43]

(Emhpases in italics – when not Arabic words – are mine.)

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and others have noted that Saudi Arabia funds most of the worldwide mosques; that it is the home of the Wahhabist variant of Islam; that oil sales are providing a steady source of income, and that whomever pays for the building and upkeep of the mosque gets to choose who the Imam for that mosque will be. The Imam sets the tone for the variant of Islam that will be taught and enforced locally to the mosque.

Bottom line: the violent but orthodox and consistent variants of Islam have been spreading like wildfire throughout the southern provinces of Thailand. Eventually this situation will render those provinces uncontrollable, and later still, they will inexorably spread North, until the Thai government becomes an Islamic theocracy. With the curren policies of appeasement and with having Sondhi, a Muslim, in a position of influence, one should expect the spread of Islam to accelerate into goverment policies as a result of pressures applied from within – as well as from without.

When All Else Fails, Blame the Government

Croissant notes none of the analyses I have provided. And, when you can’t pin the blame on the ones really responsible for all the trouble, to whom do you turn? Let’s ask Auriel.

Shift of Government Policies

Increasing Islamic awareness and the split among Thailand’s ethnic-Malay in Islamic fundamentalists, or reformists, and more moderate traditionalists contributes to a more favorable social climate for Muslim insurgency in the south and improves the opportunities for insurgent groups to recruit followers. However, the current crisis is also a result of some government policies that aggravated the situation in the region.

(Emphasis mine.)

The last sentence quoted above is largely true but does not impact the importance of the real root cause of the problem: Islamic fundamentalism. The Tak Bai incident is no doubt only one of many in which the Muslims brought death upon their own heads. But death for Muslims is both martyrdom and victimization, providing a path to both claim glory and demand reparations – or revenge.

There is no doubt that the Thai government and police have used some heavy-handed techniques when dealing with prisoners, possibly including “midnight arrests” (in which suspects vanished into jails without notice to family or friends, but for which I can find no specific references), and torture was (and probably still is) routinely used on suspects. However, these immoral techniques, long in use throughout Southeast Asia and other less-civilized nations, are relatively common and do not “target” Muslims. Those techniques were, however wrong, used in service of defending Thailand against a Muslim uprising. This is not said to condone human rights violations; it is said to place them within context.

And this is why I’m calling Auriel’s observation largely irrelevant: the Thai government, responding to a Muslim uprising and being forced to defend itself and the rule of law, must take action. In the end, it is likely that some Muslims will die; this in turn is used by the Imams to spur further Muslim violence. None of this is a root cause. It’s not even a contributing factor. It’s a tactic of war applied by the Muslims to move their cause forward. Only a firm moral footing and a total, committed rejection of Islamic principles and Shar’ia law can stop this beast dead in its tracks.

Play Nice, and They’ll Play Nice Too

Auriel will have none of this. To continue with our Croissant and coke:

Cultural insensitivity and an increasing number of human rights violations committed by the police and the military have provoked fear and anger and strengthened the cause of the insurgents. According to reports by Thai newspapers and the National Human Rights Commission, as many as two hundred local Malay Muslims had been carried away by local police and military or disappeared after the security forces had looked for them.[51] Several other measures taken by the security forces, such as intrusions into the unregistered religion schools, the arrests of teachers and the army’s frequent search and arrest hunts have eroded the local people’s will to cooperate with the security forces as well.

I’ll get to the “Cultural Insensitivity” thing in a moment. It is the reference at [51] which troubles me most because it is misleading, inflammatory, and leads nowhere.

It is misleading because the author appends “disappeared after the security forces had looked for them,” i.e., they fled, and mixes that unknown number of fleeing suspects with the total of “as many as 200 local Malay Muslims” that were “carried away” (arrested?) by “local police and military.” This creates a misleading impression that the Thai government has, at least in the recent past, embarked on a policy of widespread “disappearing” of people it does not like. It is a very serious charge, even if only by implication.

The [51] reference reads “51. The Nation, January 5, 2004; Bangkok Post, August 1, 2004.” If it is supposed to support “reports by Thai newspapers and the National Human Rights Commission,” where is the reference to the NHRC article supporting the claim? Hold that thought.

• A search of The Nation’s archives revealed no article supporting a claim of the disappearance of “as many as 200″ Muslims.
• A search of the Bangkok Post’s archives likewise revealed no such article.
• I could find nothing at the Thai National Human Rights Commission, which closed down on September 19, 2006, but has since reopened. Web links that could point toward supporting evidence are all broken (server timed out or is not responding).
• I found no references elsewhere in the world wide web and other human rights organizations alleging the disappearing of Thai citizens by its government.

Based on the fact that the cited reference is unsupportable I must therefore conclude that the implication that the Thai government has systematically “disappeared” its citizens is without justification and must be rejected as being without merit. Auriel Croissant’s implication has zero cognitive content and had no business in that document. Smoke, mirrors, and shazam!

Islamic culture rage – the new “normal”

Insofar as “cultural insensitivity” toward Muslims, which insensitivity exactly are we talking about? “Pope Rage?” “Danish Cartoon Rage?” “Salman Rushdie Rage?” “Muslim Taxi Driver Alcohol … Aggravation?” Muslim sensitivity to all things non-Muslim is by now well and truly documented. The list of things that can drive Muslims to rage is so long that I won’t bother to list it here. It’s hard to be sensitive to a religious group that has, no kidding here, a judical guide book that lists at least 124 pages of “enormities” (sins which, if not repented for appropriately, are mortal sins) which can be prosecuted under Shar’ia law. Here is a very small sample of things that qualify as an enormity:

• Sorcery
• Not performing prayer
• Not paying zakat (tithes, essentially)
• Being disrespectful to one’s parents
• Profit-bearing loans (apparently charging interest on a loan is equivalent to damnation)
• Wrongfully consuming an orphan’s property
• Lying about the prophet
• Breaking fast during Ramadan
• Fleeing from combat in jihad (unless you are militarily overwhelmed)
• Sex for the sake of pleasure (”Fornication”)
• Being a leader who misleads
• Drinking
• Being arrogant, prideful, conceited, vain, or haughty
• Bearing false witness
• Masturbation
• Sodomy
• Lesbianism
• Misappropriating spoils of war, Muslim funds, or zakat
• Fraud
• Theft
• Profligate lying
• Suicide
• Being a bad judge
• Allowing one’s wife to have sex for the sake of pleasure
• Being a masculine women
• Being an effiminate man
• Eating unslaughtered meat, blood, or pork
• Not freeing oneself of all traces of urine
• Collection of non-Muslim taxes
• Showing off (with good works)
• Innovation

The list is tedious. You can read the entire absurd and insulting list for yourself: “Reliance of the Traveller, A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law” by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, written in Arabic with facing English text, commentary and appendices edited and translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller. This is a handbook of Islamic law published in 1991 and updated in 1994 by Amana Publications, Beltsville, Maryland U.S.A.

My point here is that with a list of things this big that can be a cause of outrage, how do Muslims manage to not be outraged all the time?

Lastly, Auriel Croissant’s observation that intrusive actions taken by the armed forces to root out jihadists, to look inside the schools and mosques and see what is happening there, and the arrests of teachers encouraging their students to martyr themselves for Islam, is not taken well by the locals … well, that is just too bad. To start with, the local Muslims have a closed community and don’t tolerate outsiders to start with, so the societal separation is inevitable.

And, as I have said before, if you don’t want to suffer the consequences of war, don’t start one. (The corollary: if you’re going to start a war, be prepared to deal with the natural consequences, which are horrific. War, it has been said, is hell. For a reason.)

What to do, What to do?

In the end, our stale Croissant manages to eke out a limp recommendation that, if followed, would lead to more trouble.

The long-term solution to the problem of Muslim insurgency in southern Thailand … is to develop a new counterinsurgency strategy that combines short-term measures focusing on stabilizing the security situation with a long-term approach that redresses the political, cultural, and economic root causes of the problem is needed. Such a strategy must start with a broad recognition in government of the need to address Muslim disaffection from which both radical Islam tendencies and separatism have been drawing strength.

Stablize the situation, short-term, and appease the enemy, long-term. Nice going there, Croissant. I do hope this one didn’t make it to the King of Thailand or to former PM Thaksin. Appeasement is suicide.

However, this leads us full circle to my prior post wherein the interim PM offered to appease the Muslims in the southern provinces with a limited application of Shar’ia law.

The Islamic chickens have come home to roost. Only it won’t be their heads that are cut off. They hope.

Robert Spencer got the analyses right over at Jihad Watch; he’s been covering this situation since 2003. If you want to see for yourself that the problem in the souternmost Thai provinces is jihad, try some recommended reading from the Jihad Watch archives, beginning with the first post on Thailand’s jihadists in 2003, at the bottom this reference page on Global Vent.

I have exhausted this topic and I look forward to your comments. For now, it’s time to rest and return to my job in the real world, where I have customers to save and fires to put out.

Until next time,

– Cincinnatus

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