Muslim Identity, Local Networks, and Transnational Islam in Thailand's Southern Border Provinces

This paper discusses the nature of local permutations of transnational Muslim networks in Thailand's southern Muslim-majority provinces and assesses their impact on creed, custom, and conflict in the region. More specifically, the paper interrogates the agenda and methods of idea and norm-propagation on the part of these agents and networks, and their evolving role, as well as the structures and conduits through which they operate and mobilize. In so doing, it finds a tremendously fluid and dynamic terrain in southern Thailand, where narratives, representations, and expressions of Islamic doctrine, legitimacy, and authority, are increasingly heavily contested within the Muslim community as a whole. In addition, the paper investigates the transnational dimensions of on-going violence in the southern provinces. Here, it argues that there is little by way of substantive evidence of any sustained penetration of the conflict in southern Thailand by external actors. No doubt, many have attempted to draw conclusions to the contrary, but their evidence and arguments, not to mention analytical methodology, are tenuous at best.