Islam in Modern Thailand

Rajeswary Ampalavanar Brown

Paperback

9780815374596

Faith, Philanthropy and Politics

This book addresses the complexity of Islam in Thailand, by focusing on Islamic charities and institutions affiliated to the mosque. By extrapolating through Islam and the waqf (Islamic charity) in different regions of Thailand the diversity in races and institutions, it demonstrates the regional contrasts within Thai Islam. The book also underlines the importance of the internal histories of these separate spaces, and the processes by which institutions and ideologies become entrenched. It goes on to look at the socio economic transformation that is taking place within the context of trading networks through Islamic institutions and civil networks linked to mosques, madrasahs and regional power brokers. Brown casts this study of private Islamic welfare as strengthening rather than weakening relations with the secular Thai state. The current regime’s effectiveness in coopting these Muslim elites, including Lutfi and Wisoot, into state bureaucracies assists in widening their popular base in the south, in the north-east, and in Bangkok. Such appointments were efficacious in reinforcing the elite’s Islamic identity within a modern, secular, literate, and cosmopolitan Thai culture.

In challenging existing studies of Thai Muslims as furtive protest minorities, this book diverts our attention to how Islamic philanthropy provides the logic and dynamism behind the creation of autonomous spaces for these independent groups, affording unusual insights into their economic, political and social histories.

Contents

1. Introduction: Islam, Waqf and Modernity

2. Islamic Pluralism and Transnationalism in Thailand: The View from the Waqf

3. Cash Waqf, Islamic Finance, and Globalisation

4. Mobilizing a Divided Islam: Historical Intellectual Lineages, Diasporas and Ideologies under the Gaze of the Buddhist State

5. Cosmopolitanism and Legal Pluralism in Thai Islam since 1860

6. Pondering the Pondoks in Thailand: Islamic Education and its Long Term Repercussions 

7. Leadership and Authority: The Art of Governing the Thai Muslims

8. The Secular Pilgrimage: Economics and Secularism in the Hajj  9. Saudi Arabian Philanthropy Abroad and the Economics of Muslim Resistance in Southern Thailand

10. Conclusion: Understanding Thai Islam And The Prophets Of Renewal