Muslims in Thailand: State of the Field

Edwin Zehner, St. Lawrence University

The violence in the Malay Muslim areas of Thailand's deep south has given rise to a rapidly growing scholarly literature. Unfortunately, most of that literature has focused on the violence and its politics rather than on the lives of Thailand's people as Muslims. Although the majority of Thailand's Muslims live outside the troubled areas, there has been relatively little ethnographic attention given to their lives, their concerns, and their integration into Thai society. Today's talk will survey what is known about those communities and consider the processes by which they may have developed. In so doing, it will highlight studies of those communities by both Thai and overseas scholars, including recent work by Thai Muslims themselves.

Edwin Zehner obtained his Ph.D. in anthropology from Cornell University, having done fieldwork among Buddhists and Christians in Thailand. Since 2001 he has also been developing scholarly interests in Islam and Muslims. In late 2007 Dr. Zehner began formal study of Arabic in Yemen, and in 2008-2009 he continued studying Arabic while a Visiting Fellow at Cornell's Southeast Asia Program. During his stay at Cornell he also began surveying the literature on Muslims and conversion to Islam in Thailand and Southeast Asia. He also presented an earlier version of this paper in Cornell's Comparative Muslim Societies seminar series. Dr. Zehner is currently the Visiting Teaching Fellow for Thailand and Southeast Asian Studies at St. Lawrence University.

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