Islam in Modern Thailand

Faith, Philanthropy and Politics

Rajeswary Ampalavanar Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134583966
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

1 Introduction

Islam, waq f and modernity

The Islamic history of Thailand has either been an ideological history or a history of terrorism. Few have ventured into any analysis of Islamic institutions and in particular of Islamic charities, the waqf. The exceptions are Preeda Prapertchob’s “Mobilization of Resources through Waqf in Thailand” and Wisoot Binlateh’s unpublished paper “An Islamic Grassroots Approach to Asset Management: The Ban Nua Experience”.¹ While Tamara Loos’ work covered Thai legal systems, colonial modernity, sex and the limits of individual liberty, the works of Duncan McCargo and Joseph Liow are substantial studies on resistance movements in the south.² However, both works give little attention to the Thai economy or to legal issues pertinent to a study of Islam and Islamic philanthropy, both indigenous and from abroad, and their impact on Thai forms of resistance. Existing studies on economic or foreign influences on Thai resistance can descend into a rude caricature of Islam in the south, with its false and sensational allusions to the collection, and use of zakat and foreign funds for training of a loose coterie of jihadists.³ This is wholly untrue. There are also highly innovative books and theses on Islamic thought and ideology, but again, these are focused principally on the south.⁴

This book crosses that barrier and focuses on Islamic charities and institutions affiliated to the mosque. It addresses the historicity and complexity of Islam in Thailand, and the highly diverse ethnic adherents – the Malay Muslims in the south, the Indians and Malay Thai Muslims in the centre and northeast, the Hui (Yunnanese) Muslims, Pakistanis and Afghans in the north and the Chams in the centre, along with South Asians, Arabs and Afghans. Their allegiances to the Shafii, Hanafi, Hanbali or Maliki schools (madhahib) of Islam add to this pluralism. The whole panorama of heterogeneous believers and their history and change is captured through the waqf.

A waqf is an unincorporated trust, an endowment that is established under Islamic law and holds land and real estate in perpetuity for the benefit of family and descendants, while maintaining social provisions for the poor. The public aims included religion and education as well as welfare of the poor and economic empowerment of the local community. The income derived from donations to the mosque, zakat and sadaqqa, and the usufruct derived from land and property were directed to charity.

In Thailand, there are no state waqf so only family and community waqf persist. The waqf was often established by a wealthy member of the village or was part of historical religious lineages, like that of Haji Sulong’s family in the interwar decades. Many were also established by a wealthy patriarch to avoid fragmentation of assets and reduce tension within the family. The waqf could thus remain intact for many generations. The waqf’s assets of land and properties were ordained to be held in perpetuity and exchanges or sales could only be for assets of similar or higher value. This constraint was interpreted with slight variations by different groups. The Shafiis, who were the majority of Thai Muslims in central areas, in the south and among the Hui in the north, insisted on perpetuity and continuity of endowments’ assets. The Hanbalis, a tiny group in Bangkok, asserted that ownership was transferred to beneficiaries, although perpetuity was still adhered to. Hanafis, who predominate in Chiangmai and in Bangkok among South Asians, also adhered to the same principle. Malikis accepted that, while ownership rested with the endower and was inherited by the heirs, the waqf could be subject to change. For them, perpetuity of assets was insisted if a mosque or cemetery was included in the waqf.

Contrary to the notion that Islam is regressive in economic thought, as argued by Weber, Habermas and Timur Kuran, in practice, there is a distinct form of ethical capitalism promoted through the waqf.⁵ The waqf brings together embedded Islamic values of community-centred financial and business initiatives, as realized in the waqf in Ban Nua, Songkhla and Hat Yai. Islamic principles of risk-sharing and entrepreneurship are able to capitalize on transnational capital flows through Muslim diasporas and the performance of a global Hajj.

This book, by extrapolating through Islam and the waqf in different regions of Thailand the diversity in races and institutions, demonstrates this regional contrast within Thai Islam. It also underlines the importance of internal histories of these separate spaces, the processes by which institutions and ideologies become entrenched, and the socio-economic transformation which is taking place within the context of trading networks formed by Islamic institutions and civil networks linked to mosques, madrasahs and regional power brokers. The Thai Muslims also display diverse religious inspiration from universities in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and from India and Pakistan. This diasporic heritage and the ensuing hybridity and pluralism of Thai Islam and local historical interpretations add to the powerful peripatetic focus of Islamic doctrinal influences all vividly captured through mosques and madrasahs and the endowments.

Thai Islam: cosmopolitanism, fundamentalism, continuities and contradictions

Tracing from the Patani Empire from 1785, an exceptional period of influences, local and global, Thai Islam is distinctly cosmopolitan and autonomous, assisted in part by the disinterested aspirations of the Thai state machine. C.M. Joll, in his excellent contribution, outlines the intellectual frameworks of this cosmopolitanism through a “circulating Islam and connected creoles” within a circumambulation between Patani, Sumatra, India and Arabia.⁶ These intellectual circles were bound by trading communities and Sufi orders. Daud Ali, too, approves of this circumambulatory transmission of ideas in Islam.⁷ What is unique in Thailand is that this cosmopolitanism is maintained through intellectual family lineages and mobile Malay polyglots, such as Shaykh Daud al-Fatani (1769–1847), Shaykh Ahmad al-Fatani (1856–1908), Haji Sulong (1895–1954) and present-day Ismail Lutfi Japakiya. Ronit Ricci elaborates on these historical and complex multiple identities linking Tamil, Malay and Arabic vernaculars.⁸

These Islamic literary networks are a bourgeois form of modernity, intertwining merchants, religious elites and Islamic madrasahs and universities in Asia and Arabia since the fifteenth century. This is “adhesion” of the new rather than “abandonment” of any existing religion or cosmologies.⁹ This “adhesion” is evident in the vibrant incorporation of Baghdadi Sufism within Southeast Asia’s Sufi genre, whereby monistic Sufi treatises of Ibn al-Arabi (d. 1240) are traced in manuscripts from North Sumatra.¹⁰

It is this historical cosmopolitan inheritance so dominant in Thai Islam that provides the spinal column of the waqf. Without it, the whole edifice of economic, spiritual ideas and practices of the waqf would crumble in a fairly intimidating, strong Buddhist monarchy. While seeking protection of human welfare, of rehabilitating prostitutes, drug addicts, Aids patients, this cultural cosmopolitanism appeals. The waqf, while preserving core Islamic ideologies, also ensures no manifestation of corporal punishments, veiling and restrictions on women, banning of alcohol or dealing in interest (riba). This historical relativism, while accepting pristine Quranic sources within Kaum Muda (reformist youth), seeks little violent sectarian ostracism of Shiism, though resentment of Shias did prevail in parts of Bangkok. This flexibility is moved by ideological and political restraint, as seen in Shia charities coexisting in harmony with Sunni charities in the south, as well as in Ayutthaya and Bangkok.

This religious pluralism exists because of the secular nature of the Thai state, although in 2007 an attempt was made to incorporate Buddhism as a state religion in the constitution of Thailand. This failed to receive support from the Constitutional Assembly. This rejection was followed by street protests by Buddhist monks and Thai political activists, many of these currents emanating from the Thai royal establishment. Thai Islam in fact conforms more to the paradigm of Martin Riesebrodt, who identifies a clearly delineated, autonomous religious sphere and conformity in a secular state.¹¹

That Thai Islam is a total “civilization”, not just a religion but an economic and political system, is demonstrated in subsequent chapters in a “strong association between religious radicalism and economic globalization”.¹² This is configured in the Thai waqf with its diverse links to the hawala (remittance agency) and the Hajj. Michael Feener offers a more vigorous proposal to this issue of religious protection by playing devil’s advocate, moving the challenges of religious pluralism within Asian societies by “de-provincializing discussions of these important issues and contributing to a more truly global conversion on the dynamics of religion in contemporary societies”.¹³ This intrinsic trait has existed in Muslim diasporas in Thailand since the sixteenth century.

This work takes an empirical approach to the study of Islam and Islamic charities in Thailand. It explores the various institutions within the waqf: the mosque, the madrasah, the cash waqf, the ideologies shaping intellectual debates in religion and religious practices, elements of shari’a and its response to legal pluralism, the political dimensions of the waqf, but more about leadership and conflict in the south. Here the intersection between state appointees and local ulama is considered. The interface between the waqf and its global, educational, economic aims and pilgrimage is investigated. The waqf is studied as a centrepiece of religious, societal, legal and political discourses, a form of Islamic proto-nationalism at the local level, encompassing elite intellectuals in an agenda for the betterment of society and creation of an alternative form of capitalism, exemplified by Haji Sulong in the interwar decades and Wisoot Binlateh in Ban Nua in the contemporary period.

This book hopes to prove that the waqf offers an alternative form of innovative, community-centred welfare initiatives that draw upon Islamic principles of risk-sharing, participation and entrepreneurship. More importantly, this focus on the Islamic waqf acknowledges the plurality of practices within Thai Islam in both spiritual ideas and materialistic objectives: market and non-market, semi-capitalist and non-capitalist, formal and informal Islamic precepts that can shape capitalism.¹⁴ The mosque, the madrasah, feeding the poor, festivals and rituals are added to by the mobilization of public lands within the waqf, lending visibility to the civic activities of a Muslim minority. The public sphere is where power is manifested in symbolic and discursive forms while pursuing a dynamic, economic transformation. Voluntary activity is part of the programme. Public assistance, disaster relief and public projects for the poor and the needy, as well as for women and disadvantaged groups, through Islamic taxation, zakat and sadaqqa as a form of wealth redistribution, are all part of this initiative, revealing an increasing use of a discourse of religious morality and a reinforced Muslim identity, and in the south a more aggressive Malay identity.

In Thailand, the endowing of land, property and finance, and the allocation of funds to particular categories of provision of welfare were not registered. Often the extent of their prevalence emerged through legal suits, challenging the usurpation of waqf lands by the state. Open lands, properties, and rubber and coconut plantations were deposited with the mosque. Incomes from them are used for the maintenance of mosques, cemeteries and religious schools, as well as funding projects dedicated to programmes for the rehabilitation of Aids victims, prostitutes and young drug addicts and programmes for poverty alleviation. However, the absence of a recognized administrative organization to oversee these endowments meant responsibility rested locally with the mutawalli or ulama of the local mosque. As the waqf became a source of considerable revenue, corruption could be endemic in some cases but this is difficult to prove. In these respects, it is difficult to differentiate between family waqf and public waqf. This confuses the concept of perpetuity enshrined in waqf lands and properties, restrained from any alienation or transfer or confiscation by the authorities for economic development.

Adat and shari’a resonances in the waqf

The absence of formal registration and provision of legal status governing the waqf is clear in cases of persistent litigation of landownership in Chana (Songkhla) and in Ban Krua (Bangkok) in the 1990s. Although the Thai state maintained strict regulation of society through formal Thai law, the theoretical and historical foundations of an intertwined Islamic and adat law persisted. This was not disturbed by the introduction in 1945 of the Patronage of Islam Act, which sought to govern Muslims directly through Islamic Committees and the Chula Rachamontri (Shaykhulislam). But the localism of Muslim practices and institutions included modified elements of shari’a, local customary law and codified Thai law. The penal law remained Thai law. This legal pluralism is captured in the waqf.

The waqf in Thailand has three legal traditions. First customary law, and its many variants among the Hui, the South Asians, the Persians, the Thai Muslims, the Chams and the Malay Muslims. This is further complicated by shari’a, with its formulations, past consensus and practices determined by different madhhab: Shafii, the most dominant in Thailand, along with Hanafi, Hanbali and Maliki schools corresponding to this vibrant ethnic diversity in various parts of the country. The early Persian Shias located in Ayutthaya and Bangkok possessed matams (funeral houses), but with increasing assimilation into Thai society, these Shia religious strongholds are only present within their local mosques, endowed lands and graveyards. Their welfare programmes are part of the contemporary revival of Shiism, following the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and rising Islamic sectarianism from the Middle East.

The Thai laws pertinent to Muslims strictly emerged with the Patronage of Islam Act 1945 and the Royal Act of Mosques in 1947, resulting in the creation of Mosque Committees and Muslim Religious Councils to supervise the mosque. The perpetuity of lands belonging to the waqf is only understood under Islamic law, while the Thai Land Code of 1951 does provide permission for religious groups to acquire land, but no reference is made to the concept of perpetual ownership of religious lands. However, the Patronage of Islam Act of 1945 does obliquely give some recognition to the waqf through its definition of mosque properties, which are managed by the mosque.¹⁵ This had important implications for the central issue of capital accumulation by the waqf. There was no similar act in Thailand as the Mussalman Wakf Validating Act of 1913 in India that validated this principle of perpetuity on the understanding that it will accommodate necessary social and economic change. This difference between Thailand and India can be attributed to the degree that Indian Muslims participated in the colonial government. In Thailand, unlike South Asia, shari’a law is not institutionalized by the state and official recognition of shari’a law is ad hoc and unpredictab...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Islam, waqf and modernity
• 2 Islamic pluralism and transnationalism in Thailand: the view from the waqf
• 3 Cash waqf, Islamic finance and globalization
• 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
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Notes
• Select bibliography
• Index