Conclusion

The historiography of Thai Islam, particularly in the south, has overtly and tacitly authorized the understanding of Thai Islam as bound within the ideological and political hegemony of resistance; there is almost an obsessive compulsion to paint Thai Islam as a “Resistance Society”. McCargo, Liow and Madmarn, all political scientists, have concentrated on citizenship, political rights, the unjust state and a threatened minority seeking redress through violence. ¹ This book constructs, through the waqf, a different narrative of Thai Islam, a social-economic history which sees resistance as episodic and casting a shadow of sectarianism only under the stress of poverty and rising youth unemployment.