ABSTRACT
Leadership within the Muslim community in Thailand possesses unique traits. The office of the Chula Rachamontri is the highest religious rank, yet its holders enjoyed only ceremonial power. In contrast, the imam, established in local communities, founded mosques and madrasahs, and combined religious, educational and judicial functions. This underlying solidarity and creation of a local civil society was led by the existing new generation of the old Muslim lineages of the period from the mid-nineteenth century. These elites comprised Usman Miyashi, whose family was dominant in the north from 1878, and Haji Sulong (1895–1954), in the south.
