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Thailand: 'Religious conflict' worries
premier
By Richard S Ehrlich
BANGKOK - The Thai government has warned against
a Muslim-Buddhist "religious conflict" after assassins
killed two Buddhist monks and a novice in southern
Thailand, while the army canceled sending
Israeli-trained Thai troops to Iraq because they might
anger Iraqis.
"Don't take what happened as a
religious conflict, otherwise we could become a tool of
the [Muslim] separatists," warned Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra after three members of the Buddhist clergy
were killed in Thailand's Muslim-majority south.
Muslims fighting for a separate Islamic nation
are suspected of countless bombings, arson attacks,
shootings and other assaults during the past several
years in southern Thailand, to destabilize Bangkok's
grip and allow Islamic Sharia law to dominate there
instead.
"I will never let anyone take away even
a square inch of Thai soil," the prime minister vowed in
his weekly radio broadcast on Saturday.
Hours
earlier, assassins killed a 65-year-old Buddhist monk
and his 13-year-old novice - the latest victims in a new
strategy of assaults against saffron-robed clergy.
Previously, Buddhist religious figures were not a main
target in the violence-racked south.
Four men on
two motorcycles ambushed their victims while the monk
and novice strolled barefoot, silently collecting alms
on Saturday in Yala, about 1,000 kilometers south of
Bangkok, according to police reports.
On
Thursday, a sword-wielding man on the back of a
motorcycle driven by his partner sliced a 64-year-old
monk to death while the shaven-headed Buddhist walked to
a temple in nearby Narathiwat province, police said.
Islam and Buddhism are at different ends of the
spiritual spectrum because, unlike Islam, there is no
"god" in Buddhist belief. Muslims also denounce the
"worshipping of idols", while statues of Buddha appear
throughout Thailand and are revered by bowing Buddhists
who comprise more than 90 percent of this Southeast
Asian nation's population.
Some Buddhist
scholars say the statues are not to be "worshipped" but
instead used as a symbolic portal, similar to a
spiritual keyhole, enabling seekers to transcend earthly
existence and the illusions of human thought.
Afghanistan's former Muslim Taliban regime, however,
judged the huge, ancient Bamiyan statues of Buddha in
central Afghanistan as a "idols" and unleashed
multi-barreled rocket launchers and tanks to obliterate
the pair in 2001 while cheering and praising Allah.
Some of Southeast Asia's Muslims trained in
Afghanistan in the 1980s when the US-backed mujahideen
received massive funding from Washington and
successfully ended the "godless communist" Soviet
Union's decade-long occupation. Others trained there in
the 1990s when Osama bin Laden and the strict,
Saudi-inspired Wahhabi sect of Islam increased their
influence in Afghanistan.
Thai officials suspect
that returnees from Afghanistan, plus Wahhabi-financed
religious schools, have influenced some Thai Muslims at
more than 100 small, private Islamic campuses in the
south. Relentless arson attacks on government schools in
the south during the past decade have been blamed on
Muslims who want to cripple the official education
system so more Muslim children end up in local Islamic
schools or fundamentalist institutions in the Middle
East.
In a separate development, Thailand's army
canceled plans to fly about a dozen Israeli-trained Thai
soldiers to Iraq, "to end concerns about possibly
upsetting the Iraqis", the English-language Bangkok Post
reported on Sunday. Israel trained the soldiers in
desert farming techniques in the Jewish state, but
Bangkok's Defense Ministry "worried about negative
consequences for the mission due to conflicts between
Israelis and Arabs in the Middle East", the paper said.
According to the Defense Ministry's deputy
spokesman, Palangkoon Klaharn, a substitute team will go
from Bangkok to Karbala instead, and use their
experience gained at farm projects in Thailand. No
Israeli-trained Thai forces have been sent to Iraq,
where more than 420 Thai troops are stationed, he
stressed.
Two Thai soldiers, both
sergeant-majors, died in Iraq last month when assailants
attacked their military camp in Karbala.
A Thai
Muslim, Colonel Montri Umaree, has reportedly been
selected to become the new commander of Thai forces in
Iraq, beginning in March.
(Copyright 2004
Richard S Ehrlich.)
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