Socio-functional Structure
Religion and Community Development: Malay Muslim Community in Southern Thailand
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Muhammadrorfee E Musor
Islam has played very important role in Malay Muslim communities, the rules of belief and the rules of praxis, framed their ways of life. Moreover, Islamic principles also use as norm to strengthen the relationship among their members. Therefore, in this incident research attempts to explaining the social-functional structure of the Muslim community and to explore how religion plays in a part in development in a Malay Muslim communities which can be seen as minority group in Thailand. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 5 key informants (Imam and village administrative board in Malay Muslim communities in Pattani province of Thailand) in collecting data. The study found that Malay Muslim communities use "Mushawarah," means the consultation in different matters, to solve the solutions for any problematic affairs, by setting the Shura or Mushawarah council to give advice which conformed Islamic principles. Thus, Mushawarah is so called "community development process" where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems within community.
Life Skill Development Model of Medium-sized Islamic Private School in Southern Border Provinces of Thailand: A Case Study of Pattana Islam School, Pattani Province
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Direak Manmanah, Muhummudrapee Makeng, Awang Lanui
The subjects of this qualitative research included 16 school administrators, teachers, students’ parents, religious teachers, community leaders, current students, and alumni, side by side with three experts. The data were collected through in-depth interviews, focus group, and observations. The collected data were, then, categorized and connected for conclusions and interpretation. The reliability of the conclusions and interpretations were examined by experts of Muslim youth’s life skills development. The result of the study was that there are six inside school factors/conditions associated with the Muslim youth life skills development: kinship organizational culture, systematic student care, a good example of the administrators, a role model teacher, relationship and peer groups learning, and relationship and learning between the seniors and juniors. In addition, there are outside of the school factors/conditions associated with the development: the basic knowledge of the youth from TADIKA, relationship and outside of the school peer groups learning, warmly family nurture, the cooperation between the school and the community, and the cooperation between the school director, the community leaders, and the religious leaders. Therefore, this study recommended that Islamic private school administrators and teachers must be having the development of teaching both in religion and academic to cause a concrete educational integration among Islamic lessons and academic lessons via raising and promoting to design well-rounded lesson plan included both content having studying and teaching management and model of daily routine so that the process of life skill development for Islamic youth through Islamic private school will be highly effective.
Preserving Ethnic Identity through Religion: A case Study of Malay Muslims in Southern Thailand
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Munirah Yamirudeng
The issue of religion and ethnic identity is extremely complex, some theorists observes that in the mainstream perspective, religion is not seen as an essential component of identity. However, this notion has been challenged and different studies have shown the importance of religion for many ethnic minorities and argue for a strong link between religion, identity, and group membership. From the Southeast Asian perspective, particular religions are linked with particular cultures because they are lexically the most appropriate to express culturally embedded concepts. Malay Muslims make up the largest religious/ethnic minority in Theravada Buddhist Thailand, their ethnic identity as Malay-Muslim in southern Thailand is rapidly dissolved in the melting pot of Thai society. The preservation of Malay-Muslim identity has been a challenge rather than something we can take for granted. The fact remains that there is a need to the continuity of their community, and the preservation of their ethnicity indeed binds the Malay Muslims into viable and cohesive ethnic entity. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to discuss how religion was used as an important component to preserve and sustain their religious and ethnic identity among the Malay Muslims of southern Thailand.
