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AbstractThis article explores how scholarship can be put to work by specialists penning evidence-based policies seeking peaceful resolutions to long-standing, complex, and so-far intractable conflict in the Malay-Muslim dominated provinces of South Thailand. I contend that more is required than mere empirical data, and that the existing analysis of this conflict often lacks theoretical ballast and overlooks the wider historical context in which Bangkok pursued policies impacting its ethnolinguistically, and ethnoreligiously diverse citizens. I demonstrate the utility of both interacting with what social theorists have written about what "religion" and language do—and do not—have in common, and the relative importance of both in sub-national conflicts, and comparative historical analysis. The case studies that this article critically introduces compare chapters of ethnolinguistic and ethnoreligious chauvinism against a range of minorities, including Malay-Muslim citizens concentrated in the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat. These include Buddhist ethnolinguistic minorities in Thailand's Northeast, and Catholic communities during the second world war widely referred to as the high tide of Thai ethno-nationalism. I argue that these revealing aspects of the southern Malay experience need to be contextualized—even de-exceptionalized.

This article revisits the Dusun Nyoir rebellion of April 1948. My primary objective is to fill gaps missed by others whom I have learnt much from. Few familiar with the wider geography of violence in South Thailand are unaware of connections between this and the coordinated attacks on April 28 2004, which included the employment of Malay magic. This article demonstrates the importance of commitments to both conducting fieldwork in conservative rural communities and interacting with the secondary literature. The former revealed connections between Haji Mat Karae (who led the Dusun Nyoir rebellion) and Kyai Salleh active in Batu Pahat before the return of the British in 1945. Equally importantly, engaging in both ethnographic fieldwork and the relevant secondary literature brought into focus case studies of Malay rebellion having occurred during epochs of geo-political chaos throughout the Thai-Malay Peninsula, which those concerned with the political chaos caused by Thailand's disorderly state have missed.