The Changing Nature of Thailand’s Deep South Insurgency

Saudi Salafism rears its controversial head

By: Murray Hunter

The ideology behind the long-running ethnic conflict in Thailand’s deep south, which has taken the lives of an estimated 7,000 on both sides since it sparked into the open in 2002, is pivoting away from the centuries-old relatively laid-back Islam of the past towards a Salafi-Islamic narrative as Saudi Arabia continues to fund madrassas…