The studies would focus on the country’s five million Muslims and problems in predominantly-Muslim south.

BANGKOK, January 23 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – With the aim of promoting better understanding of the faith and its followers,  Chulalongkorn University has launched a studies center to research Islam and its relations with other faiths in the country, Bernama news agency reported on Sunday, January 23.

“The Muslim studies will concentrate on researching the faith and spreading knowledge to those interested in the religion, or the Muslim people,” Dr. Issara Sarntisart, the Muslim Studies Center Director, told the Thai News Agency.

“We will research different areas of Islam, including ethnic and local traditions,” she said.

The center would build its foundation on Thai Muslims, their economy and society, their capacity for income generation and the problems in the predominantly-Muslim south.

Sarntisart said the center would help establish a network among local and international academics in the field of Muslim studies.

As the first institution of higher learning in Thailand, Chulalongkorn University has evolved largely in response to the changing needs and requirements of the country and its people.

It now has eighteen faculties and a number of schools, institutes and projects, which are engaging in teaching and other related activities.

Better Understanding

Sarntisart hoped the center would not only help promote better understanding of Islam and Muslims among people of other faiths, but, hopefully, assist the government in drafting policy.

“We aim to help others understand more about Muslims and their lives. The center will organize academic workshops or seminars for local politicians and officials working in Muslim areas.”

The Thai government has been widely criticized for its brutal policy against the country’s five million Muslims, about four percent of the population.

Official sources recently said the government was mulling a law allowing police to hold indefinitely and without charges anyone taking part in “insurgent” activities in the southern provinces.

The report came a few weeks after 87 Muslim  protesters were killed in government’s custody.

Most of the victims suffocated to death after being bound and piled into the backs of army trucks.

On Tuesday, July 27, the government threatened to shut down some Islamic boarding schools in the south, claiming they are used as training camps for separatist fighters.

In April, security forces opened fire at Muslims killing at least 107 young Muslims in the bloodiest day in the history of this troubled region.

Thai Muslims, most of them living in the five southern provinces bordering Malaysia, resent the country's refusal to recognize their language, culture and Malay ethnicity.

Muslims in Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, the only Muslim majority provinces in the Buddhist kingdom, have long complained of discrimination in jobs and education and business opportunities.

The south was a rich Malay kingdom until it was overrun by the Buddhist kingdom of Siam in the late 16th century when it declared its full independence from its earlier status of semi-independence under the rule of the Thai kingdoms of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya.

In 1909, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Siam as part of a treaty negotiated with the British Empire.

Both Yala and Narathiwat were originally part of Pattani, but were split off and became provinces of their own.