Today, 7:15am we started rolling down the road to the deep south of Thailand. Along the way there were many military checkpoints but I was too sleepy to care as the soldiers peered into the car. Anyway, they always waved us through.
When we arrived we met our contact, a Thai Christian. They were very nice, but obviously scared. Our discussion about places that we would like to film went like this:
Me: Main mosque?
Contact: Oh no, they don't allow it. Too dangerous. They don't like foreigners. Not even non-muslim locals are allowed in.
Me: How about just from the street outside?
Contact: Oh they will come out and ask you what you are doing, and catch you.
Me: How about a Muslim village?
Contact: That's the most dangerous area around here.
Then he told us the news was warning about a likely car-bombing this week. Around this time I realized that unless we found another guide, we were going to be very short on footage. So we contacted someone else and they graciously canceled their work for the day to take us around. First stop, the fearsome main mosque. As for being covert, my student W stood on the barrier in the middle of the busy road in front of it, taking video (which turned out to be mainly a view of the powerlines anyway). Then we went inside and the Imam introduced himself to us and took a photo with W. My other student T walked around to the women's side and terrorized the poor ladies in hijab with her camera, making a couple of them even pose on the stairs for her. Two college girls shared their snacks with us. One asked me if I was a Muslim. I replied that I am interested (in their culture) which seemed to be alright. One of them invited us to go to see their university. She was actually studying to be a teacher in Islamic studies so we interviewed her.
The Imam also wanted to be interviewed but he had to go to a wedding first so we didn't have time. After prayers, another man just leaving the mosque invited us to lunch, saying 'I will take care of you.' I thought it would be nice to have lunch with him, but actually it turned out that his wife already had lunch for him at home and so he just paid for us all and left! So hospitable!
Next stop, we followed the student to visit her Islamic university, where T's exclamations over the location of the toilet echoed throughout the university mosque. In the library, the librarians showed us around, including posing with books of the local Jawi script. T was surprised to find that she could understand it being read out loud, but not in written form (it's a form of Malay but using Arabic script, whereas the other Malay languages have used Latin alphabets). I had to repeatedly rescue W from walking into gender inappropriate areas while filming. Finally we wrapped up, said good-bye to our new friends and shed our head coverings. I sent W off to practice video at a local market while T took a nap in the car. The Muslim presence is definitely stronger here, it's almost like a different Thailand. The military presence is also quite heavy, with soldiers on quite a few corners and barricades made of barbed wire, sharpened stakes and tyres on the road.
At dinner I made a mistake reading the Thai on the menu and accidentally ordered roast pork. Luckily the waiter just looked weirded out rather than offended and I quickly switched to roast beef. Reflecting on this rather surprising twist of events during the day, I can see that if most Thai believers share the same fear of Muslims as our first contact, then they will never reach out to them or have friendly experiences. No doubt, there has been violence and terrorism in this area, but it seems to be a case of the 10% of fanatics ruining life and relationships for the other 90%.
Me: Main mosque?
Contact: Oh no, they don't allow it. Too dangerous. They don't like foreigners. Not even non-muslim locals are allowed in.
Me: How about just from the street outside?
Contact: Oh they will come out and ask you what you are doing, and catch you.
Me: How about a Muslim village?
Contact: That's the most dangerous area around here.
Then he told us the news was warning about a likely car-bombing this week. Around this time I realized that unless we found another guide, we were going to be very short on footage. So we contacted someone else and they graciously canceled their work for the day to take us around. First stop, the fearsome main mosque. As for being covert, my student W stood on the barrier in the middle of the busy road in front of it, taking video (which turned out to be mainly a view of the powerlines anyway). Then we went inside and the Imam introduced himself to us and took a photo with W. My other student T walked around to the women's side and terrorized the poor ladies in hijab with her camera, making a couple of them even pose on the stairs for her. Two college girls shared their snacks with us. One asked me if I was a Muslim. I replied that I am interested (in their culture) which seemed to be alright. One of them invited us to go to see their university. She was actually studying to be a teacher in Islamic studies so we interviewed her.
The Imam also wanted to be interviewed but he had to go to a wedding first so we didn't have time. After prayers, another man just leaving the mosque invited us to lunch, saying 'I will take care of you.' I thought it would be nice to have lunch with him, but actually it turned out that his wife already had lunch for him at home and so he just paid for us all and left! So hospitable!
Next stop, we followed the student to visit her Islamic university, where T's exclamations over the location of the toilet echoed throughout the university mosque. In the library, the librarians showed us around, including posing with books of the local Jawi script. T was surprised to find that she could understand it being read out loud, but not in written form (it's a form of Malay but using Arabic script, whereas the other Malay languages have used Latin alphabets). I had to repeatedly rescue W from walking into gender inappropriate areas while filming. Finally we wrapped up, said good-bye to our new friends and shed our head coverings. I sent W off to practice video at a local market while T took a nap in the car. The Muslim presence is definitely stronger here, it's almost like a different Thailand. The military presence is also quite heavy, with soldiers on quite a few corners and barricades made of barbed wire, sharpened stakes and tyres on the road.
At dinner I made a mistake reading the Thai on the menu and accidentally ordered roast pork. Luckily the waiter just looked weirded out rather than offended and I quickly switched to roast beef. Reflecting on this rather surprising twist of events during the day, I can see that if most Thai believers share the same fear of Muslims as our first contact, then they will never reach out to them or have friendly experiences. No doubt, there has been violence and terrorism in this area, but it seems to be a case of the 10% of fanatics ruining life and relationships for the other 90%.
1 comment:
I think that's always how it goes--the radical 10% ruining it for the other 90%. Sad how that works out. Glad to hear you're making an effort to reach out to these people!
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