Muang district of Pattani is one of Thailand’s loveliest provincial capitals, and of march one of a slightest visited, what with a untimely fight and all.

It has a decent university, complicated shopping, a superb mosque and circuitously chronological sites, malls, glorious oceanside beaches — heck “Pattani” in Yawi means beach — a many easeful gulf on a southern coast, karaoke and drink bars.

There is little pollution, a studies say. The 127,531 residents (2014 census) would disagree with that. They say there is none.

Recently, some successful people in Pattani avowed that something is missing. Two things, really. They still don’t have Google Street View. Also they don’t have a 10-metre Buddha picture in a hundred-rai park. That’s what they need. And so a conflict was joined.

The junta-appointed conduct of peace-keeping in a low South pushed skeleton to build a nation’s second Buddha Monthon, after a one in Nakhon Pathom range during a eastern corner of Bangkok. Phanu Uthairat, secretary-general of a Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre, assured a allocated Pattani administrator Weerapong Kaewsuwan and Phra Siri Jariyalangkarn, conduct of a Pattani Buddhist clergy, to join his push.

The leaders are critical since while adults are giveaway to use religion, supervision officials come underneath most tighter rules. Mr Phanu, administrator Weerapong and Phra Siri kept skeleton for a Pattani Buddha Monthon to themselves. It was after argued they should have been in tighten hit with their bosses in a government, initial and inaugural Interior Minister Gen Anupong Paojinda.

Muang district is roughly 90% Muslim, maybe a bit more. There is a Chinese shrine, 3 vital wats including a Buddhist nunnery and a Rom Phrakhun Pattani Church, that serves a Christian minority so little it is not indeed available in a census. The executive mosque is a largest in Thailand, and of march there are countless little mosques dotted around city and along roadsides.

The immeasurable infancy of a race was not accessible to a thought of a Buddhist park that would be grander than any mosque or collection of mosques, and dominated by a high Buddha image. Temples yes, though tact counts. Mr Phanu suggested switching a name from “Monthon” (conveying a clarity of a unitary eremite state) to Jedi Ruam Jai (pagoda for a togetherness of all people). That altered no minds.

Contrary to renouned opinion voiced in a media and forums over a past integrate of contentious weeks, there is really a matching though conflicting box of Muslim-Buddhist community. It was suggested in Bangkok Post Sunday’s Spectrum territory accurately a year ago this weekend.

No comparisons are accurately comparison though a parallels between a dual cases are striking.

In brief, a little Muslim organisation in Nan range in a North performed some land during farming Buppharam village. After several years, with support customarily from Muslims in circuitously Lampang province, they motionless to build a mosque.

This preference took a encampment by warn and caused present and apparently abdominal opposition.

Phu Phiang district has about 40,000 people, served by several critical wats and many smaller ones. Most of a people are Buddhist, though there is a poignant Christian population, and they can attend services during dual churches, of a sum of about 20 or so in a province.

There are an estimated 100 Muslims, apparently never counted by a census. People who go anywhere in Nan range looking for a mosque are destined to Uttaradit’s Pakistan Mosque, 148km to a south, by road.

For this reason, a Muslims wanted a initial mosque in Nan province. The encampment people fabricated during Wat Buppharam and collected their arguments opposite it.

The categorical disproportion between a stream brouhaha during Pattani and a Nan fight is usually that final year’s problem was not widely known, and positively did not attract a courtesy of a ubiquitous primary minister.

Other than that, a people during Pattani and Nan reacted remarkably similarly. There has been no violence, indeed not a lifted voice so distant as anyone remembers. Arguments opposite “the others” were roughly indiscernibly alike. The long-time residents had no problem with new residents relocating in, or with their religion. But they didn’t wish to see vital construction that would move an wholly new further to a skyline, with a pragmatic hazard of bringing in day visitors fervent to pull sacrament on a residents.

There are many ways to put this. Muslims in a South, Buddhists in a North are really passive — nonetheless usually to a point. People acquire light change, not remarkable alteration. Religion is a private matter, until a bulldozers and a hammers start clattering.

Now and then, internal people done matching decisions about a matching cases.

In Nan, Muslims concluded to put skeleton on hold, and come behind to a Buddhists during a after time to plead a new mosque. In Pattani, Buddhists concluded to put skeleton on reason and come behind to a Muslim leaders during a after time to plead either a Buddhist park is feasible.

Many will reason adult sacrament as a concentration of dispute. These consanguine cases indeed uncover something utterly different. It is that internal communities are distant improved during elucidate critical issues and preventing intensity violence.

Article source: http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/836972/the-big-issue-sacred-space