Terrorism and tourism do not mix. Bombs and indiscriminate killings in southern Thailand make everyone nervous, especially would-be travelers planning holidays on Phuket.

Many of them would have noted that on large-scale maps, the troubled provinces are just a couple of centimetres away. Even Thais from the north ask whether Phuket is a safe place simply because the island, along with the bombings and the killings, is in southern Thailand.

Yet the 400 kilometres or so that separate Phuket from the troubled provinces would not pose any kind of barrier if the island's Muslims were rebelling in the same kind of way.

Fortunately, Phuket's Muslim's are characteristically low-key and content. Surprisingly, it's estimated that some one in five of Phuket's permanent residents are followers of Islam, 95 percent of them Sunnis.

Hundreds more come from the troubled provinces of Yala, Narathiwat, Satun and Pattani to find work in the island's tourist industry. Others teach, drive trucks, and work in a wide variety of jobs here.

Phuket's Muslim leaders visit the south regularly, and southern Muslim leaders come here for meetings. For decades, young Muslims from Phuket were sent almost as a matter of course to the southern provinces in their teens to complete their religious education.

If the problems of the south were simply about religion, then death and destruction would have spread to Phuket long ago.


The new mosque in Patong, with its concrete dome and minaret still covered in scaffolding, has become a landmark on the road across the island as it meanders into the coastal resort from Phuket City.

Overseeing the project is Thachapol Kanintong, 44, an elected Muslim community management leader. He says there are three mosques in the Patong region, and more than 50 scattered across the island, each with its own imam and group of followers.

While the new mosque has been underway for five years and may take five more to complete, it has already been in use for prayers for two years.

The spacious area under the dome is a long way from being finished so, five times a day, Muslims meet to pray in a large room on the second floor.

Khun Tachapol says that about 70 percent of those who pray at the mosque are tourists, from overseas or other provinces, and that foreigners have provided 90 percent of the money for erection of the new mosque. Locals are simply not wealthy enough, so the bulk of the money comes from Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Kuwait. France, too.

About three million baht is needed to finish the mosque. Khun Tachapol hopes that visitors continue to be as generous as they have been in the past, and that the job is done soon.

Khun Tachapol's personal history mirrors that of many local Muslims, who have been an essential part of the island's evolution for 200 years now. His father came to work in a tin mine, bought some land for a rubber plantation and helped raise 10 children.

Now relatively prosperous, Khun Tachapol runs a tour agency, rents accommodation and owns tuk-tuks.

Muslims have helped shape Phuket's character in ways that make it unique among Thai provinces. Nowhere else is the mix quite so vibrant.

?We live in peace with our neighbours here,? Khun Tachapol says. ?There is no sense of isolation. Muslims and Buddhists share the same space and welcome the tourists, wherever they come from. We are Thai and my nationality is Thai.

Being a strict Muslim in a raucous town like Patong, on an island like Phuket, requires balance and tolerance, with a capital T.

Muslims to the south-east, in the neighboring Muslim country of Brunei Daressalaam, are Malays first, Muslims second, and they swear allegiance to the Sultan's monarchy third.

With a heritage that was once distinctively Malay, Phuket's Muslims today remain proudly Thai.

In the south, Malay Muslims have genuine grievances and resentments built on decades of unfair treatment. Beheading monks and teachers, though, is hardly a path to peace.

Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra made the problem more acute by condoning brutal military treatment that culminated in the massacre at Tak Bai when scores of protesters were tied up, tossed onto trucks and left to suffocate under their own weight. The Thaksin remedy was to drop planeloads of origami peace doves over the south, something that was never likely to work.

Under his succesors, despite their concessionary style, the violence is growing worse.

Now international newspapers are reporting the conflict in ways that do not augur well for tourism on Phuket.

The New York Times has even gone so far as to quote expert onlookers who say the trouble in the south bears all the hallmarks of a war. Wars are usually unpredictable, nasty, and inclined to spread.


Yet positives can spring from disaster. As violence in the south began its spread from the countryside to the provincial towns and cities, the Muslim parents of Phuket decided that it was no longer sensible or safe to pack off their children to complete their religious schooling.

With funding largely from Dubai, they opened a high school and a mosque to complement the nursery and primary education facilities at Muslimvithaya Phuket School, the island's only Muslim school, on Thepkassatri Road.

The school's manager, Miss Yao Pensuk, says the results are pleasing and the 1700 students there have never suffered any kind of discrimination. They are generally happy, confident students who mix easily.

She says the Government is helping, too. ?Extra subjects have been organised for Muslim students in all the high schools on Phuket,? Khun Yao said. ?Muslim teachers also visit those schools.?

Resilience is another key characteristic of the Muslims of Phuket and the villages to the north, along the Andaman Sea coast. After the 2004 tsunami, medical authorities noted that the Muslim villages fared best in dealing with hardship and overcoming mental health issues. Not resorting to alcohol was an advantage.

In the tsunami's aftermath, compassionate and sometimes opportunistic Christians won over hundreds of villagers, but only a handful of converts were Muslims.

After the wave, Bang Tao, probably the island's biggest mixed Muslim-Buddhist village and one of its poorest, formed an unusually close association with one of the island's wealthiest communities, the five-star Laguna Phuket resort.

Most of the benefits from the resort's tsunami relief fund were channeled to help its poorer neighbours. The Laguna scheme now continues to equip locals with essential English skills, so they can more easily find jobs in the tourist industry.

Such unique alignments between rich and poor are what gives Phuket a chance of weathering a conflict, perhaps even a war.

A few years ago, a local police chief was even prepared to say that Phuket was ?100 percent safe? from terrorism. No police chief in any community in the world would be prepared to be that optimistic now.

There can be no guarantees any more. But there is real hope.

Avoiding terrorism and the kind of disaster now consuming the south largely depends on the continuing contentment of Phuket's Muslims and their heart-felt desire that the island remains at peace.

That's the island's best insurance.


What they say

Seth Mydans reporting from Pattani for the New York Times:
Some Buddhist and Muslim villages have begun sealing themselves off from one another, and people in both the region?s towns and villages say old friendships and patterns of cooperation are being undermined by mistrust.

Entire Buddhist communities have also fled in a ?de facto ethnic cleansing,? said Zachary Abuza, the author of 'Militant Islam in Southeast Asia,' in a report published last month. ?The social fabric of the south has been irreparably damaged.?

Tom Allard, National Security Editor, in the Sydney Morning Herald:
"The brutality is amazing," said Zachary Abuza, a US terrorism expert who specialises in a conflict that has simmered for decades. "For the previous generation, these acts would have been considered unseemly. No one would have done things like hacking apart monks, blowing them up when they are collecting their alms, targeting women and children."

For now, Dr Abuza believes the insurgents will stay away from tourist centres. "It would be easy enough [to attack tourists]. But I don't think they have to yet, because they are winning. The change of strategy comes when you are losing.

"If they were backed into a corner, I don't think they would hesitate for a second."