The transformation of Chinese Muslims identities in northern Thailand

This dissertation examines how Chinese Muslim identity has been transformed for those who migrated from Yunnan, China and settled in northern Thailand beginning a hundred years ago. This study seeks to investigate the ways in which markers of Chinese Muslim identities are constructed, resisted, contested and manipulated in various ways in the everyday lives of Chinese Muslims across time and space.;I use various research strategies during two years of my ethnographic fieldwork in Thailand, including participant observation; life histories; focus group discussion; survey research; and media studies.;The study shows the limitations of the monolithic view of Islam and the theoretical frameworks for the study of Chinese Muslims which fell into two extreme paradigms: secessionist and assimilationist. The Chinese Muslim identity has instead been retheorized into three periods which shifted from the local level to national and transnational levels. Firstly, before 1940, Chinese Muslims were identified primarily as traders in northern Thailand due to their primary economic activities. Secondly, between 1940 and 1990, they became a Thai-Muslim middle class as a result of the Thai national integration policy and of their own struggle for upward mobility while still asserting their Islamic identity. Thirdly, from 1991 to the present, Chinese Muslims have divided into three general groups due to the rise of transnational Muslim movements: Hanafi Muslims connecting to China; Tabligh Jamaat Muslims connecting to India; and Salafi-Wahabi Muslims connecting to Saudi Arabia. The three groups of Chinese Muslims have on occasion disputed to each other; however, they typically harmonize when they felt threaten from outside.;The results of this study suggest that we cannot consider Muslims and Islam as a monolithic, unchanging identity. The group dynamics are more fluid and fragmented. The Chinese Muslim identities in Thailand are complex, dynamic, and change across time and space depending on the socio-economic, religious and political context. They are neither completely assimilated nor fully resistant to their host society. Rather, their identities have arisen in part through their negotiations with their host society.