Soul-searching time for Muslim society for its women’s love affairs?
Love affairs between love-lorn young Thai soldiers and young Malay Muslim women in the far South while a war of insurgency is going on is not uncommon although the practice is despised by families of the women and their communities and discouraged by the army.
Colonel Thakorn Niamrin, an officer attached to the forward command of the Internal Security Operations Command (Isoc), recently told the Isra news agency that there were several hundred cases of this kind of love affairs in the past 7-8 years with many of these cases ending in proper marriages and also many others ending with the women running away with the men.
The colonel admitted that the army’s rule banning soldiers from having a relationship with local Muslim women cannot stop the matter of the heart in real practice. So when there is a case, the army will try to settle the problem amicably by arranging marriages for the couples and the men involved to adhere to the Islamic culture and to convert to Muslims.
However, the officer said that many of the marriages did not last long because of the wide gap of cultural difference between the men and the women.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a commanding officer of a task force unit in the far South, said that the love affairs between soldiers and Muslim women has caused a lot of problems and has complicated the volatile situation in the region. Especially if the soldiers got involved in a relationship with married women, he said that these would incense the families of the women concerned, citing some horrible incidents in which wounded soldiers had their sexual organs cut off or their bodies mutilated by suspected insurgents as an act of revenge.
Admitting the cultural and religious sensitivity of such love affairs, Mr Neemoo Makajay, former vice chairman of the Yala provincial Islamic committee, said that Muslims in general were not happy with the relationships between soldiers and Muslim women including their marriages because they suspected that the men did not truly have faith in Islam and, sooner rather than later, the marriages would fail and the couples would break up.
He, however, admitted that it was not fair to put the blame on the soldiers alone. He blamed the change of mores among the Muslim people in general as a part of the problem.
Echoing this view, Mr Abdulloh Ma, a local scholar in Bannang Sata district of Yala, not only young Muslim women but also married women went astray and engaged in sexual relationship with soldiers.
To address this social problem which is related to drug abuse problem, he said all community and religious leaders must join hands to work together.
A Tambon Administrative Organisation (TAO) president noted that the alleged rape case involing an army private and a 16-year old Muslim girl which caused a recent protest in Yala was just the end cause of the social problem. The root cause of the problem, he explained, is the widespread drug abuse among Muslim men and drug problem.
"Imagine what kind of men our women will look at between the sloppy-looking Muslim men and the nice-looking young soldiers or government officials," said the local government official.
He suggested that the problem should be addressed by means of strengthening the communities which means all the community leaders and local government leaders must be more socially responsible and less self-serving.
Mrs Angkhana Nilapaichit, president of the Foundation for Justice and Peace, said she was told by a teacher who said she seized a cellphone from one of her students and found many indecent video clips were stored in the phone.
She disclosed that she used to talk with several teenaged Muslim women who felt that many of the Muslim men were not deligent or were hooked to drugs compared to the soldiers or government officials who appear to be more financially secured.
Mrs Angkhana said several young Muslim women felt it was not necessary that they must marry Muslim men but they would look for men whom they could depend on or who have good jobs such as government officials.
Pre-marital sex is not right but there must be a mechanism to safeguard young Muslim women especially the family institution, said Mrs Angkhana.
She disclosed that several families could not give proper guidance to the young girls because they had problems themselves such as the fathers had several wives and children leaving the mothers to take care of the children and, in many cases, to work in order to feed the families.