Haji Sulong Abdulkadir al-Fatani : In James Ockey understanding

Individual imaginings: The religio-nationalist
pilgrimages of Haji Sulong Abdulkadir al-Fatani1

Studies of the formation of national identity have highlighted the importance of

national pilgrimages, akin to sacred religious pilgrimages. However, less attention

has been paid to the effect of religious pilgrimages on national identities. In this

article, I examine the ways that religious pilgrimages have shaped identities in the

Jawi community, particularly early in the twentieth century, when nationalism spread

through Southeast Asia. Given the deeply personal nature of pilgrimages, I do this

primarily through an exploration of the religious pilgrimage and later life of one

well-known leader from Pattani, Haji Sulong Abdulkadir al-Fatani. I find that this

approach leads to a more nuanced consideration of the ways that plural identities,

even conflicting plural identities, are often held by individuals.

Just after the turn of the twentieth century, young Muhammad Sulong went on a

pilgrimage. Sulong’s pilgrimage was not simply a matter of going to Mecca for the

Haj; it followed a form in use as a rite of passage for a small, select group of

young men from Pattani. Muhammad Sulong was bound for Mecca to study Islam,

learning from the teachers at the spiritual centre of his religion, in the original –

sacred – Arabic language. There he would study, as did other young Muslim men

from Southeast Asia and other parts of the Muslim world. After suitable learning

and preparation he would also perform the Haj. Then a decision would be made:

to stay on as a member of the Jawi community at Mecca, or return to Pattani as a

respected teacher, to share his experience and the accumulated wisdom with others

from his community. So his pilgrimage began..

In his Imagined Communities (1991), Benedict Anderson argued that pilgrimages

were crucial to the development of shared identities for both the older religious communities

and for the younger national communities:

It is not simply that in the minds of Christians, Muslims or Hindus the cities of Rome,

Mecca, or Benares were the centres of sacred geographies, but that their centrality was

experienced, ‘realized’ (in the stagecraft sense) by the constant flow of pilgrims moving

towards them from remote and otherwise unrelated localities … the strange physical juxtaposition

of Malays, Persians, Indians, Berbers and Turks in Mecca is something incomprehensible

without an idea of their community in some form. The Berber encountering

the Malay before the Kaaba must, as it were, ask himself: ‘Why is this man doing what

I am doing, uttering the words I am uttering, even though we cannot talk to one

another?’ There is only one answer, once one has learnt it: ‘Because we … are Muslims.’2

The educated played a crucial role in this process:

The literati were adepts, strategic strata in a cosmological hierarchy of which the apex

was divine … the bilingual intelligentsia, by mediating between vernacular and [sacred

language], mediated between earth and heaven.3

Thus the small group of pilgrims, especially the literate ones, were able to influence

the identity of the larger community around them.

Nationalist pilgrimages, argued Anderson,4 were initially the province of bureaucratic

functionaries. Their pilgrimages were lifelong, realised in their progress through

the colonial bureaucracies as they wended their way around the colony, from municipality

to province, gradually working their way upward to the higher positions at the

capital, the ‘spiritual’ centre of the pilgrimage. Along the way, they met fellow functionaries

with whom they shared little except this grand lifelong progression. These

bureaucratic pilgrimages became nationalist in the colonies because of the different

centres imposed on functionaries due to their place of birth. While those born in

the metropole had the opportunity to rotate through a variety of colonies and even

advance to positions in the capital city of the metropole, those born in the colonies

found their pilgrimages circumscribed to the colony of their birthplace, their upward

movement centred on the colonial capital city. Consequently, they came to identify

with those following a similar path to the same centre, identifying with fellow

‘nationals’ in their new ‘nation’.

In later years in places such as Southeast Asia these nationalist pilgrimages

extended downward, into the educational system:

The twentieth century colonial-school system brought into being pilgrimages which paralleled

longer-established functionary journeys …. From all over the vast colony, but

from nowhere outside it, the tender pilgrims made their inward, upward way, meeting

fellow-pilgrims from different, perhaps once hostile, villages in primary school; from

different ethnolinguistic groups in middle-school; and from every part of the realm in

the tertiary institutions of the capital … these journeyings derived their ‘sense’ from the

capital, in effect explaining why ‘we’ are ‘here’ ‘together.’5

Because of their ability to communicate in both local and colonial languages, again

this bilingual literati played a key role in mediating between the colonisers and

their community.6

While Anderson took some care to illustrate similarities between older religious

communities and the newer national communities, he left the relationship between

the two unexplored.7 And yet many of the anti-colonial nationalist movements

began as part nationalist, part religious movements, such as Sarekat Islam in

Indonesia or the Young Men’s Buddhist Association in Burma, or the less organised

Kaum Muda of Malaysia. Furthermore, Anderson focused on the communities that

might be created by various types of pilgrimages, but without examining the deeply

personal nature of individual pilgrimages. Understanding the life of Muhammad

Sulong allows, perhaps requires, an exploration of the impact of pilgrimages on individuals,

and of the relationship between religious and national pilgrimages. Sulong’s

pilgrimage included not only the spiritual identity-defining experience of the Haj, but

also included intensive training designed to provide him with the knowledge necessary

for a respected imam. He embarked on a form of educational pilgrimage that

would determine his life prospects and his social status, as well as his identity and

sense of community. These are precisely the characteristics of the educational pilgrimages

of the indigenous bureaucrats in colonial Southeast Asia that Anderson

thought shaped national identities. Exploring the nature of Sulong’s pilgrimages, seemingly

both nationalist and religious, provides a better understanding of his life, and

perhaps of the relationship between national and religious identities within individuals

and communities.

Although Anderson has left the relationship between religious and national

identities and communities unexplored, other work has not. According to Ernest

Gellner, in the Muslim world the modernisation process broke down the old

isolated local communities, as it had in Europe. In forming a new community, a

shared ‘culture’ was necessary; a choice had to be made between Westernisation

and some form of local culture. In the Muslim world, elites turned neither to

Westernisation nor to folk culture, but to scholarly tradition, to the written works

of Islam. Wrote Gellner:

The question the reformers faced was: why did we fall behind the West? Why was Islam,

once so confident and dominant, subjected to the humiliation of alien and infidel conquest

and influence?… the recommendation was a return to the origin, to the sources, to

purity, to, if you like, roots.8

Gellner thought that this process took place at the turn of the twentieth century,

approximately at the time that young Muhammad Sulong set off for Mecca, as reformists

sought to purify Islam by turning to scripture and scholarship, then to marry it

to modernism in order to overcome backwardness. Indeed, Sulong was one of those

engaged in this process. Where Anderson implied that religious identities eventually

gave way, however, Gellner believed that, for Islam only, religious identities overcame

national identities, as Islamic identity and the ummah won out over national identity

and the national community.9 For Gellner, then, both nationalism and fundamentalism

emerged together out of the same processes that created nationalisms elsewhere.

Islam uniquely defied secularisation, allowing fundamentalism to emerge victorious.10

Gellner’s argument has been widely critiqued, on several grounds, two of them of

particular importance here.11 First, the vast majority of the Islamic world has accepted

the nation-state system, and the nationalism that goes with it. Fundamentalism has

not overcome nationalism in Islamic societies. The two have found a way to coexist,

and the relationship between them deserves much more careful study than Gellner

gave it. Second, Gellner rightly emphasised the importance of the local community

in pre-nationalist societies, especially in Islamic societies. His contention that modernisation

broke up their isolation is more questionable. The local Islamic communities

were never as isolated in the past, nor were they as dramatically changed, as

Gellner would have it. The pilgrimage ensured that they were never isolated. At the

same time, the local-level focus of Islam, both organisationally and ideologically,

ensured that the local community remained important to identity long after colonialism

opened communities up. The Arabic word ummah highlights this dual nature

of identity and organisation. It best translates as community, and refers to both

the local community and the religious community as a whole. In many ways, the

ummah has always been conceptualised and felt most keenly at the level of the

local community, despite the more recent attempts to depict it as an alternative to

the nation.12

In examining pilgrimages and identity, I will begin by looking at the nature of

pilgrimages for the Jawi community. I will then examine Sulong’s experience in the

context of the Jawi community at Mecca, and its relations with both the larger

Muslim community and with the Jawi community in Southeast Asia. Then I will

examine the experience of Sulong after he returned to Siam, seeking to understand

the effects of his pilgrimage on his life. Along the way, I explore the ways that the currents

of modernism, nationalism and Islam shaped his identity.

Jawi pilgrimages

Ziarah

While pilgrimage is generally used to refer to the Haj in the Jawi community, it is

not the only type of pilgrimage. Local pilgrimages, called ziarah (also ziarat), are also

made to places within the region. This type of pilgrimage is common throughout the

Muslim world, although some Muslims consider it un-Islamic.13 In Southeast Asia,

such pilgrimages to local shrines predate the arrival of Islam, and are similar to

those undertaken throughout the region by those of other religions as well. In

some cases, shrines that pre-date the arrival of Islam have been repackaged, as it

were, to give them some connection with a revered Muslim scholar or saint.14

Many aspects of the ziariah are associated with traditional folk magic, with good fortune

thought to follow from performing certain rites in particular ways. The most

important ziarah pilgrimage sites for the Jawi communities within Southeast Asia

have been the gravesites of Muslim saints or powerful kings and nobles.15

If we consider these pilgrimages in terms of identity, as Anderson does, we can

make several observations. First, the pilgrimage is often a local one, re-emphasising

the importance of the local tradition and the local saint within Islam. The pilgrim

was exposed to local, or perhaps regional, geography, to local variants of the sacred,

and to other pilgrims who were not too different in appearance or dialect. Only for

more prominent sites did people travel distances extensive enough to produce interaction

of dialects and culture. Second, whereas the Haj was expensive, ziarah

pilgrimages were possible for people of all classes.16 The identity forged was not as

closely connected to either prior or subsequent social status, so that the identity

was more fraternal than with the Haj. But third, another type of identification

altogether also occurred. The ziarah pilgrimages were similar to pilgrimages taken

by those of other faiths in the region, so that the experience was shared, in only

slightly different form, with the Chinese merchant and the Thai Buddhist civil servant

from the same region. Some pilgrimage sites were shared,17 and although in most

cases, those of different faiths would have visited different shrines, the experience

was similar enough that it could be discussed and shared. In this way, there was

some basis within the pilgrimage for the development of local identities across religious

and other ethnic lines, but without erasing those lines.18

The importance of ziarah in traditional Southeast Asia is evident in early travellers’

accounts of the Haj. In one account, which describes the purported travels of

Hang Tuah, the leader of a diplomatic mission to the Seljuk/Ottoman Empire in

about 1481, the Haj was something of an afterthought. Hang Tuah stopped at

Jeddah to visit the tomb of Eve, and was convinced to go on the Haj by the harbour

master. Hang Tuah also sought spiritual power at Riau, Majapahit, and of course

Malacca.19 At least one sultan declared that the Haj was not necessary as Malacca

was to be turned into Mecca.20 Ziarah, with its powerful localising effects, remains

important for many in the Jawi Muslim community.21

Haj

One of the reasons the Haj only slowly took on importance for the Jawi community

was the difficulty involved in undertaking it. Not only was it expensive, it was

time-consuming, so that pilgrims not only had to finance the Haj itself, but also a

year away from their occupation. Even early in the twentieth century, about 15 per

cent of pilgrims did not survive the trip.22 There are no reliable figures on the Haj

from Southeast Asia in these early years, but the number must have been small.

During the mid-nineteenth century, the number of Jawi pilgrims each year was probably

no more than a thousand.23 After the mid-nineteenth century, the numbers of pilgrims

from the Jawi community began to rise. With the arrival of the colonial powers,

it also becomes possible to distinguish, to some degree, their origins. Around 2,000

pilgrims travelled from the Indonesian archipelago in 1850, increasing to about

7,000 by the turn of the century. Most travelled by way of Singapore.24 In addition,

by the turn of the twentieth century, perhaps 5,000 pilgrims from peninsular

Malaya managed to travel there each year, most from the wealthier Straits

Settlements and Federated Malay States.25 By the time Muhammad Sulong made

his own trip to Mecca, there would have been about 15,000 Jawi pilgrims a year,

with about 6,000 from the Malay peninsula, rising very rapidly to a high of nearly

40,000 by 1913–14 – comprising well over half of all pilgrims – before dropping dramatically

during the First World War.26 The Haj thus became much more familiar to

Southeast Asian Muslims, attainable for a select few in many communities rather than

something only possible for the very wealthy, very powerful, or very fortunate. In the

process, it became, increasingly, a somewhat familiar marker of social status, where

previously only those who already had social status (and their fortunate retainers)

could hope to undertake it.

Not only did the number of pilgrims change, but also there is some evidence that

the experience of the pilgrimage was changing. Virginia Matheson and Anthony

Milner have traced this phenomenon by looking at traveller accounts, which have

the advantage – and disadvantage – of revealing some of the thoughts of a small number

of pilgrims in detail. Matheson and Milner argued that as late as 1860, the travellers’

accounts they present indicate that the pilgrimage was seen and portrayed

primarily in the context of Malay court identity, rather than Islamic identity, although

this conclusion is based on very few accounts, all by members of the court.27 However,

beginning around the turn of the twentieth century, the experience began to change,

according to Matheson and Milner, in different ways for different types of travellers.

For one, described as ‘deeply influenced’ by contact with Europeans, Munshi

Abdullah, who died in Jeddah, the experience was deeply personal, conceived as

‘the supreme religious experience for a man on earth’.28 Rather than simply performing

a ritual, one seen as similar to other court ritual, Munshi Abdullah sought profound

religious experience. Matheson and Milner also discuss the pilgrimage

experience of a Malay nationalist, Harun Aminurrashid, who sees not only the Haj,

but the experience of his fellow Malays on the Haj. Seeing the Haj in terms of

one’s fellow nationals, rather than one’s fellow Muslims, is a new development.

Matheson and Milner, based on five accounts, conclude that after the 1860s, at

least, the Haj was no longer seen in terms of traditional Malay court culture. It was

conceived in new contexts, both in relationship to fellow nationals, and in more

sacred terms, as the old court culture became increasingly irrelevant. While conclusions

based on so few accounts can only be extremely tentative, and cannot represent

the experiences of all pilgrims, the potential for the promotion of new types

of identity in the Haj after the 1860s is evident, most clearly in the form of Harun

Aminurrashid’s nationalist pilgrimage. Such a pilgrimage experience could not have

been imagined before Malaysia as a nation came into view.

Educational pilgrimages

While ziarah pilgrimages predate Islam in Southeast Asia, and the Haj pilgrimage

arrived with Islam, at least as an integral principle, though it would be a long time

before many could undertake it, the notion of educational pilgrimages to the Hijaz

came later. Mohammad Rezuan Othman noted that, while ‘it is difficult to ascertain

who was the first Malay to go to the Hijaz in search of knowledge … among the first

was Shaykh Abdul Malik Abdullah of Trengganu …’ who studied in Mecca for

12 years in the second half of the seventeenth century.29 There is further evidence

of the presence of Jawi students at Mecca in the seventeenth century in the writings

of Ibrahim al-Kurani, who wrote two works in response to questions from the Jawi

community in Mecca.30 The first well-known Jawi scholars also can be traced to

about this period.31 While records from this period are often vague, where information

is available, those who travelled to Mecca on educational pilgrimages generally

appear to be established teachers, rather than young students.32 This was probably

due to the expense and difficulty involved. The most prominent teacher from

Pattani itself, Daud ibn Abd Allah al-Fatani, arrived in Mecca in the second half of

the eighteenth century. He was the most important Jawi scholar during the first

half of the nineteenth century, having written at least 20, and perhaps nearer to 60,

books, some of which are still in use.33 Despite the prominence of these scholars,

total numbers of educational pilgrims remained small, until travel became easier, in

the same way as with the Haj itself. Again, as with the Haj, such educational pilgrimages

increased quite considerably late in the nineteenth and early in the

twentieth century. Easier and cheaper transportation also must have increased

opportunities for younger scholars. An increase in the number of pondok schools

as education spread in Southeast Asia created demand for teachers and thus also

contributed to the rising numbers of educational pilgrims.34

The nature of these educational pilgrimages was such that we might expect them

to influence the identity of the pilgrims, and perhaps also the identity of the community

more generally. Like the nationalist pilgrimages, these educational pilgrimages do

loop gradually upward. However, while the local levels and the peak at Mecca follow a

standard pattern, some pilgrims visited other centres, local and Middle Eastern, on

their educational pilgrimages. Locally, the courts of the sultans, especially Aceh,

occasionally Siam, and later often Singapore, were intermediate stops. In the

Middle East, Cairo and, more rarely, the Hadhramaut were stops for some educational

pilgrimages especially at the end of the nineteenth century, but certainly not for all.

With no fixed pattern, and with these stops sometimes left out, the creation of a

broad-based identity through these pilgrimages alone may have been somewhat

shallow. Also noteworthy are the endpoints of these pilgrimages. For thosewho made the

pilgrimage to Mecca there were four possible endpoints: the Malay courts, Singapore, a

return to their home region, or remaining inMecca. Prior to the turn of the twentieth century,

some educational pilgrims returned to take employment at the court of one of the

sultans. There was some opportunity for mobility among these courts. Later, some

returned to take up residence at Singapore, a centre for those on their way to the Haj,

and a centre for publications on Islam for the community.35 However, most educational

pilgrims either spent their lives at Mecca, able to wield some influence on the Jawi

community from that position, though circumscribed by distance and time. Or they

returned to their home region, where they generally became religious teachers with considerable

status and influence. While those who returned to a sultan’s court or to

Singapore may have helped to create some sense of a Southeast Asia-wide Jawi community,

themore common patterns were to remain at the holy centre or to return to the local

community. In this way, educational pilgrimages primarily reinforced local identity, and

related that local identity to the holy centre of Islam. Few, if any, of the educational

pilgrims left Mecca to teach in other parts of the Islamic world, excepting, in some

later periods, theHadhramaut and Cairo. Thus while the educational pilgrimage inspired

some sense of Islamic community, it was of an unvisited and thus rather vague and

ill-defined community, and identification with other parts of the Islamic world was

reinforced in more limited ways than we might expect.

Taken together, ziarah, the Haj and educational pilgrimages in the Jawi community

enhanced three kinds of identity. Perhaps the weakest was that of the regional

Jawi community, since there was no standard regional pilgrimage route, nor were

the pilgrimages bounded in any clear way at the regional level, nor was there even

a standardised intermediate stop, although at different times, different places served

this role to some extent.36 Indeed, in some ways, the strongest influence on a Jawi

identity came from the presence of a named Jawi community at Mecca, rather than

from such an entity back in Southeast Asia. Ironically, this identity might have

been diluted by the larger numbers of pilgrims after about 1850. Michael Laffan

argued for the existence of a Jawi identity. Yet he noted, ‘From the moment they

[pilgrims] pledged their intention to sail, the Jawi pilgrims were categorised by their

ethnicity of linguistic group by both the colonial state and their pilgrimage hosts.’37

As for residence in Mecca, ‘The swelling size of the community … would have

given smaller groups more scope to activate their own communities …’, and indeed,

there were different quarters in Mecca for those from different parts of the Jawi community.

ecumenism abroad, ethnic ambiguity still coexisted, only now it was increasingly

phrased in terms of national parameters: Javan (or Indies?), Malay, and Siamese.’39

In other words, attempts to create a Jawi community even at Mecca and Cairo

were undermined by different ‘national’ experiences. The second identity that was

promoted was an Islamic one, which, as we have seen, became stronger over time,

though it was perhaps quite personal, with the larger community unvisited and

vaguely felt. Last, and most easily overlooked, the pilgrimages enhanced the sense

of local identity. This was evident in the ziarah pilgrimages in particular, but also

in the scholarly pilgrimages, where scholars who remained at Mecca maintained

relationships with their own communities through letter, through meetings with

pilgrims, through written work, and through issuing fatwas appealed to them from

their home communities.40 Scholars who returned interacted even more closely

with their local communities.

Young Muhammad Sulong's Siam

Muhammad Sulong was born in the village of Lukson, in Pattani, in the year 1895.41

It was a time when the experiences of the different parts of the Jawi community were

increasingly distinct, and in ways that affected the development of nationalisms.

Those in Java and the Straits Settlements had been under colonial rule for generations.

The Dutch, on the advice of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, were seeking to reduce the

influence of pilgrims, and to promote modern education as an alternative. By 1902, the

ethical policies would have a large focus on promoting education, leading to nationalist

sentiments.42 The British took a more liberal attitude towards the pilgrims, and

Singapore was flourishing as a centre for Islamic scholarship. In Mindanao, the

United States was about to take over from the Spanish, and fight a long and bloody

war. Aceh was at war with the Dutch. And the British were gradually taking power in

the Malay sultanates, in most places beginning in the guise of advisors, then slowly

expanding influence until they held control. In Siam, the court at Bangkok was working

to take greater control of its periphery, including the lower south.

Sulong’s birthplace of Pattani had a long history as an independent kingdom, and

a long history of resistance to central Thai rule. In 1808 King Rama II separated the

Kingdom of Pattani into seven small sultanates, each ruled by a hereditary sultan or

Tunku. This provoked considerable discontent for some time, and apparently inspired

those writings of the famous Pattani scholar Daud ibn Abd Allah al-Fatani that deal

with the concept of jihad.43 The hereditary sultanates were eliminated at the turn of

the twentieth century when the reforms of King Chulalongkorn brought the south

gradually into the same system of government as the rest of Siam. After 1901, the sultanates

were placed under the control of the governor of Monthon Nakhon

Sithamarat, and the tributary system was replaced with a taxation system. When

the sultans resisted the change, the government applied pressure. The sultan of

Pattani, Tunku Abdulqadir Kamarruddin, continued to resist the changes, and he

was imprisoned first in Songkhla, and later in Phitsanulok. Under duress, and in

return for an annual retirement annuity and other privileges, most of the other sultans

were ‘convinced’ to accept the new monthon system.44

Passive resistance of various sorts continued throughout the seven sultanates, and

especially in Pattani. When the former sultan of Pattani was released after two years in

prison in Phitsanulok, in return for a promise to give up political activity, he returned

to a hero’s welcome.45 He later fled to Kelantan, where his descendants continued the

resistance. Many religious scholars and others also fled to Kelantan. Meanwhile,

under the treaty of 1902 Kelantan got a British advisor, although it remained

under Siamese control until 1909, when it was ceded to the British. In 1906, the sultanates

were reorganised into provinces, amphoes and a monthon, bringing them into

line with other regions in Siam.

Sulong’s ancestors were religious teachers in Pattani, an occupation that was

influential and often hereditary in the sultanates. For several generations, the family

had been wealthy enough to send members to Mecca for the Haj,46 so that the family

had both long experience with the identity-shaping experience of the pilgrimage, and

with the influence the title ‘Haji’ could bestow. Sulong’s grandfather, Syeikh Zainal

Abidin bin Ahmad al-Fatani, was one of the best-known Jawi scholars of his generation.

47 Sulong’s father, Haji Abdulqadir, son of Muhammad, was wealthy enough not

only to go on the Haj, but was also able to support three wives, and to send his eldest

son to the best schools. Muhammad Sulong was born to Haji Abdulqadir’s first wife,

Sarifah in 1895. Thus when the sultan of Pattani, his sultan, was arrested, charged

with rebellion, and imprisoned, Muhammad Sulong was just seven years old.

Sulong went to school at a Muslim pondok school at Kruze, the old capital of

Pattani, run by Tokhru Waemuso.48 There, in what is thought to be the hometown

of the best-known Pattani scholar, Daud ibn Abd Allah al-Fatani,49 Sulong studied

Malay, basic Arabic and Islam. He must have done well because in 1907, at 12 years

old, his father decided to send him to Mecca for further studies.

Muhammad Sulong's Mecca, and beyond

Most of the travel to Mecca at the time of Sulong’s departure was on British

steamships, out of Padang, Singapore and Acheh; the ocean voyage took about 22

days. On arrival, there were two different periods of quarantine, then customs and

immigration to clear before the two-day camel trip across the desert to Mecca.

While the trip was much easier than it had been a few decades earlier, it was still arduous,

especially for a 12-year-old boy.

In Mecca, most young students stayed at a wakaf, a sort of boarding house for

students, which would have been founded by one of the rich pilgrims from the

Jawi community as a type of charitable duty. A few, including Sulong for at least

part of his time at Mecca, stayed with relatives.50 When he arrived at Mecca,

Sulong had the opportunity to meet Syeikh Wan Ahmad bin Muhammad Zain

al-Fatani, the leading scholar from Pattani and a prominent modernist.51 Sulong

began his education at Mecca by studying Arabic and Islam at a primary school

run by the Jawi community near al-Haram mosque.52 During this early period, he

met and studied with Tok Kenali, a scholar from Kelantan who was a disciple of

Syeikh Wan Ahmad.53 His course of study later involved visiting the many mosques

in Mecca, listening to the teachers there, and studying with those who had the most

knowledge or the best reputation. In this way, he learned from religious teachers from

throughout the Muslim world.54 Sulong gradually earned a reputation as a scholar

himself, especially among the Jawi community, and he was encouraged to teach,

becoming ‘a junior lecturer on Islamic law of the Shafi’ite school in 1927’55 at

al-Haram Mosque.

Haji Sulong studied, and later taught, at a time of considerable political ferment

in Mecca. The Ottoman Empire still controlled the Hijaz, but both local rulers and the

British also held influence. Since about 1880, the British had had designs on Ottoman

territory, due in part to a desire to increase trade, in part to concerns over the radicalisation

of Indian pilgrims to Mecca, in part to concerns over control of the Suez. In

1882, the British had invaded Egypt. There they established a protectorate, with a

British ‘advisor’ effectively exercising control over an Egypt that was still technically

part of the Ottoman Empire. This exertion of power through an advisor held similarities

to the experience of the Malay community back in Southeast Asia, where

the same technique had been used in several sultanates, including Kelantan,

Pattani’s neighbour. During this period, the British also unsuccessfully sought to

take control of Afghanistan, increased their influence in Oman and, in 1904, gained

control over what is now South Yemen through a treaty with the Ottoman Empire.

Elsewhere, the Russians were encroaching on Ottoman territory. The Ottoman

emperor also was resisting the political change promoted by the secular nationalist

Young Turks, who would come to power in 1908, then depose the sultan in 1909,

just four years after Sulong arrived in Mecca. The weakening of the Ottoman

Empire, and the secularisation under the Young Turks, called into question its ability

to serve as the protector of Islam and of the Hijaz. At the same time, there was no

other powerful political entity able to step in and defend Islam and its holy centre.

Sulong thus found himself at the centre of political uncertainty, of anxiety over the

future political status of the region, and of concern over what it would mean for Islam.

Increasing division in the politics of the Ottoman Empire was matched by

increasing intellectual pluralism. While Mecca remained the spiritual centre of

Islam, Cairo and, to a much lesser degree, the Hadhramaut were expanding their

intellectual influence. The revival of religious education in the Hadhramaut followed

a long period of decline, due, at least in part, to unstable political conditions. The revival

began in the late 1870s when Ali bin Muhammad al-Hibshi, whose father was the

Mufti of the Shafi’i school at Mecca, established a ribat (college) to teach more formally.

This was followed a few years later by the establishment of a college at

Tarim, financed by rich merchants from Java and Singapore as a place to send

their children. A third college was established in Ghayl Ba Wazir, a coastal city, in

1902, by Shaykh Muhammad bin Salim, who studied in Egypt. These and other smaller

colleges all led to at least a short-term revival of scholarship in the Hadhramaut.

Teaching methods and content remained mostly conservative, and the impact of this

revival was rather limited, except among some families in Java and Singapore.56

In Egypt, the reformation was more substantial. During this period, al-Azhar, the

best of the religious schools, and the centre of Sunni scholarship, underwent reforms

that would make it much more progressive. In the second half of the 1890s, shortly

after appointing Muhammad Abduh to its board, al-Azhar introduced more secular

subjects to its curriculum. During this era, despite resistance, attempts were made

to improve the qualifications of the faculty, examinations and coursework were standardised,

and the library was consolidated, mostly through the efforts of Abduh.57 As

both a modern university and the centre of Sunni learning, al-Azhar became the leading

institution of higher education in the Islamic world. Finally, in 1908, the even

more progressive Cairo University was organised, giving Egypt a modern secular university

alongside al-Azhar. Egypt and al-Azhar became known for political activism

over the next two decades. Despite the prestige of Mecca, an increasing number of

students from the Jawi community chose to study at al-Azhar, especially during the

1920s, as numbers rose from an estimated 80 at the beginning of the decade to

about 200 by 1925, with at least some of these from southern Thailand.58 This

plurality of religious centres, while not entirely new, matched the increasing political

pluralism as the Ottoman Empire weakened.

Intellectually, two powerful ideologies, nationalism and Islamic revivalism, both

central to the identities being developed through pilgrimages at the time, were

expanding within the region, with Mecca, Istanbul and Cairo as the main focal points.

Nationalism came in two primary variants, the secular constitutional nation-state

nationalism of the Turks, exemplified in the Young Turk revolution of 1908 –

which was not well received in Mecca – and the integrationist Arab nationalism of

Cairo, Mecca and Damascus. Constitutional nationalism had also its champions in

other parts of the Islamic world, particularly at Cairo where, especially after the

First World War, attempts were made to fuse it with Islam, to create a kind of

Islamic constitutional nationalism. In this later style, Islam and nationalism were to

be fused to create movements demanding independent nation-states in Islamic

countries and colonies such as Egypt or Malaysia. Such nationalism was closely

related to modernist Islamic reformism, and propagated through al-Manar, a journal

founded by Muhammad Rashid Rida, a student of Muhammad Abduh. Al-Manar had

a powerful impact on the Jawi community, with many of its ideas making their way

back to Malaysia and Indonesia during the first part of the twentieth century.59 There

Al-Azhar, or schools at Mecca, and that they reversed the decline only temporarily. The point to be made

here, however, is not their effectiveness, but the breadth of reform throughout the region, and its plural

nature.

was also contact between this group and the Jawi community at Mecca, at about the

time when Sulong was rising to prominence there.

A second form of nationalism, integrationist nationalism, sought to join the

many tribal communities together into a larger nation, one that could take a place

on the international stage. Initially, it took the form of Pan-Islamic nationalism,

due, in part, to the changes in social and educational structures, due in part to shared

dangers of Islamic nations facing colonialism, and due in part to the attempts of both

the Ottoman sultans and the British, through the local rulers of Mecca, to reinforce

legitimacy and extend influence.60 During and after the First World War, integrationist

nationalism increasingly took the form of Arab nationalism. It had a political

champion in the local ruler of Mecca, Sharif Husayn, and in his son Faisal, who

was close to the Damascus-based nationalists.

As for revivalism, it was, of course, not new. It had swept across the region many

times before. It also had many variants; nearly all Southeast Asian Muslims who visited

Mecca can be said to have promoted it to some degree, returning with tales of the

way that Islam was practised in the heartland. Haji Sulong’s version of revivalism, like

that of many in the Jawi community, was most influenced by the teaching of

Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905).61 Abduh62 was born in a small village in 1849, in

the Nile delta. By the time he was 12 years old, he had memorised the Quran; he

then went to the prestigious Ahmadi mosque at Tanta for further study, before moving

on to al-Azar. Abduh graduated from al-Azhar in 1877, and stayed on as a teacher.

Abduh’s only foray into political activism came when the British invaded in

1882. At that time he was involved with a group of army officers who rebelled against

the British, and consequently was exiled for three years.

In 1888, Abduh returned to Egypt, and was appointed a judge. In 1895, he was

appointed to the administrative council of al-Azhar, where he worked to implement

some of the educational reforms he had long advocated. Then in 1899, he was

appointed Grand Mufti of Egypt, and given charge of the judicial system. He was

also named to the Legislative Council. Politically, he believed that the government

had a right to obedience. This had to be balanced against the right of the people to

justice. The people had to provide counsel to the ruler to ensure justice and prevent

the government from errors and passions, necessitating popular participation in

politics.63 As for his reformist teachings, Abduh believed that Islam should strip away

the accretions of tradition and return to its foundations. Science and reason would then

have greater scope to build on those foundations, so that religion and science could be

compatible, since both sought fundamental truths.64 For Abduh, then, religious and

educational reform went together. He also chose to work within the existing political

system, despite his disagreements with it, rather than seek to overturn it. Abduh’s

teachings and his life would provide inspiration for Sulong upon his return to Siam.

Modernist revivalism had competition froman older retrogressive revivalism thatwas

popular among some Bedouin. This retrogressive revivalism held little attraction for either

Sulong or the Jawi community in general. Where modernists were forward-looking,

Wahhabism found its ideal society by looking back to the time of the prophet

Muhammad, and envisioning the return to such a state. It was also more forceful in its

attempts to reform Islam, as a political movement under the leadership of Abd al-Aziz

ibn Saud, who began his conquests in 1902. This was just before Sulong arrived, and

while then distant, the conquests would draw ever nearer. Eventually, in 1924–25 the

House of Saud and theWahhabis took over Mecca, Medina and eventually the entireHijaz.

Through all this ferment, Sulong studied, and with a variety of teachers from

around the region. As he matured, he began to teach others. When he was 27

years old, Haji Sulong married Sabiya, daughter of one of the teachers at Mecca.

Along with his status as a teacher came increased wealth and, since his wife was a

local, a house for his new family.65 Haji Sulong thus came to occupy a privileged position,

and planned to spend his life among the Jawi community in Mecca. His marriage

to a local gave him a certain status in relations with those from Mecca, and with

those from other communities. He was in a position to broker deals, to ease social

relations, and consequently to gain considerable respect. Snouck Hurgronje described

this status as partial assimilation, and noted that children of such marriages, or at least

grandchildren, would have been entirely assimilated.66 Sulong’s future opportunities

at Mecca seemed unlimited. A year later, Sabiya passed away.

During his time at Mecca, Sulong had the opportunity of meeting many members

of the ruling classes of Jawi society, who came from throughout Southeast Asia to

study or to perform the Hajj. At 29 years old, after the death of his first wife, he married

Khadijah, who came from this elite. Khadijah was the daughter of Haji Ibrahim

and sister of Haji Mohammad Nor, who would later become Mufti of Kelantan. This

second marriage must have helped to tighten Sulong’s links with the Jawi community

back in Southeast Asia. These relationships with leading Malaysian Muslims

enhanced Sulong’s influence both at Mecca and, later, back in Southeast Asia.

Haji Sulong was in Mecca throughout the First World War, through its intrigue,

alliances and betrayal. He saw the British, particularly the charismatic T.E. Lawrence,

encourage the Arab rebellion of Sharif Husayn against the Turks, promising an Arab

state when the war ended. He would have seen both the First World War and smaller

tribal wars, including those between the proponents of Arab nationalism and revivalism,

sweep through the area. He was at Mecca when the war ended, and when the

British government made the Balfour declaration, outlining a Jewish homeland in

Palestine. He experienced the British betrayal of Arab nationalism and the breaking

of promises to Sharif Husayn as the British took control and divided the Middle

East with France. He thus had little reason to trust in British promises. He saw the

abdication of Sharif Husayn and the abandonment of Mecca to the Wahabbi forces

in 1924, and witnessed, from a short distance, the fall of Medina a year later to the

same forces.

The Wahabbi takeover led to some hardship for the Jawi community, particularly

for teachers, as all teachings, except Wahabbi teachings, were banned, and restrictions

were placed on the publications of religious materials. Many from the Jawi community

left for Jeddah and for Southeast Asia, and the Straits Settlements government

issued safety warnings for pilgrims intending to go on the pilgrimage in 1925.67

Some from the Jawi community were killed in the fighting.68 However, a shared reformist

agenda allowed enough common ground for some from the Jawi community to

coexist, even thrive under the new regime. The famous Pattani scholar Muhammad

Nur Fatani would become the new leader of the Jawi community. Sulong must

have seen a way to coexist with the new government, as it was during this time

that he was appointed a junior lecturer at al-Haram.69 Then in 1927, Sulong’s

one-year-old son Mahmud died, and, to escape the grief, he and his wife returned

to Pattani for a planned two-year visit.70 It would mark their permanent departure

from Mecca.71

Young Sulong during his time at Mecca became Haji Sulong. He grew to maturity,

had, and lost, a wife and then a child. He became prominent in his own community

and a teacher of some renown. He was at Mecca at a time when not only he, but

the entire region experienced tremendous change: the collapse of the Ottoman

Empire, a world war, the rise of colonialism, the rise of nationalism and the rise of

perhaps the strongest and most diverse revivalist movement to date. While we can

only begin to appreciate the change his pilgrimage had on his identity by exploring

his later life, we can briefly summarise some of the most important influences.

Sulong’s maturation took place during a time of expanding pluralism: pluralism of

thought, pluralism of politics and pluralism of identities. Such pluralism is not unproblematic

for Islam, where some argue that the Quran mandates that the ummah must

be one. However, for Abduh, for Sulong, and other modernists, the unity was in religion

only, not in government and society, and only in issues clearly settled in the

Quran itself.72 Otherwise, pluralism held its virtues, in the competition of ideas,

and perhaps in ensuring the preservation of Islam by associating it with a variety

of polities, some of which were bound to survive, rather than tying it to a single

empire. Pluralism of identity at the time was prevalent not only in Mecca, where

Pattani, Siamese, Jawi, Shafi’i, Islamic, reformist, fundamentalist, Arabic and

Ottoman identities were all available to Sulong, but also back in Southeast Asia,

where colonialism was creating a variety of experiences for different groups, organised

around new boundaries. Also noteworthy was Sulong’s intellectual attachment to

modernism, and to Muhammad Abduh and his teachings. Sulong, we should note,

returned to Pattani as a visitor, not as a resident. He thought of himself as a

Meccan by that time, and left his home and possessions behind, intending to return.

That would soon change, as Sulong found that his identity was perhaps more complex

than he had thought.

Haji Sulong's Siam

When Haji Sulong returned to Pattani, he soon decided that the rest of his life

should be spent in Siam, not Mecca. He appears to have discovered his purpose in

life: a need, and an opportunity, to put Abduh’s Islamic modernisation programme

into action. He would subsequently follow the path advocated by Muhammad

Abduh quite closely, first seeking to revive Islamic teachings, then seeking to reform

Islamic education, then seeking to implement modern political and legal systems

within an Islamic context. Upon his return, it seemed to Haji Sulong that Islam in

Thailand was fraught with superstition, and believers were apathetic.73 He felt a

responsibility to teach Islam according to the teachings of the Quran, as he had

learned, practised, and taught it in Mecca. So for two years Haji Sulong travelled

around southern Thailand, promoting a revival of interest and a purification of

local Islam. He also taught in the main mosque at Pattani. His teachings, described

as ‘progressive and bold’,74 so upset local Muslim teachers – since they were responsible

for the teachings that Sulong wanted purified – that a government investigation

was requested and conducted to determine whether he was fomenting rebellion. The

government wisely chose to stay out of such religious conflicts, and no charges were

laid.75

After two years of travelling through Monthon Pattani promoting Islamic revivalism,

Sulong decided that the next step was to build a school. Perhaps due to the

influence of the teachings of Abduh, he did not wish to establish another pondok

school, teaching only religion. He wanted to build a school that would also lead to

higher standards of education in the area, and to higher levels of development. It

would be Thailand’s first Islamic school. In this way, Haji Sulong combined his revivalism

and his goal of modernisation through Islamic-based education and development.

So he set out to raise the money to build the school through donations.

However, at the time, the great depression was just beginning to affect Thailand,

making fund-raising difficult. Haji Sulong went to the former sultan of Yaring,

Phrayaphiphitsenamat, and convinced him to match the donations of the villagers,

so that he would meet half of the cost. In return, the school would bear his

name. After construction began, Haji Sulong had a sign bearing the name of

Phrayaphiphitsenamat made for the school. However, Phrayaphiphitsenamat passed

away shortly thereafter. After his death, his son, Phraphiphitphakdi, then district officer

of Mayo, objected to the use of his father’s name and appealed to the provincial

governor to have it removed. In the end, the name of the school was changed, the

donation was not made, and construction had to be halted for a time.76

As the school slowly approached completion, political circumstances changed in

Sulong’s Siam with the overthrow of the absolute monarchy in 1932. The change in

government opened up new pathways to power through election to both local and

national government. It also put in place a new national leadership that needed to

forge links to local leaders. Among those to take advantage of these new opportunities

was Haji Sulong. The new government wanted to rapidly increase educational levels,

but, in the midst of the depression, had only limited resources to do so. So they

encouraged approved individuals to build schools, which would then be recognised

by the government. In 1933, Haji Sulong travelled to Bangkok to request funds to

finish the school. He also invited Prime Minister Phahon to the opening. Phahon

provided the necessary funds, and agreed to come and officially open the school.

Pridi Phanomyong, while he was Minister of the Interior (1934–35), also visited

the school. Thus through the school, Haji Sulong became known to those in

Bangkok as a local leader of the Malay–Muslim provinces. After the school opened,

Haji Sulong became headmaster, and built up influence among students, former students

and parents. The school also came to serve as a mosque for those who lived

nearby and accepted Haji Sulong’s modernist Islam.77 Sulong frequently met with

those in the area to discuss his plans for the school, according to Numan

Hayimasae, and in 1935, the government ordered the school closed, because it feared

that the school was becoming a centre of political activity. Sulong then went back to

travelling around the region, teaching in different towns and villages.78

The political reforms implemented after the overthrow of the absolute monarchy

opened up new opportunities. Tengku Mahmud Mahayiddin, the son of the last sultan

of Pattani and the most important separatist leader, returned from exile in northern

Malaya, expressing a desire to work within the new system.79 He took up

residence not in the south, but in Bangkok, close to the centre of political power,

but far from his southern constituency. Sulong was also drawn into politics during

this period.

In 1937, the first direct election to the Thai parliament was held. The two leading

candidates were Phraphiphitphakdi (Kamukda Abdunlabut), the son of the last sultan

of Yaring, and Khunjaroenworawet (Jaroen Suebsaeng), who resigned his position as a

government medical officer to run for parliament. Another hopeful, the former

governor of Pattani, Phrayaratanaphakdi, who had been removed by the new government

after the overthrow of the absolute monarchy, asked Sulong for his support in

the election. Sulong was a prominent citizen, and knew the former governor well;

however, he felt loyal to his old friend Jaroen and chose to support him instead.

Phraphiphitphakdi was the only Muslim contesting the election in Pattani and he

sought to capitalise on that status.80 He emphasised the role of his father and his

ancestors as sultans, able to mediate with the Thai government. And in a campaign

leaflet, he cryptically quoted a verse from the Quran, which stated that Muslims

should respectfully support that which was good, while withholding their support

for the evil works of their enemies.81 With Haji Sulong supporting a Buddhist, this

Thai history. When money became available in the budget, a contest ensued between Phibun, who

wanted to spend it on defence, rewarding his military supporters, and Pridi, then the Minister of the

Interior. Pridi sought to spend the money to promote democratic participation in the provinces in a

programme that would have sent Thammasat graduates throughout the country, increasing his influence

at the local level. Phibun correctly saw that Pridi was building influence in the provinces, and, under

pressure, Pridi took a rather sudden trip overseas, during which time Phibun consolidated his power.

See Judith Stowe, Siam becomes Thailand (Honolulu: Hawai’i University Press, 1991), pp. 85–8;

Virginia Thompson, Thailand: The new Siam (New York: Paragon, 1967), pp. 88–9. Since Pridi had

visited Sulong’s school the year before, perhaps it is not surprising that the school was closed at that

time. It marked the first (but not the last) time that Sulong would get caught up in the political struggle

between Pridi and Phibun. The school then became the headquarters for an organisation established to

encourage leading one’s life according to Islamic principles.

It is important to note that Haji Sulong was sufficiently integrated into the political

system that he would support a Buddhist with a similar political ideology rather

than a Muslim with a different ideology. In other words, the politics of a candidate

was more important to him than ethnicity. Both Charoen and Haji Sulong were

‘new thinkers’, modernists who shared a belief in the rhetoric of democracy and

equality promoted by Pridi Phanomyong and some other leaders in Bangkok at the

time. With Haji Sulong’s support, Charoen would later be elected mayor of the municipality

of Pattani. After the Second World War, he would be elected to the

parliament.

In 1938, Field Marshall Phibun Songkhram became prime minister and pursued

a policy of forced assimilation nationwide. Forced assimilation and the reshaping of

culture hit particularly hard in Malay–Muslim areas, where provisions came into conflict,

not only with local culture, but also with religious practices. School curricula

were revised to include more Thai culture, and all lessons were to be conducted in

Thai. Traditional hats, headscarves and sarongs were all prohibited. The Muslim

courts previously used for civil cases were eliminated. Objections to these measures

were raised by the Muslim members of parliament (MPs) in parliament and through

other means, but to no avail.82 Effectively, Muslims were forced to choose either a

Phibun style Thai (Buddhist) identity, or a local identity, which was really no choice

at all. Passive resistance to the government became widespread. When there was a dispute

between Muslims, it would be arbitrated informally. If it could not be settled,

those living in the border provinces would appeal it to courts in Malaysia. In

Pattani, where the border was distant and inconvenient, the imams in the province

elected Sulong to serve as the arbitrator of those conflicts that could not be solved

locally.83 Sulong was also influential in creating an informal organisation to promote

co-operation among local ulama and the continued use of Islamic law.84 Sulong thus

became the leader of the informal Islamic legal system in Pattani, a position indicating

that he was held in high regard for his knowledge of Islam, and a position indicating

his own choice of identity.

Heavy promotion of the policies of forced assimilation coincided with the outbreak

of the Pacific War. Although Thailand quickly capitulated to the Japanese, a

resistance movement was established both overseas and in Thailand, spreading to

all parts of the country, including the Malay–Muslim provinces. In the lower south,

the British decided to support the resistance movement under the leadership of separatist

leader Tengku Mahayiddin, offering him, he believed, support for his cause after the

war. Some, including Tengku Mahayiddin himself, saw independence as a desirable

alternative to the harsh policies of the Phibun regime.85 For others, support for the

resistance to Phibun and the Japanese allowed a reconciliation of Malay and Thai

identities, albeit uneasily. The mobilisation and militarisation of provincial society,

mostly in urban (Thai Buddhist) areas, the difficult wartime economy, and British

covert support for separatist leaders in Malaysia who promised to fight Phibun all

further undermined Bangkok’s relations with the lower south, and support for separatism

grew. However, after the war, Mahayiddin and his movement received very limited

support from the British. They were left to seek other means to win their goals.86

At the close of the war, a new government was put into place. It found itself

facing a complex situation in the south. During the war, the northern and eastern

Malay states had been ‘returned’ to Thailand by the Japanese, so that southern

Thailand and northern Malaya were reunited after their earlier separation in 1909.

Then after the war, while the United States wanted to treat Thailand as an ally because

of the co-operation of the Free Thai resistance movement during the war, the British

wanted to treat Thailand as a defeated enemy. With British policy uncertain, the separation

of the lower south must have seemed a distinct possibility. During this period,

Sulong developed channels of communication to both the British and to

Mahayiddin.87 This provided insurance for Sulong, should Mahayiddin succeed. It

also was probably an attempt to ensure, and increase, his influence in the region.

As for the government, under the circumstances, it had little choice but to try to

win back support. Pridi, with the guidance of his Muslim friend and advisor

Chaem Phromyong,88 returned to the policies of accommodation and integration pursued

after the 1932 overthrow of the absolute monarchy. The highest profile move to

improve relations with the leaders from the lower south came when Sulong and others

were invited to Bangkok to meet King Ananda. The King donated 20,000 baht to promote

religion, education and welfare in the region.89 Pridi even indicated a willingness

to allow autonomy, within a Siamese state, providing a means to reconcile plural identities

to those who remained loyal to both Siamese and Malay identities.90

As part of its reconciliation policy, the government approved the Patronage of

Islam Act, which recognised the role of religious leaders in the lower south, and provided

a structure of authority for them. In addition to the Jularachamontri, the

national leader, there would be a central Islamic committee, provincial committees

and mosque-level committees. At the provincial level, all the imams from the province

would choose the committee. In this way, the government could learn who comprised

the recognised leaders in Malay–Muslim communities. At the same time, government

recognition of what had been informal leadership both reinforced the influence of

those leaders, and gave them formal control over mosque committees and their

imams, increasing their power considerably. In Pattani, Haji Sulong was elected president

of the provincial Islamic committee. With Sulong’s support, his old friend

Jaroen Suepsaeng, the mayor of Pattani during the war and a Pridi supporter, won

election to the parliament in 1946. As president of the Pattani Provincial Islamic

Committee, Sulong had a formal platform for expressing his views, and through his

long-time relationship with Jaroen, and indirectly with Pridi, he had taken a clear political

stand. He was firmly positioned in both local and Thai (Siamese) national

politics.

Sulong also took an interest in the government’s initiative to restore first the

system of Islamic judges, and then a revamped system of Islamic courts in

Thailand’s Malay–Muslim provinces.91 Sulong again can be seen following the path

set out by Abduh, who had during his career become involved in the judicial system

in Egypt. Sulong was unhappy with both government proposals, so that his position

became not only deeply political but oppositional. The government wanted to select

the judges itself, and to require that they be able to speak and write Thai. This would

have advantaged the former judges, removed by the Phibun government, in filling the

positions. Sulong, who had filled the position informally since the justices were suspended,

wanted the local imams to vote on the new judges, which, given his level of

support, would have allowed his preferred candidates to win. The government later

proposed an examination for those who wished the position, but Sulong held firm,

on the grounds that the judges had to be chosen by the imams, not the secular government.

The policies of reconciliation continued, as pondok schools were allowed to teach

without regard to the curriculum restrictions put in place by Phibun. Then in

response to numerous complaints about government officials, in March of 1947,

Pridi ally Prime Minister Luang Thawin Thamrongnawasawat established a committee

composed of four government officials and the Jularachamontri to go to the south

to investigate. This seeming opportunity would set in motion events that would lead

to Sulong’s imprisonment. When religious leaders in Pattani learned that the committee

would soon visit, they organised a meeting to discuss what problems should be

raised. About 100 people attended the meeting, which chose Haji Sulong as representative

to make seven specific requests of the government:94

1. That the four southern provinces be governed as a unit, with a Muslim governor.

2. That for the first seven years of the school curriculum, Malay be allowed as the

language of instruction.

3. That all taxes collected in the four southern provinces be expended there.

4. That 85 percent of the government officials be local Malays.

5. That Malay and Thai be used together as the languages of government.

6. That the provincial Islamic committees have authority over the practice of Islam.

7. That the Islamic judicial system be separated from the provincial court system.

It is unclear whether Luang Thamrong ever intended to act on the recommendations of

the committee, or whether he merely intended to use it to gauge, or to manipulate public

opinion. However, people in the south took the committee seriously, and Sulong and

other religious leaders coordinated a response. Having sought public opinion, Sulong

must have felt a responsibility to follow up on the issues raised to the committee, as

he subsequently established a ‘Seven Requests’ movement for this purpose.

The separation of the court systems, perhaps the matter of greatest concern to

Sulong, had already been rejected. Of the other requests, the first was the most difficult,

as it would grant administrative autonomy to the four Malay–Muslim provinces.

95 The committee met Haji Sulong and held extensive discussions over the

requests, but had no authority to make decisions. It also listened to similar requests

from Narathiwat, with additional requests for radio broadcasts in Malay, for Friday

holidays, and for a campaign to convince Thais not to use the derogatory word

‘khaek’ to refer to Malays. And it heard complaints about local officials, according

to its original purpose. Whatever Luang Thamrong intended, the bureaucrats were

not willing to take seriously these complaints against their own. Another committee

made up of representatives of the ministries concerned investigated 20 of the complaints.

Twelve of the complaints they considered were against government officials,

and in every case they decided that due to lack of evidence, the complaint should be

dismissed.96 As for the seven requests themselves, a government response was slow in

coming. After an interpellation in parliament by his friend Jaroen received an unsatisfactory

response, Haji Sulong began to organise his movement to pressure the government

into considering the requests more quickly, and, he hoped, more

successfully.

Sulong’s continued efforts to force the government to separate the court systems,

even after it had compromised in the selection process for justices, seems to have

convinced the government that he was stubborn, and would not listen to reason.

Sulong further alarmed the government when, in following up on the Seven

Requests/Demands, he developed an organisational structure, a plan of action, and

a mission statement, based around the twin goals of preserving Malay ethnicity and

creating an autonomous unit for the Malay–Muslim provinces, under Thai rule.

For Sulong, such a solution would have reconciled Thai and Malay identities; for

the government, it amounted to separatism. Sulong then began to raise funds and

to travel around the region speaking in mosques about his movement and its goals.

He also announced that, in accordance with the wishes of the people expressed

in the seven requests/demands meeting, he would invite Haji Mahayiddin, a son of

the last sultan of Pattani and leader of the separatist movement, to return and govern

the four southern provinces.97 None of this was considered secret, and when the

governor of Pattani was notified, he chose only to continue to collect information.

During this same period, the separatist movement, based in Kelantan and led by

Haji Mahayiddin, spurred by rising sentiments of nationalism and independence in

Malaysia, increased its agitation. There was a rise in robberies, especially of

Buddhists, some schools were burned, and violent incidents in general increased

about the middle of the year 1947. A British reporter from the Straits Times was

invited; she wrote a story about the Sultanate of Pattani and the way its people

were being repressed by Thai authorities. Haji Sulong was the host of the reporter

when she visited Thailand, so that some officials saw this as evidence that he was

involved in a separatist conspiracy with Haji Mahayiddin and with foreigners.

About the same time, a large meeting was held in Kelantan, with leaders invited

from both sides of the border, where the liberation of Pattani was discussed. With

such activities coming while Sulong was promoting autonomy and the return of

Haji Mahayiddin, some Thai officials inevitably saw the two movements as one.

They claimed that Haji Sulong was the leader of the Pattani branch of Haji

Mahayiddin’s movement.98 However, as Surin Pitusuwan argued, Haji Sulong’s

machinations were much more complex.99 Bangkok politicians were in contact

with Mahayiddin, at least intermittently, throughout this period.100 Sulong would

not have wanted to be left out of any arrangement made between Bangkok and

Mahayiddin. He also may have hoped to use the threat of an alliance with

Mahayiddin to improve his leverage with the government. In a time of political tension,

it was a risky approach, one that ultimately proved too provocative, as Haji

Sulong and his movement came under intense scrutiny.

Gradually, the government response to the Seven Requests/Demands became

clear. Only the request to separate the courts was refused outright. The other requests

were either referred to the ministries concerned (an indirect refusal), accepted in principle,

but considered possible only in the long term (such as an increase in Malay

Muslim officials), or, in a few cases, limited concessions were granted (such as

radio broadcasts of news in Malay, five hours a week of teaching Malay in elementary

schools where qualified teachers were available, and agreement in principle that government

offices would close on Friday). In addition, more development money was

promised, including money for provincial mosques, when it became available.

In November of 1947, a military coup overthrew the Pridi-allied regime and

placed a conservative pro-royalist Democrat party government in nominal power.

The following month, as a part of a policy to crack down on the southern separatist

movement, the Ministry of the Interior decided to transfer the governor of Pattani.

The proposed new governor, Phrayarattanaphakdi, had left the civil service many

years earlier, and before agreeing to return, exacted a promise of support. Sulong

believed that Phrayarattanaphakdi still held a grudge against him, since Sulong had

not supported him when he wished to run for election.101 At about the same time,

there were reports that Bangkok would open a dialogue with Haji Mahayiddin, and

through the auspices of a Muslim senator, had invited him to Bangkok.102 Haji

Sulong travelled to Kelantan to find out if this report was true, and when he was

told that it was accurate, he promised to draw up a petition in support of autonomy

for Haji Mahayiddin to use in his negotiations. Upon his return, Haji Sulong met with

the new governor, and reported his plans. However, when his supporters circulated

the petition, they were arrested, and on 16 January 1948 the police came and arrested

Haji Sulong at his home on charges of conspiracy in a separatist movement.103

The trial began in March in Nakhon Sithammarat and lasted for nearly a year

during which time the accused were held without bail. On 28 February 1949, Haji

Sulong and three others were convicted and sentenced to three years in jail. When the

prosecutor appealed, the sentence was increased to four years and eight months. Haji

Sulong’s appeal was rejected. He served most of his sentence at Bangkhwang Prison in

Bangkok, and was released three months early in the hope that it would appease his

followers in the south. Some 1,000 people were there to meet him at the train station

on his return home in March of 1952.104

While in prison, Sulong wrote about the events that had led to his conviction. He

claimed that the government had pressured witnesses to affect the outcome. Of his

own actions, he wrote:

The people of Pattani then suffered a lot of hardship as a result of discriminatory practices

of government officials. Those who did not agree with the officials were accused of

various offenses. The accused were then brought in. Halfway along the journey, they

were said to have attempted to escape and then shot dead. They died for nothing.

There were not just one or two such incidents, but tens of them …. Citizens faced extortion,

as they were accused of all sorts of offenses. If they failed to accede to the demands,

they would be detained, and sometimes shot …. In short, whoever had any sense of

social conscience could not stand learning about these terrible incidents caused by officials

from that period until my arrest ….105

It is not surprising, but it is also disappointing, that my movement is based upon

their foundation: that is to raise the status of Islam. My movement does not violate the

legal framework set by the government. Since I could not avoid the present circumstances

[prison] I should be at peace with myself, and try to be patient.106

After Haji Sulong’s release, provincial authorities continued to keep a close watch

on him. He was required to check in at regular intervals, even though he had limited

his activities. At the end of 1953, the district officer called him in and asked him to

stop teaching. He did so, but, unable to work, he struggled to support his family, and

wrote a letter of protest to the Ministry of the Interior, stating that he was not a

separatist, that he would not engage in such activities, and that if he were to be

under restriction permanently, he might have to leave the country.107 Denying his

right to teach in his school was effectively taking away what had been the great purpose

of his life, the purpose that had led him to stay in Thailand. By April of 1954,

meetings between separatists in Kelantan and supporters in the Malay–Muslim provinces

were again increasing. Banditry was on the rise. The Pattani MP,

translates literally to journey, and it may be that Sulong here is thinking of his life’s journey more broadly

rather than his political movement more narrowly. If so, he would seemingly be stating that his lifelong

task was to raise the status of Islam, and he had not violated the law along the way. He also wrote: ‘… I

am doing what the prophet had done, that is to alleviate [sic, elevate?] our religion and position.

Furthermore in my struggle I did not go against the law of the country. Hence, I accept the Will of

God, with willingness and patience.’ See Mohamed bin Apandi, ‘Translations from Suara Siswa (Kuala

Lumpur), Dec. 1970, Articles by: National Liberation Front of Patani Front’, mimeograph held by the

Cornell University library, p. 8.

Phraphiphitphakdi, reported to the government that the root cause of the rise in

crime and discontent in the south was the decline in rubber prices. This, he claimed,

had upset plantation owners and had led to widespread unemployment, especially

among young male rubber tappers who were angry and had too much free time.108

However, the government was not convinced that rubber prices were to blame. At

about the same time, Haji Sulong’s good friend, Jaroen Suebsaeng, former MP

from Pattani, came under investigation for involvement in the Peace Rebellion

(Kabot Santiphap). Jaroen was arrested and imprisoned. This may have further deepened

government suspicion of Haji Sulong, and, a few months afterwards, he and

some of his close associates were told to report to police at Songkhla. Haji Sulong

took along his eldest son, Ahmat, to interpret and to provide a contact in case of

need. On 13 August 1954, they reported to the police as ordered. They were last

spotted at noon prayers in a mosque in Hat Yai, guarded by armed police officers.

No bodies were ever found.109

Pilgrimages, identity and Sulong

Sulong’s educational pilgrimage to Mecca reshaped his life in many ways. It is not

surprising that it had such a profound impact when we consider that he was there

during his formative period, from the age of 12 years, when he was just beginning

his education, to the age of 32 years, when he had grown to maturity, found an occupation,

married, had a child, and grieved for the loss of his first wife and his young

son. What is rather striking is that his ‘vacation’ to Siam would so completely

move him from his former path, that, rather than spend the rest of his life in

Mecca, he would never return there, even when he found his life in danger in

Thailand. Despite his time in Mecca, despite his strong identification with the Arab

and Jawi communities there, Sulong still retained a strong local identity that would

become his primary identity upon his return.

The strength of this identity, and its relationship to Sulong’s other identities, can

be explained, in large part, through an exploration of his pilgrimages. We have noted

that Jawi pilgrimages tended to promote three types of identity: a universal Islamic

identity, a local identity, and a Jawi identity, with the latter generally the weakest of

the three. We can observe aspects of all these identities in Sulong’s life. Sulong’s marriage

to his second wife, Sabiya, gave him a close connection to at least part of a

Jawi-wide community, and he was, for many other Jawi, a respected (though still

young) teacher. His local identity, while he remained at Mecca, was seemingly

weak, since he never had any intention to return. It is only in the pattern of his

later life that we can see how strongly he retained it. Upon his return to Thailand,

it would take on new prominence, as he found a way to align it with his Islamic identity,

and his identity as a scholar. Sulong found his personal link between the local and

were released and disappeared along the way home. The most widely told and widely believed

story alleges that they were tortured, forced to drink alcohol, killed, and their bodies were stuffed into a

barrel and dumped into the ocean near Songkhla. Chaloemkiat, ‘Resistance to government policy’,

the universal in the teachings of an Egyptian scholar and leader respected by many in

the Jawi community, Muhammad Abduh. Upon his return to Thailand, Sulong saw a

need to put into practice the teachings of Abduh, which had become the focus of his

scholarship. We cannot know exactly when his ‘vacation’ to Siam became instead his

life’s work. What we can tell is that upon his return, he made a deeply personal pilgrimage

through the Malay–Muslim Siamese provinces teaching the Islamic reformism

of Abduh. After two years of peregrinations, his life’s work in Siam was clear

to him. The school he subsequently established was not the typical pondok of other

returning scholars. Rather it was a modern and progressive school. Where initially

he had taken his message to the people of the Malay–Muslim provinces, now they

would come to him, in a sort of reverse pilgrimage, with him at the centre.

Sulong soon became involved in Siamese politics, supporting the modernist

faction, as he would have seen it. As we noted, he attached more importance to his

ideology, and his relationship with the Sino-Thai Jaroen Suebsaeng, than he did to

his ethnicity, actively supporting Jaroen rather than fellow Malay–Muslim

Phraphiphitphakdi, son of the last sultan of Yaring. When the Phibun government

later came to power, Sulong resisted assimilation, but in a relatively passive fashion,

as he became a judge in an informal system of Islamic jurisprudence, designed to

allow Malay–Muslims to seek justice within their own legal system, rather than

through the secular courts. This provided the basis for one of his later political battles

with the state.

There are many ways to interpret Sulong’s political activities after the war. The

separatist movements in the south have sought to claim his legacy, emphasising his

grievances against the government. The government has also sought to paint him

as a separatist. Sulong himself, and his son after him, tell a different story. They

describe a man who was concerned with social justice, who sought to protect his

people through the political means available to him at the time. In some instances

he sought help from the state. He also communicated, and to some degree

co-operated with other potential sources of assistance, including the British and the

leader of the separatist movement. This kept Sulong’s options open, of course. As

Surin noted,110 this was probably a means of applying pressure to a government

that was also courting the separatist leader, seeking arrangements of its own.

In trying to understand Sulong and his life, it is essential to keep in mind that

most of the time, people do not have to choose between plural identities; indeed,

even seemingly contradictory identities can be simultaneously embraced under

most circumstances. There is nothing about Haji Sulong Abdulkadir al Fatani, his pilgrimage,

or his identity that is singular. Rather, his pilgrimage, like his life, and his

identity, can only be understood as plural. Sulong’s pilgrimage to Mecca came at a

time of great pluralism in the Middle East: pluralism of educational centres, pluralism

of ideas, pluralism of politics. This pluralism may have contributed to his complex

identities. The religious and nationalist nature of his pilgrimage also contributed.

Indeed, the key characteristic of a religio-nationalist pilgrimage seems to be to

enhance the multiple identities that all hold, making choices among them all the

more difficult. For Sulong, one identity is clearly visible throughout: his commitment

to Islamic modernism. It is rather striking that it was this commitment that allowed

him to effectively bridge his universal and local identities. At the same time, it drew

him into Siamese politics on what would ultimately be the losing side. Ironically, it

was his involvement in Thai politics, rather than any attempt to separate from it,

that would lead to his untimely death.

In writing of pilgrimages and the creation of nationalism, Anderson wrote of the

impact of large numbers of people all undertaking new types of pilgrimages, which led

to the birth of nationalism. And yet older forms of pilgrimage did not disappear,

remaining to produce alternative forms of identity. Gellner, writing of nationalism

at the same time, argued that Islam was uniquely resistant to nationalism, and that

fundamentalism would preclude national identities for those of that faith. Missing

from both these analyses is the deeply personal nature of identity, and of a pilgrimage.

While it may be true that the combining of large numbers of new bureaucratic and

educational pilgrimages created the then new national identity, it is only when we closely

examine individual pilgrimages that the complexity of the experience and the

consequent complexity of identity appear. Exploring the different types of pilgrimages,

ziarah, the Haj and educational pilgrimages, also highlights the linking of

the universal to the local, in ways that these analyses have overlooked. Even today,

as the Haj has become much easier and cheaper, allowing many more people to

undertake this central religious pilgrimage, the local aspect has perhaps been strengthened.

Pilgrims attend the Haj under national quotas, generally with a tour group from

their own local area, so that the experience is shared primarily with a local community.

And while superficial impressions of the pilgrimage may be widely shared, the

deeply personal ones are often shared only with close friends and family.

Religious identity, ethnic identity, local identity, one or perhaps two different

national identities, and a sense of personal mission all crystallised in the pilgrimage

of Haji Sulong. His Muslim identity did not preclude his national identity, or

his local identity, as we see a complex interweaving of all his many identities helping

to shape his decisions. Sulong’s experience, writ large, helps to explain the plurality of

identities among both individuals and groups in places such as the lower south of

Thailand. It also suggests some of the ways that individuals struggle to reconcile

their own diverse identities in difficult political circumstances, a challenge many

face in the Kingdom of Patani/Thailand today.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**James Ockey is Doctor at Canterbury University, Christchurch, New Zealand. Correspondence in

connection with this paper should be addressed to: J.Ockey@pols.canterbury.ac.nz. The author would

like to thank Den Tohmeena, Supoj Chaengraew, Chaloemkiat Khunthongphet and the librarians at

the National Archives of Thailand and the Cornell University library for their assistance with the research

for this article, and the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies reviewers for their helpful comments on the

submission.

1 al-Fatani (of Pattani) is affixed to the names of scholars at Mecca who come from Pattani. Some of

these ideas, including the contextualisation of the Sulong story, first appeared in brief form in James

Ockey, ‘Botrian jak prawatsat: Haji Sulong kap jangwat muslim phak tai’ [Lessons from history: Haji

Sulong and the southern Muslim provinces], Sinlapawatthanatham, 25, 6 (2004): 100–9. I would like

to thank Supot Chaengrew for his encouragement and support in that work.

2 Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 53–4.

3 Ibid., pp. 15–16.

4 Ibid., pp. 55–8.

5 Ibid., pp. 121–2.

6 Ibid., p. 115 and following.

7 Robert Hefner, ‘Reimagine community: A social history of Muslim education in Pasuruan, East Java’,

in Asian visions of authority, ed. Charles Keyes, Laurel Kendall and Helen Hardacre (Honolulu:

University of Hawai’i Press, 1994), pp. 82, 94, also noted this gap, but chose to explore educational pilgrimages within the local Islamic school system rather than the educational pilgrimage to Mecca.

8 Ernest Gellner, Nationalism (London: Phoenix, 1997), p. 81.

9 Ibid., p. 83.

10 Ibid., p. 84.

11 For a detailed summary and critique of Gellner’s argument, and its application to Southeast Asia, see

Tristan James Mabry, ‘Modernization, nationalism and Islam: An examination of Ernest Gellner’s writings

on Muslim society with reference to Indonesia and Malaysia’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21 (1998):

64–88.

12 See Frederick Mathewson Denny, ‘The meaning of ummah in the Qur’an’, History of Religions, 15

(1975): 34–70. Oddly, Denny claims that ummah means ‘community or nation’, (p. 44) as if the two

words are interchangeable, although he consistently gives it as community in translation. Of course in

Qur’anic times, there was nothing like a nation in the Middle East, but rather tribal organisations, trading

centres such as Mecca and Medina, and the two great but weakening empires in Persia and Byzantium.

13 For a general discussion of ziarah throughout the Muslim world, see Surinder M. Bhardwaj,

‘Non-Hajj pilgrimage in Islam: A neglected dimension of religious circulation’, Journal of Cultural

Geography, 17, 2 (1998): 69–88. On ziarah in the Jawi community in Java and its relationship to the

pre-Islamic past, see James Fox, ‘Ziarah visits to the tombs of the wali, the founders of Islam on

Java’, in Merle C. Ricklefs, Islam in the Indonesian social context (Clayton, Victoria: Centre of

Southeast Asian Studies Monash University, 1991), pp. 19–36.

14 G. W. J. Drewes, ‘Indonesia: Mysticism and activism’, in Unity and variety in Muslim civilization, ed.

Gustave E. von Grunebaum (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1955), pp. 297–8, described this process for

Java, where it was probably most coherent due to the desire to create a link to the Majapahit kingdom. If

he is correct, the nine Hindu guardian deities were transformed into Muslim saints, or wali, who in the

tales became responsible for all the cultural traditions being repackaged as Islamic. Fox discusses the

legend of the wali in detail in ‘Ziarah visits to the tombs of the wali’. One version of the legends can

be found in Ian Mustafa, Cerita Sejarah Wali Sanga (Bandung: Indah Jaya, 1985).

15 I have been told that in the past ziarah pilgrimages were made to Kruse, a mosque at the old capital

of Pattani; however, that has not been the case for many years now. Since the 1970s, Kruse has been a

political site for Muslims rather than a pilgrimage site. An associated Chinese temple long has been, and

remains, a pilgrimage site for Chinese. See Chaiwat Satha-anand, The life of this world: Negotiated lives in

Thai society (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2005), ch. 3. The Taloh Manoh Mosque in Narathiwat,

built, according to legend, on the instruction of Haji Saihu in 1769 is another likely site, as it has a

tomb in the same style as those at other ziarah pilgrimage sites. The minaret is built in the style of a

Chinese pavilion. For a photograph and a brief history, see http://www.tourismthailand.org (last accessed

on 16 Sept. 2010).

16 Some from the lower classes were able to make their way to Mecca for the Haj, generally itinerant

holy men who travelled overland or servants travelling with wealthy patrons. In later years, as transportation became easier, some were able to borrow enough from friends and family for the trip

17 Fox, ‘Ziarah visits to the tombs of the wali’, pp. 19–20, noted one particularly apt example of shared

pilgrimages in Cirebon at the mausoleum of Sunan Gunung Jati, where the tomb of Putri Cina comprises

part of the complex. ‘According to popular tradition, when Putri Cina married Sunan Gunung Jati, she

converted to Islam. But her conversion was only partial. She was converted to Islam from the waist up,

and as a consequence of this partial conversion, non-Muslim Chinese are permitted to approach her

tomb and light joss-sticks to that part of her that remained unconverted.’ Duncan McCargo has recently

informed me of a similar site in Pattani province, where people from different religions make pilgrimages, so that this is not unknown in the lower South.

18 Nelly van Doorn-Harder and Kees de Jong, ‘The pilgrimage to Tembayat: Tradition and revival in

Indonesian Islam’, Muslim World, 91 (2001): 339. In recent years, ziarah has changed, as it has come to

resemble a kind of spiritual tourism, carried out in air-conditioned buses, led by knowledgeable tour

guides. On the one hand, it seldom includes the kind of sacrifice and commitment it required in the

past. On the other hand, it is available to many more people. The identities it generates are thus broader,

but perhaps less intense. This, too, is like the Haj.

19 Virginia Matheson and Anthony C. Milner, Perceptions of the Haj: Five Malay texts (Singapore:

ISEAS Research Notes and Discussion Paper, 46, 1984), pp. 4–9. Note that the facts of the trip are

less important than the account that is told and remembered, for our purposes.

20 Ibid., p. 13.

21 Recognising the ongoing potency of such sites, in more recent years, the Suharto regime tried to

manipulate ziarah pilgrimages. See van Doorn-Harder and de Jong, ‘The pilgrimage to Tembayat’, p. 328.

22 William Roff, ‘The conduct of the Haj from Malaya, and the first Malay pilgrimage officer’, SARI

(Institute of Malay Language Literature and Culture) Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Occasional

Papers No. 1, 1975, p. 96, noted that in 1924, 540 of the 3,317 registered pilgrims died in the Hijaz,

23 Michael N. Pearson, Pilgrimage to Mecca: The Indian experience 1500–1800 (Princeton: Markus

‘some 16 percent, a rate not untypical of the time’.

Weiner, 1996), p. 52. During this period, pilgrims from the Jawi community were numbered with the

Indian pilgrims. Pearson (pp. 56–7) estimated the Indian pilgrims separately at around 15,000 during

the period of his study; he gave no estimate for Southeast Asia, but subtracted out 1,000 from his calculations in accounting for them.

24 William Roff, The origins of Malay nationalism (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1994) [o.d.

1967], 2nd edn.

25 Mary Byrne McDonnell, ‘The conduct of Hajj from Malaysia and its socio-economic impact on

Malay society: A descriptive and analytical study, 1860–1981’ (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University,

1986), p. 76. These figures would include most pilgrims from Pattani, as they generally travelled to

Mecca via Malaysia or Singapore. We should also note that travel and migration from the Middle

East to Southeast Asia also increased dramatically. Huub de Jonge notes that at the turn of the nineteenth

century, there were only 621 Arabs in Java. By 1870, there were 13,000 in all of the Netherlands East

Indies, increasing to 27,000 by 1900. Most came from the Hadhramaut to trade, some came from the

Hijaz to accompany pilgrims. See Huub de Jonge, ‘Discord and solidarity among the Arabs in the

Netherlands East Indies, 1900–1942’, Indonesia, 55 (1993): 74, 75.

26 Calculated from McDonnell, ‘The conduct of Hajj from Malaysia’, p. 631 and J. Vrendenbregt, ‘The

Haddj: Some of its features and functions in Indonesia’, Bijdragen tot de Tall-, Land- en Volkenkunde,

118 (1962): 149. No actual figures are available for the First World War period since consular offices

were withdrawn. Despite the seeming precision of the figures after about 1884, the numbers should be

considered rough estimates at least until 1927 when a passport system was implemented; see Roff,

‘Conduct of the Haj from Malaya’, p. 112. The only figure I have been able to find for Siam is 245

pilgrims in the year 1898 (Michael Francis Laffan, Islamic nationhood and colonial Indonesia (London

and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), p. 218). Nearby Kelantan sent just 70 pilgrims in 1920, in

the aftermath of the war, and averaged about 275 over the next decade (McDonnell, ‘The conduct of

Hajj from Malaysia’, p. 636).

27 Matheson and Milner’s contention that pilgrims before the 1860s saw the Haj through the lens of

traditional court culture is somewhat difficult to evaluate because both the accounts presented come

from members of the court, while none of the three presented from the later period came from that

group. That at least some pilgrims had different experiences is evident in the Padri movement, inspired

in 1803 by three returning Hajis who taught a rather puritanical version of Islam that would lead to a

revolution against the Dutch. See Anthony Reid, ‘Nineteenth century pan-Islam in Indonesia and

Malaysia’, Journal of Asian Studies, 6, 2 (1967): 272.

28 Matheson and Milner, Perceptions of the Haj, p. 23.

29 Mohammad Rezuan Othman, ‘The role of Makka-educated Malays in the development of early

Islamic scholarship and education in Malaysia’, Journal of Islamic Studies, 9, 2 (1998): 147.

30 Azyumardi Azra, The origins of Islamic reformism in Southeast Asia (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen &

Unwin; Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, 2004), p. 42. According to Azra, the first of these, al-Masa’il

al-Jawiyyah (the questions of the Jawi people) may have been underway as early as the 1650s, but certainly in the 17th century. While it is possible that many of these students could have been pilgrims, since

extended stays were then common, there were at least some who came primarily to study.

31 Azra, Origins of Islamic reformism, pp. 52–3, noted that Hamzah al-Fansuri, a scholar who died early

in the 17th (or perhaps the 16th) century, spent time in Mecca. He also spent time in Siam (see Peter

Riddell, Islam and the Malay–Indonesian world (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), pp.

104–5). The much more prominent Abd al-Ra’uf, or Ali al-Jawi al-Fansuri al-Sinkili, from what is

now Aceh, travelled to Mecca in about the 1640s (Azra, Origins of Islamic reformism, p. 71; Riddell,

Islam and the Malay–Indonesian world, pp. 125–6). The third, Muhammad Yusuf, or Abd Allah Abu

al-Mahasin al-Taj al-Khalwati al-Maqassari, went to Mecca at about the middle of the 17th century.

Both al-Sinkili and al-Maqassari studied with al-Kurani at Mecca, and thus may have been among

those asking questions. (The other major ‘Jawi’ scholar from the period, al-Raniri, was born in

Gujarat (Azra, Origins of Islamic reformism, p. 54).)

32 I base this observation on the evidence available in Azra, Origins of Islamic reformism, Riddell, Islam

and the Malay–Indonesian world and the other secondary sources employed here. Abd al-Ra’uf, or

al-Sinkili, was relatively young at about age 26 years when he left for the Middle East. According to

Azra, even Daud ibn Abd Allah al-Fatani, who arrived over a century later, was in his mid-twenties, if

not older.

33 Azra, Origins of Islamic reformism, pp. 122–6; Virginia Matheson and M.B. Hooker, ‘Jawi literature

in Pattani: The maintenance of an Islamic tradition’, JMBRAS, 61,1 (1988): 14–15; Mohd. Nor bin Ngah,

Kitab Jawi: Islamic thought of the Malay Muslim scholars (Singapore: ISEAS Research and Discussion

Paper, no. 33, 1983), p. 6. When a Malay language government printing press was established in

Mecca in 1884, a Pattani scholar, Ahmad bin Muhammad Zain bin Mustafa bin Muhammad

al-Fatani (see below), was appointed to supervise it. He had many of Daud’s works printed. See

Matheson and Hooker, ‘Jawi literature in Pattani’, pp. 21, 28–9.

34 Othman, ‘The role of Makka-educated Malays’, p. 147.

35 William Roff, ‘South-east Asian Islam in the nineteenth century’, in The Cambridge history of Islam,

vol. 2, ed. Peter Malcolm Holt (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1970), p. 177, noted that in Singapore

there were scholars from the region, including from Pattani, who had studied at Mecca. There were also

scholars from the Hadhramaut and the Hijaz in Singapore.

36 Trengganu, Aceh and Singapore in different historical periods had some status as centres of

scholarship.

37 Laffan, Islamic nationhood and colonial Indonesia, p. 48.

38 Ibid., pp. 70–1, 75; Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in the latter part of the 19th century; Daily

life, customs and learning of the Moslims of the East-Indian-Archipelago, trans. James Henry Monahan

(Leiden: Brill, 1970), pp. 6–8.

39 Laffan, Islamic nationhood and colonial Indonesia, p. 218.

40 See Nico Kaptein, ‘Fatwas as a unifying factor in Indonesian history’, in Islam in the era of globalization (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002).

41 Chaloemkiat Khunthongphet, ‘Kantotan naiyobai rattaban nai si jangwat phak tai khong prathet

Thai doi kan nam khong Hayi Sulong Abdunkadae’ [Resistance to government policy in the four

southern provinces of Thailand under the leadership of Haji Sulong Abdulqadir] (M.A. thesis,

Silapakon, 1986; published in Pattani: Munnithi Ajan Haji Sulong Abdulqadir Tohmeena, 1989), p. 2.

Chaloemkiat’s work is the most detailed account of Sulong’s life, and the source for many of the basic

facts here.

42 George McT. Kahin, Nationalism and revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1952),

pp. 29–36, 52–3; Anderson, Imagined communities, p. 116 and following.

43 Azra, Origins of Islamic reformism, p. 143.

44 Kittisak Nakmuang, ‘Kanburana kanchat nai hua jangwat chai daen phak tai’ [Restoring the nation

in the southern border provinces] (M.A. thesis, Thammasat, 1995), pp. 187–94; Rattiya Salae,

Kanpatisamphan rawang sasanik thi prakot nai jangwat Pattani Yala lae Narathiwat [The interaction

between religious adherents in Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat] (Bangkok: Samnakngan Kongthun

Sanapsanun Kanwijai, 2001), pp. 57–8; Krasuang Mahatthai, Prawat mahatthai suan phumiphak jangwat

Pattani [History of the Ministry of the Interior by Province, Pattani province] (Bangkok: Ministry of the

Interior, 1985), pp. 42–3.

45 Kittisak, ‘Restoring the nation’, pp. 191–3.

46 Interview, Den Tohmeena, 10 Feb. 2004.

47 Numan Hayimasae, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–1954): Perjuangan dan sumbangan beliau

kepada masyarakat Melayu Patani’ (M.A. thesis, University Sains Malaysia, 2002), p. 81.

48 Chaloemkiat, ‘Resistance to government policy’, p. 2. According to Numan, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul

Kadir (1895–1954)’, p. 83, however, Sulong studied at the school of Haji Abdul Rashid bin Abdul

Rahman at Sungai Pandang in Pattani.

49 Azra, Origins of Islamic reformism, p. 124; Riddell, Islam and the Malay–Indonesian world, p. 199. In

Malay, Kruse is spelled Kresik. It may also be worth noting that according to legend, Malik Ibrahim, one

of the nine Wali Sanga, spread Islam to Pattani before moving on to Java (Azra, Origins of Islamic reformism, p. 124), where he is said to have ruled in Gresik, a commercial centre.

50 According to Numan, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–1954)’, pp. 83–4, after the death of his second

cousin, Syeikh Wan Ahmad (in 1908, see below), Sulong moved in with Tuan Minal, or Pak Do Omar

(full name, Syeikh Zainal Abidin al-Fatani), a member of the family. Numan does not specify where

Sulong stayed before that time; however, if Wan Ahmad was his second cousin, as Numan claims, he

may have stayed in his household, which would also explain his move at the time of Wan Ahmad’s death.

51 Numan, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–1954)’, pp. 83–4. Wan Ahmad was born in Sena Janjar,

Pattani in 1856, and studied at Pondok Bendang Daya, before travelling to the Middle East for further

study. He spent time in Jerusalem and Egypt, settling in Mecca where he taught at Masjid al-Haram,

the central mosque of Mecca, and of the Ka‘ba. He published a large number of books in Arabic and

Malay, on topics ranging from science to history to politics, and was apparently also a medical practitioner and researcher. He was also given responsibility for the first state-sponsored Malay language

printing press in 1884. See Othman, ‘The role of Makka-educated Malays’, pp. 148–9; Azra, Origins of

Islamic reformism, p. 151; Matheson and Hooker, ‘Jawi literature in Pattani’, pp. 21, 28–9. The progressive, scientific orientation of this prominent Pattani scholar must have contributed to Sulong’s own modernist outlook.

52 Nik Anuar Nik Mahmud, Sejarah Perjuangan Melayu Patani 1785–1954 (Bangi: Universiti

Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1999), p. 51; Surin Pitsuwan, Islam and Malay nationalism (Bangkok: Thai

Khadi Institute, 1985), pp. 147–8. According to Numan, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–1954)’,

p. 83, the school was Ma’had Dar al-Ulum.

53 Numan, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–1954)’, p. 84. Tok Kenali (Muhammad Yusof bin

Muhammad) was a prominent scholar in his own right who taught at al-Haram as well. In 1903, two

years before Sulong arrived at Mecca, Wan Ahmad took Tok Kenali to Jerusalem and Egypt, where

they evidently took an interest in educational reform and visited al-Azhar, still under the influence of

the famous Islamic modernist Muhammad Abduh (see below), who passed away in 1905. Tok Kenali

was deeply saddened by the death of his mentor, and stayed on at Mecca for only about two more

years, returning to Kelantan in 1910, so Sulong would not have studied with him for long. See

Othman, ‘Role of Makka-educated Malays’, p. 151, footnote 26; Azra, Origins of Islamic reformism,

p. 151.

54 Chaloemkiat, ‘Resistance to government policy’, pp. 2–3; Numan, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–

1954)’, p. 85.

55 Surin, Islam and Malay nationalism, pp. 147–8.

56 Ulrike Freitag, ‘Hadhramaut: A religious centre for the Indian Ocean in the late 19th and early 20th

centuries?’, Studia Islamica, 89 (1999): 168–71. Freitag argued that the colleges never reached the level of

Al-Azhar, or schools at Mecca, and that they reversed the decline only temporarily. The point to be made

here, however, is not their effectiveness, but the breadth of reform throughout the region, and its plural

nature.

57 Bayard Dodge, Al-Azhar: A millennium of Muslim learning (Washington, DC: The Middle East

Institute, 1961), p. 129 and following. An earlier round of reforms had taken place in the aftermath

of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, which included the introduction of some secular subjects; see

Bassam Tibi, Arab nationalism, 3rd edn (Houndsmill and London: Macmillian, 1997), p. 84 and

following.

58 William Roff, ‘Indonesian and Malay students in Cairo in the 1920s’, Indonesia, 9 (1970): 74.

59 Azyumardi Azra, ‘The transmission of al-Manar’s reformism to the Malay–Indonesian world: The

cases of al-Iman and al-Munir’, Studia Islamica, 6, 3 (1999): 77–100; Roff, ‘Southeast Asian Islam in the

nineteenth century’, pp. 73–87. This may have provided some impetus to creating a Jawi nation.

However, the political impact of these ideas, according to Roff, The origins of Malay nationalism,

p. 87, was limited back in Southeast Asia, due to difficulties in reaching a mass audience

60 Kemal H. Karpat, The politicization of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ch. 11,

especially pp. 256–7. Karpat noted that much of the Pan-Islamic/Islamic sentiment came from below,

and especially from those in formal education, similarly to nationalist sentiment. This sentiment was susceptible to manipulation by political leaders.

61 Sulong’s adherence to Abduh’s strand of Islamic modernism was first discussed in Surin, Islam and

Malay nationalism, p. 148 and following. His modernism is also a theme in Chaloemkiat, ‘Resistance to

government policy’. More recent explication of Sulong, Abduh and modernism can be found in Numan,

‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–1954)’, Ockey, Botrian jak prawatsat [Lessons from History] (the earliest

version of the argument I present here) and Thanet Aphornsuvan, ‘Origins of Malay Muslim “separatism” in southern Thailand’, in Thai South and Malay North: Ethnic interactions on a plural peninsula, ed.

Michael Montesano and Patrick Jory (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2008).

62 I rely here on Dodge, Al-Azhar: A millennium of Muslim learning, pp. 129–32; Malcolm Kerr,

Islamic reform: The political and legal theories of Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1966), especially ch. 4; Yvonne Haddad, ‘Muhammad Abduh: Pioneer

of Islamic reform’, in Pioneers of Islamic Reviva, ed. Ali Rahnema (London: Zed, 1994), pp. 30–63.

63 Kerr, Islamic reform, p. 108.

64 Ibid.

65 Although Den was unclear himself, he believed the house came at the time of his marriage to Sabiya,

who was from Mecca (interview, 10 Feb. 2004). According to Den, Sulong was then 27 years old, making

the year either 1922 or 1923.

66 Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in the latter part of the 19th century, pp. 6–8.

67 Roff, ‘The conduct of the Haj from Malaya’, pp. 99–100. Laffan, Islamic nationhood and colonial

Indonesia, p. 224, cited sources indicating that 1,500 out of 4,000 ‘Indies subjects’ returned at this time.

68 Laffan, Islamic nationhood and colonial Indonesia, p. 223.

69 Surin, Islam and Malay nationalism, pp. 147–8.

70 Chaloemkiat, ‘Resistance to government policy’, p. 4; interview Den Tohmeena, 10 Feb. 2004;

Numan, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–1954)’, p. 86. According to Numan, Khadija could not bear

to see Sulong suffering such grief, and so she suggested the trip, and it was due to her encouragement

that Sulong decided to return to Siam.

71 According to Numan, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–1954)’, pp. 83–5, Sulong had made one earlier return. Numan wrote that in 1915, Sulong set out overland to Southeast Asia, where he intended to

teach, to make some money, and to visit Pattani. In Pattani, he would also fulfil a very personal form of

ziarah: just after he arrived at Mecca, his mother had passed away, and this would be his first visit to her

grave. Sulong would have then been 20 years old, and away from home for eight years. His first stops

were to areas on the fringes of the Jawi community; he travelled first to Cambodia, to an area occupied

by Cham Muslims. He then moved on to Bangkok, staying at Bankhrua and teaching there for a month,

then moved on to Aceh, Sumatra, Singapore, Malaya, and finally arrived at his hometown in Pattani. He

stayed there only about a month, fulfilling his duty to his mother, then returned overland to Mecca. No

other source mentions this trip, and it seems extremely unlikely that he could have made the journey

overland, twice, in the time frame given.

72 Islam in an era of nation-states: Politics and religious renewal in Muslim Southeast Asia, ed. Robert

W. Hefner and Patricia Horvatich (Hawaii: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997), pp. 27–8. For Sulong here,

I make this judgement based on his known adherence to Abduh’s thought and on his later actions; see

below.

73 Interview, Den Tohmeena, 10 Feb. 2004.

74 Nik Anuar, Sejarah Perjuangan Melayu Patani, p. 51. According to Nik Anuar, Sulong also established a madrasah, called al-Muaruf al-Wataniah (al-Màarif al-Wataniyya), which the government

closed. No dates or sources are provided, and it is not clear whether the local or national government

would have closed it, or whether this would have been at the request of the same imams who accused

him of fomenting rebellion

75 Chaloemkiat, ‘Resistance to government policy’, p. 6.

76 Numan, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–1954)’, pp. 139–41.

77 Chaloemkiat, ‘Resistance to government policy’, p. 13; Numan, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–

1954)’, pp. 114–44.

78 Numan, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–1954)’, p. 144. The year 1935 was a key turning point in

Thai history. When money became available in the budget, a contest ensued between Phibun, who

wanted to spend it on defence, rewarding his military supporters, and Pridi, then the Minister of the

Interior. Pridi sought to spend the money to promote democratic participation in the provinces in a

programme that would have sent Thammasat graduates throughout the country, increasing his influence

at the local level. Phibun correctly saw that Pridi was building influence in the provinces, and, under

pressure, Pridi took a rather sudden trip overseas, during which time Phibun consolidated his power.

See Judith Stowe, Siam becomes Thailand (Honolulu: Hawai’i University Press, 1991), pp. 85–8;

Virginia Thompson, Thailand: The new Siam (New York: Paragon, 1967), pp. 88–9. Since Pridi had

visited Sulong’s school the year before, perhaps it is not surprising that the school was closed at that

time. It marked the first (but not the last) time that Sulong would get caught up in the political struggle

between Pridi and Phibun. The school then became the headquarters for an organisation established to

encourage leading one’s life according to Islamic principles.

79 The sultan of Pattani, Abdul Kadir Kammarudin, died in 1933 in Kelantan. One of his sons, Tunku

Mahayiddin, took up the separatist leadership. He later got support from the British in Delhi when he

served there in the resistance against the Japanese. After the war, he returned to British Kelantan and

was an official in the education department while leading the separatist movement.

80 According to the complaint, he campaigned as follows: ‘The reason I have come here is to introduce

myself and ask for the help of Muslim brothers and sisters here in one matter. In the upcoming parliamentary election, there are four candidates: myself, Khun Charoen, Momluang Chai, and Mr Thaen. I am

the only Malay, the others are all Thai. I ask my Muslim brothers and sisters to choose carefully. Do not

choose someone from another chat, language or religion.’ (Chat has become the Thai word for nation,

but is here used in the older meaning, ancestry.) Krasuang Mahatthai [Ministry of the Interior];

‘Batsonthae klaothot Phraphakdi nai kanklao chakchuan nai kanluaktang pho. so. 2480’, National

Archives, Mo. Tho. 0201.6.6 box 1, folder 8.

81 ‘Barisan Nasional Pembebasan Repablik Patani [National Liberation Front for the Patani Republic]’,

Suara Siswa, 2, 2 (1970): 29. Suara Siswa has reprinted much of the autobiographical portion of

Sulong’s Gugusan Chahya Keselamatan, a book also containing a selection of prayers, religious practices

and favourite verses written while he was in prison in Nakhon Sithamarat in 1948–49, but later banned

and confiscated by the government. Phrayaratanaphakdi would later be reappointed as governor; see below.

82 According to Ibraham Syukri, History of the Malay kingdom of Patani, trans. Conner Bailey and John

N. Miksik (Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2005, o.d. 1985), p. 90, the reply to one such letter from an MP,

received from the Office of the Secretary of the Prime Minister, read, ‘… the Office of the Ministry of

the Interior has given notice that the actions of the Governor of Pattani are considered to be proper

and should give no cause for anger from the majority of the people. Be so informed.’

83 Chaloemkiat, ‘Resistance to government policy’, pp. 24–5.

84 Numan, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–1954)’, pp. 122–3. The organisation was called Hay’ah

al-Munfizah al-Akham al-Shar’iyyah.

85 Surin, Islam and Malay nationalism, pp. 94–9. Tengku Mahayiddin answered directly to the British

rather than through the Seri Thai movement.

86 Ibid., pp. 94–106; Imron Maluleem, Wikhro khwamkhatyaeng rawang ratthaban Thai kap Muslim

nai khet jangwat chaidaen phak tai [An analysis of the conflict between the Thai government and

Muslims in the southern border provinces] (Bangkok: Islamic Academy, 1995), pp. 142–4.

87 Chaloemkiat, ‘Resistance to government policy’, p. 40. Chaloemkiat also noted that Sulong, as president of the Pattani Provincial Islamic Council and as a respected religious leader was important enough

in the region that the British and the Tengku also sought to cultivate relations with him.

88 Pridi had appointed Chaem as Jularachamontri, chief Islamic cleric for the country.

89 Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff, Minority problems in Southeast Asia (Stanford: Stanford

University, 1955), p. 160.

90 Surin, Islam and Malay nationalism, pp. 150–1.

91 Ibid., pp. 119–41.

92 The struggle over the appointment of judges was complicated by a struggle over influence within the

Muslim community in the South. On the one side were Sulong, head of the Pattani Provincial Islamic

Council, and his supporters, while on the other was Jae bin Abdullah Langputeh, long-time MP for

Satun and head of the Satun Provincial Islamic Council. Jae, who represented the more Thai-ified

Satun constituency, had briefly been a cabinet minister in the Phibun government and would have

been influential in any government appointment of judges. Sulong, of course, had strongly resisted

the Thai-ification campaigns. This dispute is still remembered in the South today. See Chaloemkiat,

‘Resistance to government policy’, p. 49 and following; Numan, ‘Haji Sulong Abdul Kadir (1895–

1954)’, p. 122 and following.

93 Chaloemkiat, ‘Resistance to government policy’, p. 44 and following; Surin, Islam and Malay nationalism, p. 154.