'No idea' how to stop Thai violence

Mar 18, 2008, news.com.au:

THAILAND'S Interior minister has said he has "no idea" how to curb unrest in the nation's Muslim-majority south, as the government announced an emergency meeting following a deadly hotel attack.

"I must say I have no idea how to solve this problem," Interior Minister Chalerm Yubamrung said, saying the insurgency stemmed from Muslim feelings of discrimination by mainly Buddhist Thailand.

"The southern unrest is a very serious problem. It's about their religion and their beliefs, and their grievances about discrimination," he said ...

Two people were killed and 10 others injured Saturday when a car bomb exploded in the parking lot of a smart hotel that had been considered a safe zone for business and political leaders visiting the province of Pattani.

The conflict is entering its fifth year, but Thailand has made little visible progress even in identifying the people or groups behind the attacks ...

While the previous military government launched a raft of peace-building measures, almost daily shootings and bomb attacks continued to rock the region ...

Another victory for interfaith dialogue ...

A victim's relatives cry next to the body of an elementary school teacher shot dead by Muslim militants in Yala province, in September 2007. Militants have killed 75 teachers and burned down 297 public school buildings since early 2004, according to a regional educational office in Yala.

Thai-Muslim protesters chant slogans next to a photo of a Danish cartoonist during a protest outside the Danish embassy in Bangkok, Thailand Wednesday, March 12, 2008. Some 800 Thai Muslims took part in the protest against the reprinting of a cartoon in Danish newspapers perceived as insulting to Islam.

Thai policemen inspect the wreckage of a vehicle after a roadside bomb attack in Thailand's Yala province, February 27, 2008. Suspected Muslim separatist rebels killed one soldier in a bomb attack, police said.

Thai-Muslim protesters chant slogans during a protest outside the Danish embassy in Bangkok, Thailand Wednesday, March 12, 2008

No idea? Robert Spencer can help you:

For this to end, peaceful Muslims around the world would have to confront the fact that bin Laden and other jihad terrorists are regularly justifying their violence by reference to passages of the Qur’an and the words and deeds of Muhammad. If they don’t acknowledge this and formulate new and non-literalist ways of understanding this material, it will continue to be used to incite violence. In other words, the use that jihadists make of elements of the Qur’an and Muhammad’s teaching makes it incumbent upon peaceful Muslims to perform a searching reevaluation of how they understand those elements, so as to neutralize their capacity to set Muslims against non-Muslims.

Instead, the best we get from peaceful Muslims is the "not in our name" routine. It's not good enough.

Thai Muslim villagers pray at a mosque in Pattani province on March 7. Thailand's insurgency-torn south has witnessed an escalation in drive-by shootings and bomb attacks.