The New Path to Peace

Abstract

This chapter explores how the differences seen in young Muslim men is produced in the drug rehabilitation camp Yalannanbaru and discusses how the disciplinary methods deployed by military trainers derive from the Buddhist tradition. It looks at the different exercises of the camp's program to show how the category of religion is enlisted to serve the disciplined incorporation of potentially unruly Malay subjects. The modern concept of religion is not only central to the Yalannanbaru report but also key to understanding how power at the camp operates within the larger structural context of Thailand's imperial formation. Ultimately, the Yalannanbaru training exhibits the military's paternalistic approach; counterinsurgents, many of whom are Buddhist, teach young Muslim men the supposedly correct practice of Islam. While the Yalannanbaru training mobilizes a normative category of Muslim religion, it also implicitly relies on practices and norms central to the Theravada Buddhist tradition.