STRATEGYPAGE looks at Muslim terrorism in the south of Thailand:

The violence in the south is increasingly directed more at Moslems, as the terrorists try to eliminate government informers, and non-Moslems increasingly organize death squads to carry out reprisal attacks. Most of the Moslem population wants all the violence to stop, as this sort of thing has happened before. Since the Moslem Sultanate was taken over by Thailand a century ago, there have been uprisings every few generations. In the past, these rebellions were put down with much violence by the Thai government. It’s not for nothing that Thailand is one of the few nations in the region to never be colonized. The Thais are tough, determined, and vicious if provoked. However, times have changed, and “vicious” doesn’t play as well as it used to. So the Thai government is telling the southerners to cool it, and is sending money and other economic aid as peace offerings. In times past, this might have worked. But this time around, it’s not just ethnic (the southerners are Malays) and religious (some 95 percent of Thais are Buddhists) differences, but the presence of Islamic radicals who want to convert all Thais to Islam, and establish an Islamic religious dictatorship throughout the region.

This will never work, and if the Islamic militants are able to keep it up long enough, the Thais will toss political correctness and go old school on the Moslem minority. That may help the world-wide Islamic radical movement (by providing lots of “martyrs”), but it will be a disaster for the Moslems in southern Thailand. And it will probably work. Islamic terrorists have been stamped out several times in the last twenty years, using similar methods. Most Moslems are caught in the middle. If they oppose the Islamic militants, they are attacked for disloyalty. If the Moslems support the terrorists, they are subject to attack by death squads or security forces.

The Islamists bring joy wherever they appear, don’t they?