Patrick Jory traces the history of the conflict in southern Thailand and probes the causes and impact of naming it as an Islamic insurgency:

The answer can be found in the suppression of official references to the distinct ethnic Malay identity of the population of the border provinces, in favour of the generic term, “Thai Muslims.” The consequence of this re-labelling has been that the essence of the conflict, a clash between competing Thai and Patani Malay nationalisms, has been lost amidst explanations of the conflict in religious terms.