NEW TRANSLATION PROMISES CALM TO CONFLICT-PLAGUED SOUTHERN THAILAND

Songkhla University faculty with Amporn (front, third from right) and Greg Kingdon (back right) with copies of The Way to Happiness in Malay-Jawi.

In a nation that is 95 percent Buddhist, the southernmost provinces of Thailand are dominated by Malay Muslims, who make up a full 75 percent of the region’s population. Thailand is home to the third largest ethnic Malay population after Malaysia and Indonesia.

With Muslim separatist groups demanding independence for the ethnic Malays, violence has plagued the south for decades—the unremitting conflict leaving more than 6,500 dead since its eruption in 2004.

The Way to Happiness (TWTH) Thailand team, without political agenda or religious intent, started distribution of the Thai version of The Way to Happiness 15 years ago and has since distributed hundreds of thousands of copies, defusing political unrest more than once in the country’s capital, Bangkok.

But the real ongoing and senseless violence is in the southern region. And while many Malay Muslims read and speak Thai, being given a copy of The Way to Happiness in the very language that usurped their own doesn’t have the same peaceful sway as it might if given in Malay-Jawi, the language native to the Muslims.

In fact, some exhibit resentment at the perceived assault on the region’s cultural identity, of which a loss of their native language is a major part, galvanizing broader support for insurgency in the first place.

Whatever the case, TWTH Ambassadors Greg Kingdon, of Salt Lake City, Utah, and his wife Amporn Kingdon, a native of Thailand, knew a translated The Way to Happiness book was the answer—it would undercut all else by instilling a moral code on which all faiths and cultures could agree.

So they took it upon themselves to disseminate TWTH in Malay-Jawi, a language written with the same Arabic script as is considered proper for the Quran.

The Malay-Jawi translation marks the 115th published language for The Way to Happiness, reaffirming its standing Guinness World Record as the single most-translated nonreligious book of all time.

“We are planning to distribute these in the far south, along with the Thai version, to try and reduce this senseless violence here,” says Mr. Kingdon.

If the 62 percent drop in homicides in Colombia after distribution of The Way to Happiness to 20 percent of that population or the 50 days straight without a single murder in Compton, California, during dissemination there are any indication, we can expect in the near future, prevailing and much needed calm in southern Thailand.

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TWTH Latvia team planning dissemination of The Way to Happiness across their country.

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