The Year of the Rat Reading 15: "The Muslims of Thailand"

One day while walking on my first trip to Thailand, I heard a sound that was vaguely familiar. So I stopped to listen. I had a certain melodic quality to it that confused me to its origin but it was the Islamic call to prayer. I didn't think I would be hearing this while walking through Bangkok, but unbeknownst to me there are about a half a million Muslims in Bangkok.
So since them I have been looking for some material on Islam in Thailand. I have never been able to find any before this trip, and then a whole bunch of it fell into my lap. This book, "The Muslims of Thailand," is the first one I will clean off my lap.
This is the kind of book you are forced to read in university. There is a lot of information but no narrative. Why do historians just tell us the facts. Some stories would also be interesting. Thailand is the midst of a mini-civil war, au currant, in its southern Islamic provinces, so perhaps some of those voices could have made it more interesting. Not that it wasn't an interesting enough book (as so many are) but the author seems to forget that history is full of people doing fascinating things. Just none of them are found here.