TRADITIONAL BIRD SINGING CONTEST IN SOUTHERN THAILAND: ANALYSIS OF THE UNDERSTANDING LEVEL ON THE ISLAMIC RULES AMONG THE PARTICIPANTS

Traditional sports competitions based on bird s contest especially zebra dove bird singing is popular among Muslim communities in southern Thailand. The contest is organized almost every day except Friday at many places and district. Confusion among the Muslim community in southern Thailand on the Islamic rules of these bird competition makes such activity is still active until today. This paper discusses the understanding level of the Muslim community particularly the contestants of the bird singing on the legal status of the competition. Data were collected through interviews with selected respondent among the contestants of the birds’ singing and participatory observation of the activities at selected places in southern Thailand. All the data were analysed according to the relevant themes. The study found that majority of respondents were having different views on the legal status of competition that is; legal, not good in some respects, does not know and illegal, which contained element of gambling since it involved fees and prizes are from the fees source