Muslims in the Philippines

The title is an article by Jan Stark published in “Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs”, Vol. 23, No. 1, April 2003. The following is the article.

Introduction

Muslim minorities in Southeast Asia have received various degrees of public attention during the last few decades. Their demand for more political and cultural participation has pressurized governments to accept Islam as a vital element in establishing a working relationship between religion and state. The Islamic concept, din wa daula, (religion and state) has made it exceedingly difficult for non-Muslim majorities to grant more self-determination to a minority, whose ultimate goal of an Islamic state is seen as a serious challenge to established governments' and nations' territorial integrity. Although the rising trend of Islamic resurgence since the 1970s has had wide ranging impact on Muslim majority states, including Malaysia and Indonesia in the South East Asian region, it has also made Muslim minorities in the region more committed to Islam and increasingly resistant to non-Muslim governments. However, the extent of this resistance has depended very much on the policies of the particular government.

Muslim minorities in Singapore and Thailand, for example, have been largely assimilated and given a certain degree of autonomy, which, especially in the case of Thailand, has led to a gradual appeasement of Muslim separatism, which was virulent in the 1970s and 1980s. The Moro Muslim minority in the Philippines however remains on the international political agenda and more so since the recent hostage crisis in Jolo, which again attracted worldwide attention to the still unresolved minority issue in Mindanao.

The questions of nationality and ethnicity have been widely discussed and their impact on modem statehood in terms of political integration, class conflict and economic deprivation have come full circle. 1 These approaches have failed however to explain persisting ethnic conflicts which have not subsided during the process of modernization and its egalitarian effects of market economy, urbanization and social communication, nor have cultural values been gradually diffused by the growing divisions of classes. As Che Man observed, the acculturation problems of Muslim minorities may only be partly explained in political and economic terms. 2 The crucial divide, which separates minority from majority lifestyles, can be traced back to a conflict of cultures, placing the need of political control through the definition of common symbols by government elites against a perceived suppression of cultural and religious identity by the Muslim minorities.3 Anderson's model of 'Imagined Communities' draws a clear picture of the unifying forces of an imagined identity, which traverses even cultural and ethnic division.' He describes religion as one important factor in shaping a feeling of belonging which, in the case of lslam, unites believers from totally different backgrounds who become aware of shared rituals, a shared 'sacred language' and a common socio-cultural system as one part of the Islamic ummah. 5

In the context of the Muslim minority in the Philippines, this model serves as an important tool to explain why the confrontation between the Muslim community and non-Muslim outsiders, be it colonial administrators as the Spanish or the Americans, or the Philippine government has not been resolved until now. Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' theory which refers to large cultural entities, the perceived cultural conflicts between east and west, is reshaped here in the microcosm of a Christian dominated society, which tries to impose its values, its belief system as well as its economic and political dominance onto the Moro minority. 6

While keeping Anderson's model in mind, this article attempts to give an overview of the political and socioeconomic situation of the Muslim minority in the Philippines. It will be argued that rising political frictions and economic deprivation are not the immediate results of a policy of domination exercised by the majority, but that they emerge from cultural differences and conflicting 'imagined communities' which never received a proper response in terms of self-determination and cultural/religious emancipation. Only as a result has the political and economic situation in the southern Philippines gradually deteriorated to the extent that the integrity of the country is at stake.

Both the degree of government intervention as well as assimilation play an important part in determining how far a minority is going to perceive itself as an integral part of a society or whether it will feel alienated. The questions that will be raised in this context are:

(a) What are the factors that would lead a minority to identify itself with the majority?

(b) What are the steps that should be taken by the majority to guarantee cultural self-determination by a minority group?

(e) To what extent would these goals be achievable in the Philippines considering its specific historical background?

The total population of the Philippines was 66 million in the census of 1990. Given an annual growth of around 2.4%, the population should have reached well over 70 million by the end of the twentieth century. Various estimates, influenced largely by political as well as economic considerations, have made it difficult to assess the actual strength of the Muslim population in the Philippines. The constant neglect of Mindanao by the colonial and post-colonial administrations, before and after independence, has compounded this difficulty. The Muslim population in Mindanao has been obviously exaggerated by members of the separatist groups in order to strengthen their demand for independence. While the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) claimed a total number of 5 million Muslims, the government puts the figure at 2 million, a number that has slightly risen since the 1980s. 7 A point to consider in this context is the population growth rates of Muslims and Christian immigrants. With migrants from the north, mainly Luzon, crowding into the fertile provinces of Davao Oriental and Lanao del Sur, the overall population of these provinces has doubled within one decade. The 1990 census puts the ratio of Muslims and Christians at around 1: 5. With the total population of roughly 12 million in Mindanao, the Muslims would therefore number around 2.5 million.

The main Muslim tribes in Southern and Southeastern Mindanao are the Maranao, Maguindanao (both over 700,000), the Tausug (325,000), Samal, Yakan, Sangil and some other smaller groups as the Palawani on the western island of Palawan (10,500).

All these communities have their respective languages, which are related to the national language Tagalog (Filipino), which belongs to the Malay-Austronesian language group. 8 Through constant migration of Christian settlers, the majority-minority ratio has been reversed during the last 100 years. While in the early twentieth century the Muslim ethnic groups were still in the majority, numbering 76% or 250,000 of a total population of around 330,000, the ethnic balance since then has drastically changed. According to data provided by the Filipino National Economic and Development Authority, the number of non-Muslim immigrants has increased more than 100-fold during the last century, reaching around nine million in 1990 from an initial number of 78,000 in 1903.9 This strong migration pressure has added to the rising quest, often backed by violence, for self-determination by the Muslims, as experienced, for example, by the Malay Muslim minority in Southern Thailand.

Whereas the main Muslim groups, Maguindanao and Maranao, are settling in the western and southern parts of Mindanao, the ethnically most homogenous group is the Tausug in the Sulu archipelago, mainly on the islands of Basilan, Jolo and Tawi-Tawi, situated between southwestern Mindanao and northeastern Borneo (Sabah, Malaysia). Smaller minorities are concentrated at the coastal areas of Palawan; this group, the Palawanis, however is not involved in the uprising of the Muslim minority in Mindanao and plays a considerably marginal role.

As Anderson puts it, communities tend to imagine their cultural self according to their historical traditions, which are often shaped by the 'dynastic realm'."" Even though being no more than a mere symbolic construction to which people are referring in order to compile a common identity, dynasties have gained their legitimacy by traversing all concepts of modem statehood. The Malay sultanate represents such kind of imagined community, which despite ill defined and shifting borders has exercised a great amount of control over its subjects by means of a shared code of behavior.11 Muslims in the Philippines claim that this concept of statehood, represented by the Malay Muslim sultans of Sulu, differs totally from the Christian one, which has been characterized by a strong dependency on cultural and religious values introduced by the Spanish missionaries in the sixteenth century.

The Arrival of Islam in Southeast Asia

The spread of Islam in Southeast Asia has taken a very different course from its land of origin. The traders from the Middle East and India, who arrived in the Malay Archipelago in the fifteenth century, did not have any intention to conquer new kingdoms or to establish areas of interest. They came to strengthen the trade relations between the major Arab and Indian ports and those emerging trade centers as Melaka, which soon became the export center of the new faith. Islam was confronted with a society, which had already established its own specific social structure, the kerajaan, which revolved around the Sultan or Raja and his court at the top level of a tightly organized hierarchic structure. The customary laws of traditional Malay societies were able to accommodate Islam, since the new religion was able to merge with some elements of the traditional culture, which could be seen as strengthening the position of the Raja.

The Persian perception of the ruler as 'God's shadow on earth', which evolved during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was compatible with the traditional Malay perception of an all-dominating, almost divine chieftain. It is interesting to note that in embracing Islam, the Sultans were able to perceive themselves as part of an Islamic ummah. This put them in a larger frame of an imagined community which not only did provide them a sense of increased social standing, but also enabled the rulers to profit more directly from improving trade with the Islamic world.

The arrival of the first Muslim in the Philippines is clouded in myth. Muhammad Kabungsuwan, a member of the royal court in Johar and of mixed Arab-Malay descent, is said to be the first one who introduced Islam to Mindanao. When the first Islamic sultanate was set up in the fifteenth century in Sulu by an Arab, Sharif Abu Bakr, Sulu became not only an important trading port in the eastern Malay Archipelago, but also the first state in the Philippines to acquire its own centralized political administration.' Again, the awareness to belong to a greater entity, a community of believers sharing the same scripture and rituals, partly explains the attractiveness of Islam in an area, which had been dominated by polytheistic Hinduism. Culturally as well as ritually, the seeds were sown for the development of a specific Islamic identity, which gradually developed into a political movement emphasizing Islam and not the common ethnic bond with non-Muslim Filipinos as its dominating characteristic.

The Period of Spanish Colonialization

A crucial factor in the identity construction and a slowly emerging rift between a specific Catholic-westernized and Muslim viewpoint was the arrival of the Spanish in the Philippines in the early sixteenth century. Anderson points out how closely the Spanish quest for political conquest and the attempt to shape the Filipino mind were interrelated.' The new colony owed its name to Phillip II of Spain reflecting the strong bond of cultural as well as spiritual identification, which the Spanish were seeking to establish. King Phillip II stood at the helm of a most conservative redefinition of the Catholic faith in Spain, leading it to a state of rigidity, which had deep impact on the non-Christians coming under Spain's rule. Much more than Magellan, who arrived in Cebu in 1521, it was Phillip II's explorer Legazpi arriving later in 1565, who achieved the fame of successfully spreading Christianity to the Philippines and reshaping the country according to the Christian image. When Legazpi reached Luzon, he quickly realized the importance of Manila as a center for Spanish trade and administration. As in Sulu, Manila had become a Muslim sultanate in the course of growing trade with the Middle East. The overthrow of the Sultan, Raja Soliman by the Spanish set the precedent for a series of similar moves during which the influence of Islam was reduced to the southernmost islands, Mindanao and Sulu.

Two questions are crucial at this juncture. Why did the Spanish succeed in pushing Islam back to the south so quickly, and why, on the other hand, did the Spanish missionary efforts in Mindanao meet with such a lasting-and at the end-successful resistance? The Moro wars which were fought between the late sixteenth and early twentieth centuries with the ultimate goal to christianize and assimilate the south have only hardened the opposition by the local residents and have done little to reconcile the two competing religions. While ports such as Manila or Cebu emerged as Muslim trade centers along the expanding Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian shipping routes, it was the south and most of all the sultanate of Sulu which effectively established a political, economic and social system long before the arrival of the Spanish. Consequently, an Arab trader, Syed Abu Bakr, successfully created an Islamic sultanate among the Tausug in Jolo around 1450; and 50 years later Muhammad Kabungsuwan established the Maguidanao sultanate at the mouth of the Pulangi river in Mindanao0.' In its perception of Islam, Spain had been deeply influenced by the Moorish-Arab occupation, which brought Spain under Islamic dominance for 400 years. The zeal in bringing Christianity to its colonies reflected similar motives, which led the Moros in Mindanao to reject the new faith. Both communities regarded religion as one of the prime factors of their identity construction and were not willing to let outsiders impose upon them an alien belief contradicting their own. The concept of assimilation, which the Spanish had so successfully applied to make the mestizos (children of mixed marriages) the elite of their administration in Latin America, failed in Mindanao.'° There was no interaction between the locals and the Spanish colonizers. Christian colonial settlers who were brought to the south to assist in the 'civilizing efforts' of the Muslim tribes were equally instilled with the derogatory image which the Spanish possessed of Islam as 'the pestilential fire.

In varying degrees of violence, the two communities were clashing with each other for more than three centuries of Spanish presence in the Philippines. The mounting resistance of the south, which made it clear that Islam could not be pushed out of Mindanao altogether, led to a Spanish policy of aggression during the seventeenth century. Consequently, as the Muslim Sultanates were weakened, southern Philippines declined politically as well as economically. Trade, which made ports like Sulu to flourish, was interrupted. Through the introduction of the encomienda system, lands owned by locals were taken over by the Spanish settlers without compensation and by simply declaring the change of ownership as an act of protection over the territory claimed.

The Spanish crusade of military might and faith, of cross and sword, failed however to make inroads into the control of the entire island. Only a few garrisons, as the one established in Zamboanga in 1635 or the one in Tamontaca in central Mindanao, serving as basis for Jesuit conversion efforts, were put up as mere symbols of Spanish control.18 Until 1898, the last year of Spanish occupation, the ongoing wars between the Muslim population and their colonizers had resulted in a deep rift within the local population. The propagation of the unity of Catholicism and nationalism, which provided the Spanish ideology of Filipino unity, enabled a larger proportion of the population to identify itself with the Spanish motherland, creating exactly the kind of spiritual link which Anderson regards as a crucial factor in defining imagined cultural boundaries.19 While the christianized 'Indios' became the citizens of the Spanish empire, the Muslims not only remained as the brandished outlaws of a 'barbaric' faith, but they in tum looked to their glorious past for creating an image of a specific Islamic identity.

The American Impact in Mindanao

The arrival of the Americans in the early twentieth century did not result in a major shift of policies towards Mindanao. The aim of integrating the Muslims into the wider frame of the Philippine nation was upheld even though the Americans tried to achieve it by purely secular means. The signing of the Kiram-Bates Treaty in 1899 between the Sultan of Sulu, Jamalul Kiram II and the American general J. Bates marked a period of cautious reconciliation between the two sides.2

The treaty acknowledged the sovereignty of the sultanate and its right to practice its own Muslim affairs without outside interference. By launching a policy of attraction shortly after the termination of military role from 1899-1913, the Americans through development projects and institutions tried to win over the members of the sultanate as representatives of the American system. The establishment of cultural hegemony, which is so crucial for political control, slowly made its inroads into Moro society.° With the establishment of the commonwealth government of shared Filipino nationalist and American role in 1935, official recognition of the sultans and the right to manage Muslim affairs was abolished altogether. The newly elected president Manuel Quezon proclaimed the equality of all Moros before the law, reversing the hierarchical royal system of governance by appointing administrators from outside to enforce the rule. After the death of the Sultan of Sulu, Jamalul Kiram II, the government declared that the sultanate ceased to exist.?

The political and social demolition of the sultanate structure was followed by the introduction of legislation, which also had adverse effects on its economic standing. In February 1935, the Quirino-Recto Colonization Act was introduced opening Mindanao to massive migration from the north. Through legislation, the 'christianization' of the south, which Spain had attempted by missionary means, was reattempted by reversing the majority-minority ratio between Christians and Muslims. In November 1936, another presidential degree declared all Moro ancestral land as public property in order to be resettled and to ease the overpopulation of the north.23

Brought forward in several petitions from the Muslim side since 1935, a political solution had never been seriously considered either by the Americans or by the Commonwealth government. The ultimate aim remained the integration of Mindanao and its Islamic minority into the Filipino state. Only after the independence of the Philippines in 1946 and the takeover of the presidency by Ferdinand Marcos in 1965, however, the social and political tensions in Mindanao, which had accumulated over decades, erupted into an armed conflict, ultimately leading to the quest for an Islamic state.

Political Implications of Economic Disparities

The call for an Islamic state has often been the result of corrupt governments failing to extend political participation to the general public, provide the masses with economic opportunities and welfare facilities such as education and health, and accommodate the demand for cultural self-determination from the minority communities as in the case of the Philippines.? As much as the Islamic resurgence is a general phenomenon in the Islamic world, local factors have also contributed to a Muslim mindset. It sees Islam being threatened from outside forces, which calls for a joint effort from the faithful to save the religion. After comparing the different degrees of Muslim minority resistance to the central governments in the Philippines and Southern Thailand, Che Man observes that a crucial factor in sparking Islamic violence has been the economic deprivation of large segments of the Muslim communities.° The economies of Mindanao in the Philippines and Pattani in Thailand have been mostly in the hands of non-Muslims since early twentieth century, when both territories were incorporated to their respective states. In Pattani, however, resettlement of non-Muslims and expropriation of Muslim lands has occurred to a much lesser extent than in Mindanao, which partly explains the considerably lower scale of the Muslim resistance in southern Thailand.3° In the case of the Philippines, multinational conglomerates have settled in Mindanao, mostly operating in the agricultural and plantation sectors. Fruit processing companies like Del Monte have been allotted with extensive areas of land by the government and they have benefited from the pool of cheap labor in that province. However, this has not raised the living conditions of the local population, since the bulk of the profits earned from these operations had flowed outside the province. However, economic deprivation was not the only cause for rising Islamic consciousness among Mindanao Muslims. The gradual decline of Moro sultanates as a whole, the replacement of the traditional system of trade by foreign-controlled establishments and the breaking up of the hierarchic Moro social structure by an influx of culturally different settlers have contributed to a deepening religious awareness. This was further strengthened by the Islamic resurgence of the 1970s and 1980s, which provided the Moro movement an international forum.

The Impact of the Marcos Administration

The climax of the deteriorating crisis was reached under the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, which lasted for 21 years between 1965 and 1986. The first years of his government were characterized by increasing violence between Muslims and Christian settlers. Often the claim for land was used to drive locals from their ancestral lands. The inability to understand one's cultural and religious differences, family feuds between rivaling clans, but also plain banditry and rising conditions of lawlessness in Mindanao formed the background for a chain of events, which finally led to the explosion of social-economic tensions into civil war in the early 1970s.

Worsening economic growth, depreciation of the Peso and increasing cronyism, not only destabilized the political structure of the Philippines as a whole, but also deteriorated the situation in the south. The emergence of the so-called Ilaga gangs in 1970s in Cotabato province was one of the clear symptoms of Mindanao plunging into a state of complete lawlessness. The Ilaga (rats), a Christian militia, mostly comprising of settlers from the Ilongo tribe, was set up by the military. Jubair points out the significance of the terrorist activities of this group in an effort to reverse the religiousethnic balance in Cotabato so that the Christian immigrants would become the majority. The 'ethnic cleansing' carried out by these groups in remote Moro villages was aimed at the expropriation of Moro lands and the expulsion of their owners. A file provided by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) cites a total of 518 people killed in Cotabato province between March 1970 and January 1972.3 Between January 1972 and the declaration of martial law in September that year there were continued atrocities on both sides which saw the gradual depopulation of several towns in the Cotabato province. Around 30,000 Muslims and Christians left their farms as a result of this violence.

The emergence of the Muslim National Liberation Front was the result of policies of negligence, which had persisted since the Spanish came to Mindanao, but received a new momentum under the Marcos government. This is evident from the initial background of the MNLF movement. The early leaders of MNLF such as Nur Misuari emerged from the Marxist student movement in Manila, which at that time favoured a socialist approach to solve the problems in Mindanao. They were propagating a revolutionary struggle against feudalism, imperialism and capitalism. As another observer put it, the conflict in Mindanao did not primarily address religious frictions within the community, but mainly focused on uneven economic opportunities, land distribution, and biased law enforcement in favor of Christian immigrants."

However, Islam provided the MNLF with a powerful weapon to unite the scattered resistance groups in Mindanao. When the Moro cause was presented to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Jeddah in 1972 shortly after the declaration of martial law in the Philippines, Libya declared its willingness to assist the Moros in all possible ways. The MNLF quest for self-determination did not receive favorable response from the Marcos administration. It was the increased violence of 1973-197 6 and the pressure exerted on the Philippine government by the OIC that forced Marcos to sign the Tripoli agreement in 197 6, which provided for autonomy in the Muslim majority areas of Mindanao. The Christian majority in eight of the 13 provinces, however, turned the proposal down in a referendum, which secured the implementation of the autonomy agreement in Marcos' own terms. The MNLF armed struggle did not yield any tangible result in spite of the financial and ideological support from Libya's president Muammar Al-Qadhafi. It lost considerable credibility and the disillusionment in MNLF leadership led to further radicalization of the Moro conflict, involving one third of the Filipino army at its peak in 1976.3

Effectiveness of Government Efforts

The measures taken up by the government to appease the situation did bring some relief to the local population. Facing growing resistance, the Marcos administration aimed at providing economic as well as educational support for the Muslims in Mindanao. Between 1975 and 1980, the Southern Philippines Development Administration (SPDA) set up several corporate projects to increase job opportunities and to generate tax revenue for the local administration. Non-corporate projects intending to enhance education, land ownership and healthcare were jointly undertaken by the SPDA and other government agencies.

However, the core of the Muslim grievances, i.e. occupation of ancestral lands by Christian settlers and the uncertainty of land titles, which enabled multinational conglomerates to take over large areas of land, had not been solved in spite of an attempted land reform in the early 1980s. It has been argued that Marcos' measures were not really an attempt to improve the socioeconomic conditions of the Muslims but were driven by his desire to win over the members of the traditional Muslim elite in order to ease the pressure on the government.31

The Aquino administration from 1986 to 1992 and her successor Ramos' ( 1992- 1998) pursued the course of reconciliation with the Moros and in 1996 a major peace accord was achieved between the Ramos government and the MNLF. Despite the fact that this was seen as a major breakthrough after the failure of the Tripoli agreement, the situation since then was one of varying degrees of tension in the region. The factionalism within the Moro separatist groups has made it difficult to reach a consensus over issues such as the role of the MNLF in the peace accord, the degree of autonomy to be achieved and the number of provinces to be involved. Moreover, the rising Islamic resurgence in the 1980s, which became even stronger through the support of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), has shown that dissatisfaction over unresolved economic, social and political issues would find an outlet through religious expression.

Continued Discontent

The economic and social condition of the Moro has virtually remained unchanged since the time of colonial rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There were two factors hampering Muslims equal participation in political and economic institutions. First, the colonial administrations and successive Filipino governments never truly intended to make Mindanao an integral part of the country as far as distribution of funds and resources and political participation were concerned. The problem of Muslim insurgence has been mainly perceived as a challenge to national unity, which has to be curtailed by military measures. It is revealing that following Anderson's concept of 'imagined communities' the Moros have never positively responded to this Unitarian concept. They have always perceived themselves as a culturally different entity and part of the Islamic ummah, despite their close ethnic and linguistic ties with other non-Muslim Filipinos.

It could be argued that the resettlement program of the Filipino government, which brought millions of immigrants to Mindanao, was not only intended to ease the overpopulation in the north but also was an attempt to shape a sense of shared national values following the Spanish concept of Catholicism as the source of Philippine unity.° The fact that this concept has failed is highlighted in the continuing resistance by the Moros, articulated in a socio-cultural struggle, which ultimately has put the entire concept of Philippine nationhood into question.

The second problem is related to the political structure and system of government, which is not only highly centralized but is also more of a Latin American than Southeast Asian type: 'The top 5.5% of all landowning families own 44% of the arable land' whereas as little as 100 families control all elective positions on the national level.33

Since the demolition of the traditional sultanate system in Mindanao, this has consequently shifted decision-making processes in favor of non-Muslim clans, often closely connected to the government. In Mindanao, the concept has been suggested by the MNLF and members of the Catholic Church, but failed so far to get the approval of the government, for obvious reasons. Mindanao has contributed as much as 25% to the total export value of the Philippines. This value has not been redistributed to the local population, but has only benefited a small number of individuals, the economic and political elite. The effect of this uneven economic development has widened the gap between the privileged upper class and the impoverished masses, the latter lacking job opportunities and access to higher education.

The Socioeconomic Factors

The last census in 1990 and a recent study carried out under the auspices of the National Statistics Office in Manila have painted the following picture of the socioeconomic conditions of the Moro people: the main areas of Muslim employment are in forestry and agriculture, amounting to 43. 7% of the total workforce. Another 40% is employed in elementary and special occupations as laborers, in the household and in social and community services. Thus more than 83% of the Muslim working population is employed in these three areas. The ratio of occupational status in urban and rural areas is however significantly different and is also influenced by the fact that the majority of the Moros (76.7%) live in rural areas. Here the main income is derived from fishery, forestry and agriculture (72%), whereas in urban areas wholesale and smallscale retail trading and social/community services dominate (about 45%).35

Other occupational areas in which Muslims form a minority are mining, manufacturing, construction and finance. These are the traditional strongholds of non-Muslims. Significant differences also exist between the occupational status of men and women. The majority of rural males are working in the agricultural sector (75%), but around 45% of all employed women work in retail business, social services and as housewives. These are mostly situated in the urban areas. In rural areas, nearly 40% of the female workforce is engaged in agriculturally related occupations. Even though the unemployment rate among Muslims is very high (57.3%), it is not much different from the figure for non-Muslims, which is 54.2%, thus reflecting the generally bad condition of the Filipino economy. The numbers however do not say much about the subsistence economy still prevailing among those employed in the agricultural sector. The living standard of unemployed Muslims who own a small plot of land or who earn other income from social activities (mainly women) is often higher than the one in urban areas who have no such avenues.3°

The History of Muslim Education and the Role of the Madrasah

Muslims have been traditionally educated in Islamic religious schools called madrasahs. This educational system, which is also prevalent in neighboring Islamic countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, originates from the traditional kerajaan (sultanate) and had been set up to impart basic knowledge in Islam. When the Spanish arrived in the Philippines in 1521, there was already a well-established political and educational system, which included informal religious schools in various parts of Mindanao, such as Sulu and Buayan. These schools provided religious knowledge to the newly converted. The early madrasahs were organized within small communities and offered a limited selection of subjects, as the ones in the sultanate of Sulu.

The Spanish and American colonization posed a great challenge to the traditional Islamic educational system. The madrasah system was seen by the Spanish as an obstacle in their effort to Christianize the population. The colonial education system served from the very beginning as a tool to foster a sense of nationhood among the Filipinos, which, according to the Spanish ideology, was synonymous with Catholicism and its dominant role in society. The schools and colleges that were established, maintained and operated by the Christian missionaries provided western education at various levels of learning. Among those established were the College of San Carlos, San Juan de Letran, Sta. Isabel and the University of Santo Tomas. At the same time Muslim schools were closed down and most of its documents and paraphernalia were burned or destroyed. In Mindanao and in Sulu, Islamic education was actively discouraged by the Spanish, because they perceived such education as a means of resistance against their own missionary efforts. In the long run, however, this policy did not only weaken the madrasah system much, but engendered a growing friction between Muslims and non-Muslims, since the latter were able to receive western-style higher education and consequently had access to better jobs and lifestyles, while the former was deprived of those opportunities.37

In the 1950s, however, with the establishment of new madrasahs and Muslim private schools some improvements were registered which to a certain extent arrested the declining educational standards among the Muslims. Religious teachers started to arrive from abroad when the Egyptian government under Nasser sent imams from Cairo and awarded hundreds of scholarships to Filipino Muslims.38 Courses in private schools, which were run by religious foundations and private organizations, were redesigned to accommodate the general teaching outline of government schools. The new system provided a six-year elementary course, a four-year secondary and a two-year collegiate course comprising subjects such as reading and writing, arithmetic, history and Islamic affairs. One outstanding example of such a religious school is the Kamilol Islam Maahad Ulom in Marawi City, in the Lanao del Sur province. As one of the oldest schools of this type, established in 1938 by Kamilol Islam Society under Sheik Mohamed Siddiq, it was converted into a bilingual institution in 1952, which offered both Islamic and western-style education. The Arabic department has consequently been upgraded into a new institution, the Jamiatul Philippine al Islamiya, which offers both Islamic and non-Islamic courses in accordance with government regulations. Another madrasah in the same city is the Mindanao Arabic Institute (Maahad Mindanao el Arabi), organized by the Agama Islam Society under Sheik Ahmad Basher. The principal aim of this school is to spread Islamic education and to make Muslims aware of their religious heritage. However, it has been observed that other religious schools like the Hidayatul Muslimin, the Motamarol Islam or the Maahad Ulom (all in Marawi) have failed so far to set up an Islamic curriculum, which focuses on the specific circumstances and cultural differences of Southeast Asian Islam compared to the situation in the Middle East. Since teaching materials are mostly donated from Arabic countries, mainly Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Libya, they are of little relevance to the local historic background.

Since the Islamic resurgence of the 1970s and 1980s, religious teachers have been sent to the Middle East for further education and training. This has enhanced the influence of an 'Arabic Islam' in Mindanao, which played a role in the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism and call for an Islamic state, especially among the more politically articulate of the separatist groups. Since the Islamic educational system is not organized under a single supervisory body, the methods of teaching vary. Its common goal however remains the propagation of Islam as an all-comprising system of governance (syumul).

In 1962 the first university in Mindanao was established, the Mindanao State University in Marawi City, to provide higher education to Muslims. With a total of just 282 students to start with this university has grown over the years and is now providing education in a wide range of disciplines including sociology, economics, political science and Islamic studies and has received funds both from Arab countries as well as the west. The number of degree holders among Muslims, however, is very small and is almost not measurable statistically. Only about 18.1 % of all Muslims have achieved a high school degree, whereas 36.9% has only reached elementary level and 28.6% do not hold any degree at all. Generally, women show a higher percentage of no degree holders compared to men and they are also underrepresented among those holding college degrees. It is not surprising therefore that the literacy rate among Muslims is very low (66.5%) compared to 82.4% among non-Muslims.39 This is partly the result of Muslims rejecting the western-style educational system introduced by the Spanish, which in the Muslim view was an instrument of foreign dominance and interference.

Political Representation

Various factors have contributed to a steady rise of Islamic consciousness in Mindanao over the last 20 years. The feeling that they are being left behind the Christians politically, economically and educationally has not only alienated the Muslims from the Christian minority but also has strengthened the separatist movement, which is split into several, partly fundamentalist, Islamic groups. The radicalization of the Islamic discourse appears most obvious in the political field, both locally as well as internationally. The legitimacy of the ulama, the Islamic religious leaders, has been considerably strengthened since the Islamic resurgence, which has challenged all secular systems in the Muslim world. This has led to increasing confrontation between the young Muslim leaders and members of the traditional elite in Mindanao. Both groups differ in their interpretation of Islam and its injunctions and both are competing for influence amongst the Muslim public. The traditional elite, which was offered participation in the political system by Marcos, has lost its credibility to represent the Moro community. Traditionalist folk Islam has been weakened as a result and has been challenged by the young Islamic leaders, who have returned from the Middle East. They are yearning to establish an Islamic state, based not on the feudal structures of kinship but on the Islamic shari'ah. This change has obviously impacted Moro political representation, especially after the emergence of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The MILF has become an independent movement in 1984, following the dispute between Nur Misuari and his chairman Hashim Salamat over the implementation of the Tripoli agreement. The MILF has adopted a more Islamic approach towards the Moro problem, accusing the MNLF of move away from Islam and along a Marxistnationalist direction." Whereas the MNLF led its armed struggle against the Filipino government with the ultimate objective of achieving autonomy or complete independence, it is the MILF that for the first time has succeeded in establishing a 'parallel state' with its own administration. In Cotabato mostly and in its headquarter camp Abubakar, which are under MILF control, Islamic jurisdiction under the shari'ah laws are implemented and Islamic education is being imparted.41

Furthermore, the rising influence of the ulama has the blessings of the MILF, which organized the First Ulama Summit Conference in 1998 in Sultan Kudarat, Maguidanao. Even though the ultimate shape of an Islamic state is not clear yet, MILF leaders point at Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as examples.42 At least in the first two cases, where civil war and ethnic violence have brought deaths and destruction, Islam has become a decisive factor in establishing law and order. Considering the decades of unrest in Mindanao, it is not surprising that MILF leaders have chosen this model to ensure a pattern of social security for the population, which has been absent under the Philippine administration so far.

The Islamic commitment of the MILF is also reflected in its implementation of the shari'ah not only in civil and property matters, as provided under the Philippine law, but also in criminal cases. Whether the MILF leadership has the grassroot support in implementing the shari'ah punishments is a different thing altogether. In any case the organizational structure of the MILF has a strong leaning towards Islam and it underlines the quest of the leadership to make scriptural Islam the main ideology for armed struggle. Based on governing practices in early Islam the MILF has adopted the Majlis Shura as its highest administrative body. It implements decisions made according to the Islamic principle of consensus (mushawarat) and is assisted by the Supreme Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal, which applies the shari'ah code. In contrast to the MNLF, which is organized as a secular revolutionary organization, the MILF believes that the Islamic institution of holy war (Jihad) should be the main basis of its struggle.

When the Philippines were admitted to a meeting of the OIC held in Burkina Faso in West Africa in June 1999, the government succeeded for the first time to secure its position as a negotiating partner at par with MNLF and MILF. This could strengthen the position of the Philippine government in presenting the peace accord with the MILF to an international body, while checking the financial support for the MILF, which now mostly comes from non-governmental agencies within the OIC countries. The attitude of the Estrada administration towards the MILF has however been characterized more by feelings of contempt, than of reconciliation, especially since the government was internationally humiliated during the Jolo hostage crisis in summer 2000.

Considering the limited resources of the Philippine Muslims in Mindanao and their continuing dependency on government funding, it is highly unlikely that the quest for independence of Moroland would become anything more than a political slogan of the separatist leaders. The institutional framework developed by the Muslims in the political sphere is too heavily inclined towards the separatist groups. Their goal of military confrontation and Holy War has made it impossible to develop alternative civilian structures in administration and economy, which could eventually lead to more autonomy in the future. Some existing organizations such as the Muslims Lawyer's League, the Muslim Youth National Assembly or the Muslim Student's Association of the Philippines are all focusing on certain strata of the Muslim community. Muslim political organizations are also divided along ethnic lines and have not achieved a common stand to back the MILF in its military struggle towards independence. The traditional elites still remain the most influential groups in the dominant rural and conservative Muslim society, whose faith in folk Islamic beliefs has not been fundamentally altered by the zeal for Islamic purity advocated by the MILF or its even more radical counterpart, the Abu Sayyaf. Islamic extremism has never played an important role in the history and customs of Southeast Asian Islam, which has always been blended with traditional beliefs and cultural practices from the pre-Islamic era. Caught between a radical Islamic approach, which does not find widespread support among the population, and a rejection of the 'corrupt' elites of the traditionalist sultanate, the Muslim separatist groups are faced with a dilemma and that has weakened the Muslim position as a whole. The religious elite has not yet succeeded to replace the traditional one and political representation is still very much influenced by the weakened, but still existing structures of the former Moro sultanate. The leadership in the MNLF/MILF is divided between leaders from secular (Nur Misuari) and traditionalist (Salamat Hashim) backgrounds.

Conclusion

The notion of Islamic statehood as a unifying entity of religion and state has made it increasingly difficult for the governments involved to even consider the granting of autonomy or independence to minority groups which are aspiring for nothing less than an Islamic system of governance. Governments see this as a challenge to secular systems and national unity. The Muslim minority demands however should not be perceived only in political terms. In the case of the Philippines, where the fight for self-determination by Muslim Moros has been going on for centuries, the cultural dimension of different beliefs becomes apparent. In fact there have emerged two culturally separate societies existing under the same roof of national statehood but adhering to two widely differing notions of belief, culture and loyalty. The Christian traditions shared by the majority of Filipinos is rooted in the Catholic and purely western oriented perception that the Philippines are the last bastion of Christianity in Asia; whereas the Moro historical tradition stems from the traditional Malay sultanates as a form of pre-western local governance. Considering these wide differences the ongoing crisis in southern Philippines supersedes categories of political theory. Moreover, the definition of the conflict as one of cultural and religious identity helps to explain why the two religious groups adhere to their respective values with such vigor.

In the context of the Philippines, the traditional Moro sultanate has provided both the political as well as the religious motive for resistance against the Spanish colonial system of governance. That system was perceived as alien towards the daily Muslim lifestyle. Neither the colonizing Americans nor the Philippine administration addressed the root cause of the Moro problem, the question of cultural identification and political participation. The perception of Mindanao as a source of raw materials and cheap labor has prevailed since the first Spanish settlers arrived and the ensuing centuries of negligence had pushed the Moro population towards economic and educational backwardness. Having been alienated already both politically and economically, the Moro minority saw in the worldwide Islamic resurgence of the 1970s and 1980s an opportunity to take its cause to the international arena. Factors that promote communal integration such as participation in the political process and a fair share in the local economic output have been absent in Mindanao. This has made the Moros identify even more strongly with the Islamic past and Islam became a unifying force. However, the ethnic divide among the different Muslim groups as well as their different secular, traditional and religious backgrounds have prevented them from re-establishing the traditional social and economic structures of the sultanate, which could have prepared them for eventual autonomy or even independence. The political, social and economic foundation for such an endeavor is not in place and has been totally annihilated by a government policy of resettlement and land redistribution in favor of Christians.

Thus, the Muslim population has been increasingly pushed into the economic periphery and remains mainly employed in forestry and agriculture or in other elementary occupations like small business and petty trade. With an overall unemployment rate of almost 60%, the position of Muslim women is even worse. The traditional family structure has kept the women illiterate and has discouraged them from participation in the workforce. On the political and organizational front the Muslim separatist movement has failed so far to establish a united structure of representation. This is also reflected in Muslim political organizations, which remain divided ethnically and suffer in addition from the unresolved conflicts between the traditional and orthodox (resurgent) factions. Apart from these internal factors the conflict with the government makes reconciliation even more difficult. As long as the separate cultural identity of the Muslims is not acknowledged by the government in the consideration of the Muslim demand for autonomy, the present conflict will persist.

NOTES

Notes are available on the website of the journal.