MUSLIM PHILIPPINES: WITH REFERENCE TO THE SULUS, MUSLIM-CHRISTIAN CONTRADICTIONS, AND THE MINDANAO CRISIS
BY AsiRI J. ABuBAKAR
JNTRODU'Cl'ION The history and culture of the Moro People have been constantly attacked in this country ever since the days of the Western colonizers. This has been the case even up to this day because some aspects of Philippine institutions, like history and economics, still cling to the colonial legacies of discrimination and prejudice. As such, the Muslim masses in Morolandia are still lagging in many aspects of human life. There is restlessness in their midst which may burst into a mass discontent. This paper is being written for the interests of the Filipino nation whose members are victims of the colonial legacies of hatred and prejudice. Its primary purpose is to trace and analyze the origins of the Muslim- Christian contradictions that, in one way or the other, serve as the. root causes of the Mindanao Independence Movement. This movement should be discussed in the open and viewed in its proper perspective. Unless the root causes of this movement are traced and analyzed, no proper solution can be made to meet it. We cannot ignore the impact of this movement to the suffering Muslim masses. A,nd besides, we cannot be sure whether it will die a natural death or cease to be a problem of this Republic. In order to trace the origins of the Muslim-Christian contradictions, I start with a brief account on the history of the the first of the early Philippine natives to receive Islamic ideology and to establish the "first organized government in the Philippines" -the Sultanate of Sulu. What is shown here is only the Sulus' struggle against the Western colonizers and how the Spaniards and, later, the Americans, with their colonial "divide and rule" policy, successfully ruined the centuries-old political institutions of the Sulus. The history and socio-political institutions of the Maguindanao and Buayan sultanates are not discussed here. Historical accounts reveal that the Muslim sultanates in the south shared common historical experi- ences and institutions. It is hoped that by showing the impact of Islamic Ideology to the Sulus and how such ideology inspired their resistance against Western colonizers, the readers may be given enough background as to the socio-political and historical differences between the Muslims and the Christians of this country.
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The word contradiction here is not used to mean religious differences. It is used here to mean the differences between the Muslim and Christian Filipinos mentioned above. The words "Moro" and "Muslim" are inter- changeably used in this paper.