I wrote this for my Philippine History students many weeks back. Im sharing it here as my little contribution to providing some context for the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro (CAB) yesterday. Mabuhay ang Pilipinas at mabuhay ang Bangsamoro! تحيا الفلبين! تحيا بانجسامورو! The coming of Islam to the Philippine Archipelago The story of how Islam arrived in the Philippines must be framed by the larger story of Islams arrival in Southeast Asia. It is also a story that implicates the maritime trade nexus that has evolved in and has characterized SEA since the first millennium. The successful introduction of Islam was linked to: 1.) The increasing control from the 8th Century onwards of coastal trade and shipping from India by Muslims; and 2.) the decline and eventual collapse of non-Muslim maritime trading empires from the 13th to the 15th centuries. The demise of the Srivijayan empire (Buddhist) in the 13th Century and of the Majapahit empire (Hindu-Buddhist) from the 15th to early 16th centuries paved the way for the emergence of Muslim trading centers. The most powerful of these was Malacca, which was founded as a sultanate in the 15th Century. With Chinese naval support (protection), Malacca would eventually displace Majapahit as the center of regional trade and the dominant economic power in SEA. Malacca came to control secure the eastbound commercial traffic from India and the Middle East, and would become the last great entrepot city-state of Southeast Asia prior to the arrival of the Europeans. The rise of these trading centers would not only provide Muslim missionaries (mainly Sufi) with bases from which to carry on their work of proselytizing among non-Muslims but would also give rulers of communities eager to tap into the trading networks controlled by these Muslim centers a powerful economic motive to embrace Islam. This may be said of centers like Malacca, Ternate, Aceh, Johor, Brunei, Sulu, and Maguindanao. The Sufi missionaries preached a mystical brand of Islam which fitted with the animist and Indic beliefs and expectations of Southeast Asians. Given this, and given the relative simplicity of the Islamic faith as well as its egalitarian character, it did not take long for Islam to swiftly traverse the maritime realm and gain wide acceptance among its people by the 15th Century. The coming of Islam to Southeast Asia was therefore made possible, in large part, by the complex maritime trading system that not only brought together the coastal and riverine chiefdoms of the region but also made it the converging point of the Chinese trading zone on the one hand, and the Indian Ocean and West Asian trading zone on the other. Aside from its uncompromising monotheism, Islam brought with it new laws, different ethical standards, and a fundamentally new understanding of the meaning and direction of life. Also, the advent of a common set of beliefs based on the Qur’an and on Islamic laws and tradition, common rituals and languages (Arabic and Malay) allowed the Muslims of the Sulu Archipelago and Mindanao to experience being part of an expanding Islamic Malay world. Equally important was the fact that the Muslims in the Southern Philippines began to develop a sense of belonging to a wider community that extended from Morocco on the Atlantic Ocean to the Malay lands in Southeast Asia (Majul 1980, p. 25). Although it would not be until the late 1960s when a unifying “Bangsamoro” identity could finally be articulated, a development that McKenna believed was encouraged by American colonial practices decades earlier (1998; see interview, June 2000), the Islamic faith and the participation of the Philippine Muslims in the larger Islamic Malay world did allow them to distinguish themselves from the non-Muslim communities in the Archipelago. The coming of Christianity and Spanish colonialism, and subsequent Spanish attempts to subjugate the Muslims with the help of Christian natives, would of course intensify this process. Resistance to Spanish colonization came to be seen by Muslims as the defense of Islam. According to Majul (1980), “[the] Muslims in the Philippines, realizing that this meant they would become vassals of a foreign king and eventually lose their faith and their freedom as an independent people, responded to the threat by greater loyalty to their sultans and their datus, a greater respect for their panditas [i.e., those learned in religious matters], an intensification of their Islamic consciousness, and determined efforts to resist the military incursions of the enemy in their lands” (p. 27). It is fair to say that the “Bangsamoro” identity informing the present-day struggle of Muslims in the Philippines is the end result of this historical process, and the subsequent political, economic and cultural marginalization of the Muslim population vis-à-vis the Christian majority after independence. How the Philippine government and the Christian majority choose to deal with this historically evolved identity --- meaning, to what extent they are willing to come to terms with it --- will help determine the outcome of the peace process in Mindanao.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 03:51:17 +0000
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