Islam is considered the oldest recorded monotheistic religion in the Philippines. Islam reached the Philippines between 12th and 14th century with the arrival of Muslim traders from the Arabian Gulf and southern India, and their followers from several sultanates in the Malay archipelago.
In 1380, Makhdum Karim, an Arab trader, reached the Sulu archipelago and introduced Islam to the local population and from there spread the faith to other parts of the island of Mindanao. He built the first mosque on Simunul island in the present day province of Tawi-Tawi, heralding the coming of Islam to the islands. From then on, Islam spread rapidly to the islands of the Visayas (Central Philippines) and Luzon (Northern Philippines).
Subsequent settlements by Arab missionaries traveling to the Malay region helped strengthen Islam in the Philippines.
Muslim communities founded on the island included the Sultanate of Sulu, the Sultanate of Maguindanao, and the Principalities of Lanao, among others.
By the 15th century, the islands of Mindanao, the Visayas and half of Luzon had become subject to the various Muslim sultanates and much of the population became adherents of Islam.
Colonial period
In 16th century, the Spaniards arrived in the Philippines and found the people, particularly in Mindanao, already organized into sultanates with a well-ordered hierarchy and cohesive system and relatively advanced degree of social organization. They had their own bureaucracies and were performing such state functions as administration of justice, maintenance of peace and order and fiscal administration.
The Spaniards called the people in Mindanao “Moros” — from the word Moors — when they found them professing the same faith as the Moors of Northern Africa who ruled Spain for more than 800 years.
Spain failed to subdue and convert the Moro people to Christianity and place them under its command.
Consequently, the Spanish colonizers painted them as pirates, wild men and savages, among others.
On the part of the Muslims, the swords and the cross of the Spaniards had only intensified Islamic activities to such a point that Islam became a rallying ideology, which together with patriotism, served as a force against Christianity in the Philippines. Parts of Mindanao, like Zamboanga and Maguindanao, were partly occupied by the invading Spaniards but they had never completely subjugated the whole region for the more than 300 years of Spanish rule in the Philippines.
The Spaniards succeeded, however, in creating two distinct division among Filipinos — the colonized and Christianized peoples of the North and the unsubjugated and mostly Muslim people of the South — which had created a misunderstanding, prejudice and animosity between the Christians and the Muslims.
The Muslim resistance against colonial power continued during the time of the Americans. But what the Spaniards failed to accomplish in three centuries, the Americans did in a few decades through its “policy of attraction” and the promise of “non-interference” as manifested in the Bates Treaty signed between the United States and the Sultan of Sulu in August 1899.
Through this policy, the Americans won peaceful cooperation from the Muslims. For the first time in their history, the Moro Muslims came under a single political authority of a modern government under the American rule. They also introduced public education to the Muslims as another colonial tool to subjugate them.
The US government’s resettlement program of bringing settlers from the North to the South resulted into massive migration to Mindanao of Christians from Luzon and Visayas who established settlements and exploited its vast natural resources.
Foreign companies also gradually entered the region and gobbled up a considerable chunk of indigenous territory with rights over their natural resources. This became a trend resulting to the gradual loss of Muslims’ ancestral lands to non-Muslims and the infusion of Christianized Filipinos into the Muslim areas which continued even in the post-independence period.
Before the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, Moros already have political and social institutions, administrative system, as well as trade and international relations with other countries.
Today, Moros or Muslim Filipinos consist of the 13 ethno-linguistic groupings: Iranun, Jama Mapun, Palawani, Molbog, Kalagan, Kalibugan, Maguindanao, Maranao, Sama, Sangil, Tausug, Badjao, and Yakan. In terms of size, the three main groups are the Maguindanao, Maranao, and Tausug.
ARMM
The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is the current political expression of the Muslim population’s desire for a distinct role and place in the national socio-economic and political setting. There are other regions in the Mindanao, which are home to Muslims, but the five provinces and one city of the ARMM — Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and Marawi City — are where they are most numerous.
ARMM as a region is composed of mainland and archipelagic provinces. The mainland provinces are Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao. The archipelagic provinces are Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.
The region is one of the richest sources of fish and marine products in Mindanao and it is also host to seaweed farms, which produce the raw materials for one of the country’s dollar-earning industries, carageenan. It is also home to the world-renowned South Sea Pearl. Water has also made the region an ideal area for agricultural and industrial production owing mainly to the big rivers that irrigate and enrich its soil and provide it with an almost inexhaustible source of hydroelectric power.
ARMM is also a region straddled by a number of mountain ranges that not only protect agricultural lowlands from the rare storms that visit but are rich sources themselves of timber, metallic, and non-metallic minerals such as copper, manganese, gold, silver, iron, lead, chromite and sand, gravel, clay and limestone. The region has long been identified to have strong growth potential, given an inventory of underdeveloped natural resources.
The ARMM subscribes to the Islamic educational system, which is founded on the Qur’an and uses the Arabic language as a medium of instruction alongside the dialects spoken by the respective ethnic groups. A great number of the population can read, write and speak the Arabic language as Arabic studies are widely taught to the people.
Philippines and the OIC
For more than 30 years, the Republic of the Philippines has partnered and engaged with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in bringing peace and development to the Muslim communities in the Philippines.
In 1996, the Philippine Government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) — a Moro revolutionary group — signed a final peace agreement under the facilitation of the Republic of Indonesia, with support of other OIC member states. As a result, Muslim Filipino communities have gradually enjoyed autonomy and development. In addition to the establishment of the ARMM, the Southern Philippine Council for Peace and Development (SPCPD) and the Southern Philippine Development Authority (SPDA) were institutionalized. At present, the Philippine government, MNLF and the OIC Peace Committee for Southern Philippines continue to collaborate for the full implementation of the final peace agreement.
Moreover, the Philippine Government has intensified its efforts to reach a final peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). President Benigno Aquino III met with Murad Ibrahim, Chairman of the MILF on August 5, 2011, in Tokyo, Japan to discuss, in an unprecedented manner, the president’s propositions and programs, and his comprehensive peace and development agenda for Muslim Mindanao.
In its commitment to transform Muslim Mindanao as a catalyst for national unity and progress, the Philippine government has engaged with a number of counties including regional and international organizations such as the OIC, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and now the European Union (EU) to fast track the final realization of the potential of Mindanao ‚ the Land of Promise.
