An autonomous history of Muslim Mindanao beyond textbooks

The heightened public interest following the recent House vote on the Bangsamoro Basic Law and the Mamasapano clash provides a timely occasion to re-examine popular historical consciousness on Muslim Mindanao. 

If Philippine history textbooks would be a measure, then there is certainly a lack of knowledge and nuanced perspective on the region. 

Beyond the mention of traders and preachers from the Malay Peninsula who brought Islam to Sulu and Maguindanao, textbooks have been largely silent on the rich and indeed continuing connections between the southern Philippines and the larger Muslim world. 

The Malay-Indonesian world in general, and Muslim Mindanao in particular, remain marginal in most Philippine history books, which is symptomatic of the fixation on reconstructing streamlined narratives of the Filipino nation. 

These narratives largely draw inspiration and frustration from the Catholic historical experience. (READ: Who informs us about Mindanao?)

History, religion

While a number of historians have endeavored to embed Muslim Mindanao into the story of the Philippine nation, their success – especially during the Spanish colonial period – has been modest, to say the least. 

From the nationalist quarters, the recent trend has been to emphasize the pre-Christian, pre-Islamic, and somewhat chauvinist Austronesian Philippine past. But the gambit to sacrifice religious differences for the sake of primordial unity hardly disentangles the nationalist narrative from its colonialist cousin. (READ: Distorting Mindanao)

Filipino historiography, like many of its Spanish and American colonial precedents, “provincializes” Muslim Mindanao history. It delimits history within the spatial and ideological enclosure of the Philippine state. 

Although historians like Cesar Majul, Ruurdje Laarhoven, and Kawashima Midorihad laid the ground for the study of Muslim Mindanao and its rightful place in the broader region, much work remains to be done. 

A most relevant case is that of Abd-al al-Majid al-Mindanawi, the 18th century figure from Maguindanao who authored a short treatise on Islamic theology while in Aceh, Indonesia, on his way home from a pilgrimage in Mecca. He wrote in Malay using the Arabic script jawi, illustrating that, as Kawashima Midori argues, Muslim Mindanao participated in the broader Islamic networks. He might have been the famous teacher in Maguindanao favored by the aristocratic families of north Sulawesi, and referred to anonymously in the Dutch archives. 

Abd-al al-Majid al-Mindanawi and others who have yet to be duly acknowledged represent emancipatory figures that challenge the insularity of Muslim Mindanao history that is often confined to textbook heroes like Sultan Kudarat. They provide us a window to a world where secular and spiritual wisdom did not emanate from – or were monopolized by – the colonizing West. They were not part of the world inhabited by friars, galleon skippers, or discontented ilustrados, the vaunted “brains of the Filipino nation.” 

Instead they lived in a society whose external connections were then, and up to now, facilitated by Islamic culture. 

The current discussions on the Bangsamoro and its history should pave the way for questioning our received historical knowledge. 

Perhaps by de-centering the seamless rise of the nation as the overriding narrative of Philippine history, we would be one step closer to finding an answer. – Rappler.com

Ariel C. Lopez Ariel Lopez is a graduate student at Leiden University, Netherlands. He previously studied at the University of the Philippines-Diliman.

Books image via Shutterstock