If Filipino nationalism imagined all language and social groups from Jolo to Appari as constituting one people and then wrote the history of the Filipino nation based on this assumption,  Moro nationalism in turn championed the cause of a singular, homogenous Bangsa Moro.

According to Moro historical construction, this “Moro Nation” existed even before there was a Filipino nation. In fact, the Moro people (or their prototypes) existed since time immemorial, although surely they were not called Moros since Spain introduced the label to these shores only in the 16th century. 

The Moros shared a common Islamized culture.  They fought Spanish colonialism  and resisted direct rule. In contrast, descendants of today’s Filipinos lived in Spanish-governed settlements, paid tributes and converted to Christianity.

The Moros already had a government in the form of sultanates at a time when most Filipinos’ descendants were ruled by petty chiefs.  As proof of their sovereign status, Moro rulers signed treaties with the American colonizers.  But against their will, Mindanao was annexed by the US to the Philippine Republic.  Thus began the history of oppression of the once-free Moro people by Filipino colonialism. 

This in brief, is the story of the Moro Nation.  It is a historical “master frame” that has achieved an ideological, valorized status such that believers and supporters retell and defend it passionately. They built and fortified self-identities, wrote fiction and poetry, engaged each other in e-mails and blogs, and organized campaigns and coalitions around it.  Armed struggle continues to be waged in its name. Scholar Norman Fairclough describes this dynamic as the important part of the ideological work of texts and discourse – when interpretative principles operate in naturalized way, resting upon assumptions of an ideological sort.

Moro majority-minority divide

But there remains resistance to what this composite, Moro ideological struggle has advanced not only from the majority-Filipino but also from within the Moro constituency. 

Other voices are coming out emphasizing the diversity among the 13 Islamized ethnolinguistic groups in Mindanao.  They are concerned that official Bangsamoro history has downplayed the diversity in local histories and practices in the effort to compress Moro-ness into a single, historical timeline with attributes(events, features, personalities) largely drawn from the numerically and politically dominant Moro ethnic groups, namely, the Tausug, Maguindanao, Maranao. They are raising questions on the preeminence given to the sultanate as against the many more  autonomous datus and councils of elders that shaped the evolution of Moro polities, and that could inform the charting of alternative political processes and arrangements.

Aside from their distinct history of resistance to colonial rule, Islam is the cultural glue that binds the Moro people.  It is the preeminent signifier of Moro-ness,  in the same way that Christianity is for the Filipino. But the Moro groups themselves have different languages and customary practices. The impact of the spread of Islam was varied. Many folk beliefs and practices persisted.  Today, however, the revolution-backed Islamization movement is increasingly defining law and justice, dress and decorum, governance practices and civil relations according to Islamic tenets.
 
Interestingly, some imams have negotiated the totalizing inroads of purist ulamas (both outside and ‘inside’ the rebel organizations) by distinguishing between un-Islamic and anti-Islam. They argue that many folk practices may be un-Islamic but they do not violate Islam, and should thus not be considered haram.

In her seminal paper,  Muchashim Arquiza, a promising, young scholar from Mindanao, gives an example of this diversity and the resultant tension over the valorized Bangsamoro frame. She wrote: 
  
 “(The) Sama Dilaut still practice their traditional ancestral worship and pantheistic spirituality and tend to be the least Islamized. The Tausugs are supposed to have considerably mainstreamed and fully imbibed the Muslim values especially the teachings coming from Arabian shores, values that have become the basis of the political, economic and social ideology of the traditional sultanate system. The Sama and Yakan, on the other hand, whose folk beliefs, pantheism and syncretic forms of spirituality still flavor their practice of Islam appear to be in the median.
  Having been traditionally autonomous from the centralized sultanate system, the ‘commoner’ social status and the combined factors of ethnicity and economic class maintained a somewhat fluid Islamized communities among the Sama Dilaut, Sama and Yakan allowing [the] practice of [a] more tolerant kind of Islam that is deeply embedded within indigenous culture.
This is apparent in the extant practice of religious syncretism (i.e. folk Islam) and the prevailing a’dat or customary traditions that rule the day-to-day conduct of life [while] the Tausug, being the dominant ethnic community and the politically privileged class to comprise the Sultanate and the datu class have assumed a more rigid adherence to Islamic fiqh (jurisprudence) and shari’a (corpus of rules/laws).”

Class divide

Critical voices are also calling attention to the absence of any class element in Bangsamoro discourse.  According to foreign scholar Ahmad Aijaz: “Much of the Muslim intellegentias conjures myths of communal land ownership and egalitarian classlessness witin Moro society. From this they draw a strategic perspective that directs the revolutionary struggle solely against Christian ‘colonialism’, and seeks to preserve and reproduce the existing social structure of the Moros.”

According to Ahmad, the smaller Moro groups ike the Sama, Badjao and Yakan  have no stake in the agrarian economy and occupy a subordinated position in the ethnic hierarchy. They also played no major role in the war since leading cadres were drawn from the three dominant groups. Consequently, they have always been marginalized under a Moro political set-up. 

We  see this marginalization of the minority Moro groups in the present Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).  Since its creation in 1989, leadership in the ARMM and its major provinces (Sulu, Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur) were held by the Tausug, Maguindanao and Maranao elites. Non-Moros are similarly underrepresented.

Other voices

Moro nationalism also has to contend with the emerging discourses of  Moro women who fear that purist Islam’s emphasis on outwardly manifestations such as dress and decorum will restrict rights that are otherwise enjoyed under customary practices  (note that purist Catholicism also poses a similar threat to Catholic women.)

The ancestral domain claims of Moros are confronted by similar claims of non-Moro indigenous populations (called lumad)who have distinct but also overlapping land claims that need to be secured.  Then there is the alternative frame of  Mindanaoan advocates for “a new/our own Mindanao” or a “tri-people Mindanao” shared by the Moros, lumad and settlers.  These discourses, along with the dominant state discourse of sovereignty and peace and order,  provide the resources to obstruct the Moro quest. 

Adherents mobilized around the valorized history and identity of the Bangsa Moro have waged war – and now peace  -- in order to justly retrieve and secure for themselves a measure of their  lost sovereignty and  territory based on the right to self-determination. But to succeed, they must first grapple with a suspicious if not hostile Filipino statist and nationalist perspective. After this, the fact of plurality within their own communities and Mindanao. They have yet to weave into a more inclusive frame the identities, welfare and interests of other claimants to Mindanao for their cause to gain more discursive power within their own variegated society and the bigger Philippine society where they are lodged. 

In other words, Moro claimants are faced with the same need as that of the bigger Filipino nation. This is the need to acknowledge the diversity and correct the inequities within, secure the rights and welfare of all without discrimination, and to allow for greater political, cultural and social autonomy at different levels of governance.

E-mail: mcf178@yahoo.com

*This is  a sequel to the previous column, Metaphorical Framing and the “Moro  Problem”