Acknowledgments

This is a book about Islamic solidarity and social disparity in the Muslim Philippines. It chronicles both an extraordinary Muslim nationalist struggle and everyday political relations between rich and poor Muslims in the Cotabato region of the southern Philippines. Based on field research in an urban Muslim community, this study combines political ethnography and historical interpretation to investigate the rhetoric and practice of Philippine Muslim politics.

I have spent more than a decade on the research and writing presented in this work and incurred a great many debts of gratitude along the way. Two extraordinary teachers, William G. Davis and John Walton, have provided unstinting guidance and support from the very outset of the project. I thank them and would hope they find something of what they taught me reflected in this work. A number of scholars of the southern Philippines generously offered valuable advice and encouragement very early on. Most I have never thanked properly, and I wish to do so here. My (belated) thanks to Carter Bentley, Eric Fleischman, Thomas Keifer, Cesar Majul, Lela Noble, Stuart Schlegel, and James Stewart.

The following institutions made my research in the Philippines possible in 1985–86, in 1988, and in the summer of 1995: the National Science Foundation, the University of California, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Archival research in the United States was

underwritten by a Faculty Research Grant from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an Academic Sharing Grant from the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Michigan. I am indebted to a great many individuals for smoothing my path in the Philippines, only a few of whom may be mentioned here. Joel Rocamora provided valuable contacts in Manila and Cotabato. In Manila, Dr. Jesus Peralta, the curator of the Anthropology Division of the National Museum as well as a scholar of the southern Philippines arranged my affiliation with the museum and generously shared his knowledge with me. Of my friends and acquaintances among the Christians of Cotabato City, I am most deeply indebted to Patricio Diaz, the Bravo family, and to Fr. Jun Mercado, who first brought me to Campo Muslim.

My most enduring debt of gratitude is to the people of Campo Muslim for their generosity and patience toward an itinerant scholar who had little to offer in return other than the promise to tell their story. I am especially grateful for the hospitality shown me by the family of Imam Akmad. Though far from the first lost soul that the imam and his wife had welcomed into their home, I was certainly the most exotic. Five individuals in the Muslim community made extraordinary contributions to my research, for which I want to express my sincere appreciation. My three research assistants, Nur Miskin, Abdul Karim, and Zamin Unti, were not only careful workers but involved advisors and valued friends. Kasan Kamid was my principal consultant and confidant in Campo Muslim and I treasure his friendship. I am also deeply indebted to Sultan Mohammad H. Adil—soldier, scholar, Magindanaon nobleman, and Moro nationalist—for allowing me to record his remembrances.

I am grateful to the following people for reading and providing valuable comments on various drafts of this book—some of them more than once: John Bowen, Colin Davis, William G. Davis, Dale Eickelman, Brian Hesse, Cynthia Mahmood, Michael Peletz, Jennifer St. John, John Walton, and an anonymous reviewer for the University of California Press. I thank all of them for their suggestions, which prompted me always to rethink and very often to rewrite.

Zamin Unti painstakingly, and lovingly, constructed the map of his community, Campo Muslim. Ken Thompson added his talent as an illustrator to that map and the others, and transformed them into the professional looking products included here. Wilma Nappier has as-

sisted me in numerous ways in the preparation of this manuscript. My thanks to each of them.

This long list of benefactors ends appropriately with those closest to me. I choose to thank them in few words so as not to dilute the message. I am forever grateful to my wife, Patti, for making it all possible and to my son, Matthew, for making it all worthwhile.