Conclusion

The marshbound community of Campo Muslim offers an analytical vantage ground from which to survey the understandings of the ordinary adherents of the Bangsamoro Rebellion. For the greatest part of the period of armed separatist struggle, popular support for the separatist insurgency was substantial in Campo Muslim and throughout Cotabato and was expressed unofficially in songs and stories. Those unauthorized narratives nevertheless reveal that ordinary Muslims'

perceptions and representations of the war were often conspicuously independent of the ideological influences of any separatist leaders or, for that matter, of any elite group.

A close reading of the cultural work of the rank-and-file composers of the unofficial songs of the Bangsamoro Rebellion reveals significant variance from its official motives. Song 1 presents the voice of a self-consciously "poor man" who sings of social distance and social rejection before "horizontal comradeship" (Anderson 1983). The song's narrator—a failed suitor turned rebel—unabashedly pursues a separate reward of genuine social recognition (represented by his request for reconsideration by his beloved) in addition to the official cultural recognition as either victor or martyr offered to individual fighters.

The two key unofficial images found in the lyrics of both songs—those of "inged" (community, homeland) and "jihad"—are deeply resonant ones signaling fundamental understandings about community and religious identity. Those terms convey deeply held notions not at odds with those that separatist leaders wished to implicate in their nationalist appeals for the "complete liberation" of the Philippine Muslim "homeland" in order to ensure the preservation of its "Islamic and indigenous culture" (Misuari quoted in Majul 1985, 139). The wide use of "inged" and "jihad" in inspirational rebel songs reflects the power of those mythical concepts to motivate Muslim fighters. They expressed with particular force the fears (of the aggression of the Christian-controlled martial law state) and longings (for an end to domination by hostile outlanders) of ordinary Muslims and provided fuel for separatist military mobilization in Cotabato. Although the cultural knowledge imbedded in those two terms was widely shared, they could nevertheless possess quite different colorings for differentially situated Muslims. In Cotabato, most elite and non-elite adherents shared the view that the Bangsamoro Rebellion was a struggle to preserve the integrity of Muslim communities and defend against Christian hostility. Interpretations diverged, however, at the point of delineating the boundaries of the crucial community and the parameters of religious struggle.^[20]

The most commonly endured experience of Muslim subordinates immediately prior to and during the rebellion was terror at the hands of the Philippine military. Their suffering generated a community-based "knowledge of the moment" (Rebel 1989, 362) that conditioned the responses of ordinary Muslims to the nationalist appeals of separatist leaders. The search for protection against external aggression

was a powerful impetus for joining or supporting the separatist insurgents and was independently symbolized by subordinates in magical narratives of the bestowal of divine mercy. For Campo Muslim residents especially, effective protection was often not forthcoming because of the limited capabilities of the rebels in the city. When comparable protection became available for Muslim urban residents from rebel defectors, they accepted it unreservedly. Although the defectors had deserted the armed struggle for the officially imagined community (Bangsamoro), they had not abandoned their primary communities (ingeds), and divine mercy was permitted them. Today those defector-defenders remain heroes to community members who nonetheless express commitment to Moro nationalism.

Magical stories describing the condition of the corpses of slain rebels present another dramatic instance of contrary interpretations of key communal representations. By recognizing or denying the signs of martyrdom, storytellers either acknowledged or disputed official assertions of jihad. The increased difficulties and disillusionment experienced by ordinary noncombatants (especially urban residents) during the late stages of the armed rebellion prompted some of them to perceive the political landscape differently than separatist leaders and, eventually, to interpret central signs of the struggle in a manner that directly countered official versions—in effect, denying political legitimacy to certain officially sanctioned insurgent activities. The Muslim nationalist cause saw its lowest levels of popular support during this period. As described in the following chapters, substantial popular backing was only recovered some years later in a reconstituted form through the strenuous efforts of a coalition of Muslim clerics and politicians to build a broad-based political movement for Muslim autonomy. All the same, the independent motivations, perceptions, and assessments of ordinary Muslims have persisted in postrebellion politics in Cotabato City.