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Chapter 11 Resistance and Rule in Cotabato
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Unarmed Struggle and Islamic Renewal

The Muslim separatist movement in Cotabato transformed itself into a self-consciously Islamic movement in 1984 with the creation of the


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Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). While Islamic clerics had played key roles in the Cotabato movement from its beginnings, the launching of the MILF amounted to a formal declaration that, henceforth, the independent ulama (as well as ulama-led Islamic renewal) would predominate in the struggle for Muslim political autonomy.

The emergence of an independent, Middle East-educated ulama in Cotabato was an epochal event accomplished by means of international assistance and individual courage. Cotabato lies at the easternmost extremity of the Eurasian Islamic world. No significant Muslim populations of the Old World are further distanced from the central sites of Islamic ritual and instruction than are those of Mindanao. Islamic practice in the Cotabato sultanates for most of their history had reflected that extreme distance from Islamic centers. It was only as a result of the pan-Islamic initiatives of Nasser's Egyptian government that significant numbers of Philippine Muslims were, for the first time, able to pursue Islamic studies in the Muslim heartland. Those scholars returned to Cotabato after their long courses of study to encounter firm opposition from established Muslim elites and armed antagonism from agents of the Philippine government. With martial law, most were forced to flee underground or return abroad. Those who, like Ustadz Ali, remained visible suffered continual and sometimes brutal harassment at the hands of the Philippine military. None were able to speak out freely in public forums prior to about 1980. When finally free to speak they did so energetically, advocating the reordering of social and ritual as well as political life and garnering a great deal of attention from ordinary Muslims. That attention, however, was not entirely, or even primarily, approbative.

In what actual sense was the popular, aboveground, and ulama-led movement for Muslim political autonomy from 1980 onward an Islamic movement? To what degree, that is, was the collective political action of ordinary adherents motivated by Islamic imperatives and interpretations as enunciated by the ulama? At least two components of the Islamic appeals of the ulama resonated deeply with non-elite Muslims. There was first the notion of "Islamic unity." That concept is of course a universalistic one, referencing the establishment of a more uniform Islamic community in Cotabato, one encapsulated within a worldwide community of believers (the umma ). For ordinary Muslims in Cotabato it was also a notion with very specific circumstantial connotations. "Islamic unity" was promoted by the ulama and the opposition alliance as the antithesis of familiar politics in Cotabato. The


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umma as political community offered the solution to internal divisions based on class, ethnicity, familism, and political factionalism in general. Islamic unity, it was said, would also accomplish what the armed rebellion had not—genuine political autonomy for Muslims—because a unified Islamic community could better withstand the divide-and-rule tactics of the Philippine government.

A second popular component of the ulama's message was the ideal of juridical equality for all Cotabato Muslims. The notion that datus and endatuan, rich and poor Muslims, ought to be judged equally by indigenous adjudicators was a radical one that greatly appealed to ordinary Muslims. There is a sense in which the ulama personified for non-elite Muslims the ideals of Islamic unity and juridical equality. Individual ustadzes had resisted co-optation by the Muslim establishment and the Philippine government. They lacked the usual accoutrements of authority—automobiles, armed escorts, and entourages—and those who hailed from powerful families did not conspicuously favor their relatives in their official pronouncements or activities.

On the whole, ordinary Muslims genuinely admired the ustadzes and those political leaders closely aligned with them. It was that admiration, more so than anxiety about applications of armed force by the MILF, that seems to have motivated much of the popular political support for the ulama-MILF coalition. The voluntary nature of that popular loyalty was illustrated by a 1986 incident recorded in my field notes—the arrest and subsequent release by government forces of Hadji Murad, the top military commander of the MILF.

Hadji Murad and some of his companions were captured by the PC [Philippine Constabulary] on their way back from Marawi when their jeep broke down. They were taken to PC headquarters in Marawi City. Within a very short time many people ("thousands") had surrounded the PC camp, some with guns. The people gave an ultimatum that if Hadji Murad was not released by 10 P.M. they would storm the camp. Some women protesters did enter the camp. PC commander Gutang and Governor Zacaria Candao were told of the arrest and went to the camp. Governor Candao reportedly announced to the crowd that if Hadji Murad were not immediately released he would resign his post. General Gutang signed the release papers and Hadji Murad was freed that same night.

Just the same, non-elite Muslims also responded with argumentation and resistance to a number of the specific endeavors of the ulama. They objected to ulama attempts to reform ritual practice and made clear by their continued attendance that they opposed the ustadzes' denunciation of dayunday performances. While appreciative of moves to-


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ward juridical equality, they were intensely troubled at reports of severe applications of Islamic punishments by some nontraditional (i.e., ulama) adjudicators. In Campo Muslim, some of the disagreements were more expressly political. Many community members contested attempts by ustadzes to expel the CCF program without replacing it with comparable resources. They also disputed the continued characterization by the ulama and MILF in the 1980s of the separatist struggle as a jihad, because they resented making obligatory contributions to support mujahideen who were neither engaged in armed conflict nor experiencing economic conditions more difficult than their own.

Contemporary social analyses of Islam-in-place have emphasized the significance of the dynamic relationship between the ideal life prescribed for Muslims and the actual lives Muslims lead (Bowen 1993; Eickelman 1976; Ellen 1983; Kessler 1978; Roff 1985).[5] The expression of tensions between ideal and actual Islam in Campo Muslim highlights the two-sidedness of the dialogue between the "prescribers (ulama)" and those they perceived as backsliders (Roff 1985, 9). Among the independent ulama of Cotabato there had developed the notion that the Muslims of Cotabato had progressed partway toward the goal of becoming "genuine Muslims" (in Magindanaon, tidtu-tidtu a Muslim) and had to be gradually but firmly propelled farther along the path. An alternative opinion was evident among ordinary Muslims. As expressed by Imam Akmad of Campo Muslim, it turned the ulama's notion of incipience right around by maintaining that with time the ustadzes would obtain practical knowledge, relax their prohibitions, and accommodate certain local practices. The view expressed by Imam Akmad and other elders amounted to the assertion that there were two morally acceptable directions in which to move on the path of Islam: toward strict scriptural interpretation and toward local knowledge—what Roy Ellen (1983) has termed "practical Islam." Movement in the first direction was not invariably preferable, and movement in the second did not necessarily constitute backsliding.[6]

How then should the Islamic identity of ordinary Muslims in Cotabato be characterized? First of all, it is not, and probably never has been, predicated upon their holding their traditional nobility in "religious awe and adulation" (Glang 1969, 33). At the same time, as we have seen, most ordinary Muslims are not the sort of Muslims the independent ulama would have them be. They are Muslims who rely on magical charms and amulets and appease local spirits. They are Muslims whose religious practice exhibits a good deal of ritual impropriety, who may drink and gamble, neglect their prayers, and perform


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religious rituals quite at variance with Islamic orthopraxy. They are Muslims who embrace many ingredients of the highly Westernized culture of their Christian neighbors. While Muslim subordinates have, to a significant degree, accepted the new source of moral authority represented by the independent ulama, they have done so despite its associated call for Islamic orthopraxy and the disenchantment of their world, not because of it.

They are Muslims, they declare, because their forebears were Muslims, because they live in a Muslim homeland, and because they profess Islam. As we have seen, their "Muslimness" (Ellen 1983, 56) is an oppositional identity but not one constructed for them by political leaders. The ordinary Muslims of Cotabato have never uncritically embraced any of the dominant meanings of Islamic identity either ascribed or proposed to them. Their Muslimness is self-sufficient and has resisted symbolic definition or moral supervision by either ulama or datus. That is not to say that it is a fixed identity. Rather, it may be said to represent "only the current state of play" (Bowen 1992, 668) in three continuing and complexly intertwined dialogues: that between ordinary Muslims and the independent ulama over styles of religiosity, between traditional leaders and followers over the sources of political legitimacy, and between Muslims and the Christian-controlled Philippine state over the parameters of regional self-determination.

As for the political potential of that Islamic identity, it is clear that the ulama's message of Islamic unity and equality resonated far more deeply with Muslim subordinates than the datu coalition's often awkward appeals to traditional loyalties. The popular appeal of the political message of the ulama coalition allowed them to mobilize large numbers of Muslims to support them in public demonstrations and provincial elections (there were also, to be sure, some more practical incentives for political mobilization, ranging from entertainment-seeking to severe social pressure). In the municipal elections, however, the ideal of Islamic unity ran directly up against the particularistic goals of Muslim politicians and vote brokers and the practical economic considerations of Muslim voters.


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Chapter 11 Resistance and Rule in Cotabato
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