1. Madrasahs in the Muslim Philippines typically offer programs at the "elementary, preparatory and secondary levels of Arabic education." A madrasah that includes all three levels (a twelve-year program), or only the secondary program, is termed a mahad (in Arabic, ma'ahad ) (Hassoubah 1983). [BACK]

2. Alim is the Arabic term for a scholar who has mastered a specific branch of knowledge—a learned person, or savant. In the southern Philippines the term is used to refer to someone who has educational qualifications for, and is knowledgeable in, the teaching of Islam. The plural of alim is ulama . Ustadz

(from the Arabic ustadh , meaning "teacher") is the most usual term of address in the Muslim Philippines for an alim. (Glassé 1989; Hassoubah 1983). [BACK]

3. This statement seems to suggest that in 1950 there was no Magindanaon speaker available in Cotabato who spoke Arabic well enough to translate directly for the Maulana. [BACK]

4. Ustadz Abdul Gani Sindang arrived in the Philippines in 1950, along with another missionary from al-Azhar. Their first school in Malabang closed within a year and he proceeded to Cotabato City (Muslim Association of the Philippines 1956, 106). He is almost certainly the same missionary referred to by Hunt in his brief account of Muslim religious education in Cotabato in the early 1950s: "In 1950, a formal Islamic school was set up in Cotabato, housed in a residence donated by a local datu and headed by a Muslim missionary sent by the Egyptian government. In addition to learning to read the Qur'an in Arabic, the students are taught to understand the language" (1974, 205). [BACK]

5. This traditional maktab system of Islamic education in Cotabato was quite similar to the pondok schools of Malaysia (see Nagata 1984) and the pesantren schools of Java (see Geertz 1968). [BACK]

6. For an account of the politics of Islamic preaching elsewhere in the contemporary Islamic world, see Patrick Gaffney's (1994) ethnographically rich investigation of the complex connections between religious rhetoric (as expressed in Friday sermons) and political dissent in Upper Egypt. [BACK]

7. Partial funding for the establishment of the English program was obtained from the Philippine government's Ministry of Muslim Affairs. [BACK]

8. Hassoubah notes elsewhere that, despite the intensification of Islamic instruction in the Muslim Philippines, "the quality of education in the madaris , with very few exceptions, leaves much to be desired by way of being at par with standard schools in the Middle East or even compared to the quality of the Philippine public school system"(1983, 74). [BACK]

9. In the context in which it was usually used, the term "Shia" was used pejoratively to mean a heretical Muslim radical influenced by the Shia Islamic government of Iran. [BACK]

10. Tantawan is the Magindanaon name for the main hill of Cotabato City, commonly known as P.C. Hill because it had served as local headquarters of the Philippine Constabulary during the American colonial period. [BACK]

11. For a detailed account of the operation of the Christian Children's Fund in Campo Muslim, including an analysis of the injurious effects of child sponsorship on the community, see McKenna (1988). [BACK]

12. The mean estimated income of community households in 1985 was 1,333 pesos ($71.82) per month. That of CCF recipient families was about 900 pesos (less than $50.00) per month. Household income was calculated as the sum of the monthly earnings of the household head at his or her primary occupation, additional earnings of the household head (reported by just under 20 percent of respondents) from productive land, "sideline" jobs, or other sources, and monthly contributions from other household members (reported by slightly more than 60 percent of respondents). It is plainly a very inexact figure. Respondents often had no precise knowledge of contributions of other household members and, because of the high incidence of uncertainty in their

own economic endeavors, were sometimes able only very roughly to estimate their average daily income as well. [BACK]

13. As this passage and the previous one suggest, it was most often women—the mothers of CCF recipients—who were forced to confront the pressures and contradictions involved in attempting to obtain CCF resources for their children. Their predicament illustrates what Sherry Ortner has recently referred to as the "multiplex identit[ies]" and "compounded powerlessness" of subaltern women—in this case as women, as poor, and as Philippine Muslims (1995, 184). By attempting to assist their children they placed themselves in an emotionally wrenching double bind, anguishing on the one hand about the imagined loss of their children to unseen and unreachable "sponsors," and on the other about the public disapproval of the ulama and MILF. At the same time, the responses they have made to their dilemma—seeking to contact sponsors directly to tell them the ''true" stories of their families, insisting that those seeking to remove the CCF program provide another in its place (see below)—represent (as Ortner also notes) creative efforts on their part to "formulate projects and . . . enact them"( 1995, 185). [BACK]

14. As reported in the Mindanao Cross , Sandiale Sambolawan, the Muslim governor of the province (and a member of the Ampatuan clan), was disturbed by the student demonstration and enraged by the banner portraying the "Ministry of Munafiq Affairs" ( Mindanao Cross , February 28, 1985). [BACK]

15. Included among these six were the son of Datu Udtug Matalam, as well as two younger members of the Sinsuat and Ampatuan families. [BACK]

16. A number of Magindanaon datus attended the ceremony, some of them traveling in the traditional manner on decorated boats to Lanao. [BACK]

17. Similar ritual feasts ( kanduli, kenduri, kenduren, slametan ) held for various occasions by other Southeast Asian societies are described by Geertz (1960), Reid (1984), and Bowen (1992). [BACK]

18. Datu Adil, fostered as a child by Edward Kuder, always preferred to speak to me in English. While strongly opposed to many of the efforts of the independent ulama, Datu Adil is also a vigorous proponent of Muslim autonomy and a very vocal critic of the martial law regime and its local supporters. [BACK]

19. Wahhabism, an eighteenth-century Islamic reform movement in the Arabian peninsula begun by Muhammad ibn "Abd al-Wahhab, strenuously opposed Sufism and advocated puritanism in religious practice. Wahhabism played an important role in the creation of an Arabian state and remains the dominant variant of Islam practiced in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Cole 1975; Eickelman and Piscatori 1996). [BACK]

20. The lyrical form of the dayunday resembles that of the Magindanaon bayuk, a style of romantic poetry that almost certainly predates the arrival of Islam in Cotabato. The practice of romantic song duels between men and women was apparently found throughout the Philippines at one time. Anthony Reid, citing a seventeenth-century Spanish account, notes that spontaneous contests of romantic poetry and music (called balak ) were "enormously popular in the central Philippines up to early Spanish times" (1988, 148). [BACK]

21. Dayunday lyrics are customarily sung in an archaic form of Tau sa Laya (upriver) Magindanaon, the same form used for traditional ballads and

poetry. Downriver audiences typically find dayunday lyrics difficult to understand. At the performances I attended I found that I was able to make out only occasional words or phrases. My downriver companions reported that they understood, on average, about 25 percent of the lyrics. Difficulties with aural comprehension did not in the least hinder the enjoyment of downriver audiences. Campo Muslim residents advised me that the dayunday must be appreciated in its totality: the music, the showmanship of the performers, the costumes worn by the female performers, the nonverbal interactions among the singers, the repetitions of standard phrases—all combine to provide the entertainment experience so appreciated by ordinary Muslims. [BACK]

22. Another of the Friday sermons of Ustadz Ali had as its theme the statement that "Allah will help the weak person to claim justice." [BACK]

23. Clearly, a number of the behavioral reforms suggested by the independent ulama—their efforts to prohibit "emergency" marriages, the dayunday, and other entertainments—primarily reflected their concern with regulating the behavior of women. Those efforts did not, in 1986, extend to any specific attempts to prescribe either the proper dress or work activities for women. [BACK]

24. Imam Akmad was by no means the only community elder to question the reform efforts of the independent ulama. A passage from my field notes relates another specific instance: "Bapa Hasan is a traditional healer. His cousin, Ustadz Murid (an important ustadz inside [in the MILF]), criticized him for these traditional beliefs, but Bapa Hasan showed the ustadz the passages in the Qur'an where it referred to such healing practices." [BACK]

25. As suggested by the passage quoted above, the MILF acquiesced to community members on this issue, at least temporarily, for "practical" reasons. [BACK]

26. Eickelman and Piscatori observe about varying Islamic interpretations of zakat:

There is little agreement [about zakat] other than using it for humanitarian or charitable purposes: The Qur'an encourages Muslims to spend their mal (wealth) "out of love for Him, for your kin, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask, and for the ransom of slaves" (2: 177). Some Muslims argue that it is a voluntary act of faith; others argue that it is obligatory . . . An indication of the degree to which doctrine is malleable is the specific political use of zakat in a resolution of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (1981, 699). It endorses collection of zakat to support the work of the Palestine Liberation Organization, rather than, for example, to support Palestinian widows, orphans, and refugees as might be expected. (1996, 16-17)

27. It may be noted in this context that the common term used to refer to the rebels—both current ones and those who fought during the active rebellion—was not "mujahideen" but the Spanish-derived "rebelde." [BACK]

29. It should be noted that the public position of the MILF in regard to voting in the 1986 presidential election was primarily one of indifference

rather than pointed opposition. As a (nominally) separatist organization, the MILF simply commented that it had no interest in elections of officials to a government that it considered illegal, with the implication that its supporters need have no interest as well. The following excerpt from an editorial carried in the January 1986 issue of Tantawan, the newsletter of the Kutawato Regional Committee of the MILF, illustrates official MILF attitudes toward electoral participation: "Many are asking this column whether the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILD takes sides in the forthcoming election [for president] or any election in the future. Our answer to this is solid NO! The MILF does not believe in elections to correct injustices, oppression, exploitation, persecution and aggression in society" [emphasis in original]. [BACK]

30. The ulama and professionals who formed the aboveground component of the counterelite were able to acknowledge publicly their support for the MILF without fear of sharp reprisal only because of the formal cease-fire that still obtained between the MNLF and the Marcos government and the expressed interest of various Arab oil-supplying states in a continued dialogue between the government and the rebels on the issue of the full implementation of the Tripoli Agreement. [BACK]

31. More than one Campo Muslim resident remarked on the main irony surrounding the ustadzes' adamant disapproval of dayunday performances. The dayunday first gained popularity during the period of the armed rebellion when military repression was most severe. Popular legend states that it was invented by an upriver rebel commander and his sweetheart. Dayunday performances were among the very few popular diversions available during those dark years when virtually all ordinary Muslims suffered as a result of the Bangsamoro Rebellion. Yet when the ustadzes, who were so closely associated with the leadership of the rebellion (and in many ways personified its aims), were able to speak openly after the cease-fire, one of their very first pronouncements was to denounce the dayunday. [BACK]

32. In a recent work, Michael Peletz (1997), provides a fascinating discussion of the ambivalence of ordinary Muslims toward Islamic resurgence in contemporary Malaysia. While Campo Muslim residents expressed ambivalence toward Moro nationalism (both desiring and distrusting it), I did not find the same sort of responses in respect to the Islamic renewal efforts of the independent ulama. Instead, as I have noted, some aspects of the renewal program were accepted and others resisted, in some cases openly. The primary reason why the Cotabato case differs from that described by Peletz for Kelantan is that the independent ulama were openly opposed in Cotabato by established Muslim politicians who advanced an alternative ideology of moral authority. The existence of this powerful opposition allowed ordinary Muslims the opportunity for "fence sitting" and permitted potential mediators such as the community imam to explore the middle ground between the polar positions. [BACK]