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COMMENT: Metamorphosis
| Background: MindaNews is sympathetic to if not the mouthpiece of Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, so put on your Salafi-colored glasses while reading this report... |
Long before the coming of the Spaniards, Muslims in Mindanao and Sulu were known by their ethnic names Magindanaw, Maranao, Tausug, etc., interestingly, even in their indigenous or generic terms. The Spaniards called them all Moro. After the expulsion of the Spaniards almost 50 years under America and a quarter of a century of the Second Philippine Republic they were Muslim Filipino. In the 1970s emerged the Bangsamoro. This is the metamorphosis of Bangsamoro. Each period of transformation was an interesting era. The metamorphosis is the transformation of a people seeking their rightful place in the present and the future anchored in Islam and the past they ever hold as glorious.
Every period was a struggle. The Moro, deemed contemptuous in the past, transformed into an identity, the byword of an aspiration, hence Bangsamoro; then Muslim Filipino became disfavored even despised. The metamorphosis is a story of generations.
In the first period, generations built proud and prosperous sultanates; in the second, they fought the Spaniards who despised them as Moro, reminiscent of the Moors who had occupied Spain for more than 700 years; in the third, ambivalent, they tried reconciling the Muslim and the Filipino; in the fourth, they asserted their aspirations -- to regain their homeland and identity.
Posted by: Seafarious 2007-08-16 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=196269 |
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