| 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. |