It has been a strong argument today that Moro intellectuals must actively participate in the formation of the Moro nation state, its activities as well as moving for its establishment. Meaning,Moro intellectuals must consolidate efforts for the betterment of the Moro people.
It is a comforting thought as well as agitating, however, one may seem to be at loss if one may want to define what is good for the Moro people? Many situations appear that Moro figures appear to be “doing good” but obviously not for the Moro people but for their own people.
Facing a dilemna today due to events that we have thought has been solved long ago, but recurring in cycles we may need to find answers to these recurrences.
One may recall that the government has several times “decimated” the doyen of terrorism in the homeland, the dreaded “Abu Sayyaf” after having nipped all its leaders, henchmen and ringl leaders. But recent media exposures on events says otherwise. It appears they are alive and kicking.
We say that we are proud to be Muslims after 300 years of Spanish oppression, and yet, we have not even have a single collective identity as a Moro people. Others may disagree with me, but if you are around taking a stroll in the city, “to speak Muslim” means to speak ones particular dialect (like there has to be an officially Muslim dialect acceptable. I speak chavacano with my Moro cousins and Convert cousins and feel no loss about it.)
At the grassroots level, there is no single joining politicization of a Moro identity. Muslim yes, bangsa moro… I disagree.
You may ask anyone from the street if he identifies himself as a Moro, he will always first define himself by his bangsa ( tribe) rather than as a Moro.
We do not have a singular unifying language. One that has the pecularities of unification, thus no national language. For the people of Zamboanga,Basilan, Sulu and Palawan…. Tausug appears to be the lingua franca of the Moros there. But if you go to Marawi and Cotabato, there are mixed signals, Maranao may be an influential language, but the Maguindanao dialect is spoken by the most populous group. And you would see mixed reactions from the Moro tribal minority groups in Northern and southern Mindanao on adopting either language as a Lingua Franca owing to the peculiarities of their own dialects.
A lot of Moro intellectuals have done good in their own personal, professional and institutional roles, but there appears not clear-cut vision of what they should do.
The homeland continues to be in utter disarray. There is a need for these intellectuals to band together irregardless of tribal orientation and biases.
Its a standing challenge, the Moro intellectual must define his role and vision for his people or his people will not have a future in the end.
Related posts:
Why the Moro intellectuals cannot identify genuine Moro nationalism?
Logically speaking, the geo-sentiment of the Moro with nationalist identity is a pseudo-culture… Perhaps, being a Muslim is a clear identity than a Moro.
Learning from the dilemma of the Filipino nationalism is also suffering from the ideology of pseudo-culture. This imposed culture of nationalism of the Filipinos from centuries of colonization and decolonization – is the major caused of cultural suppression of the indigenous people from other regions in the Philippines.
The Kurds are as disparate as the Moros speaking in dialects and languages even that are mutually unintelligble because they live in different valleys separated by mountains. It is the same with Albanians who are divided into clans, families, language, customs and traditions and who have no sense of common history or even national identity and yet they now live in independent countries, Albania and Kosovo. The Iraqi Kurds are now semi-independent with substantial autonomy if not de facto statehood. These two peoples the Kurds and Albanians, are ethnic groups who are Muslims but you never hear of them being described as tribal peoples or divided into tribes or ethno-linguistic groups because just like the Moro and the Malays in Malaysia the part of being Muslim is the essential ingredient of their ethnic identity and to be Moro, Kurd, Albanian or Malay is to be Muslim and vise versa. History has defined them as Kurds or Albanians and it is the same with the Moros no matter the protestations of others (such as Noyla, is she Muslim?).
Obama was asked in one interview before he became President of the US if he considered himself half-black or half-white. He said that he is black because of the color of his skin and the way people deal with him and their perception of him is black and it was not a choice he made but was made for him at the moment of birth. It is the same with Moros because no matter how Moros try to assimilate their being Muslim and coming from Mindanao sets them apart from larger Filipino society. To be Muslim and to be from Mindanao is to be Moro because society and history dictates it. Even if you are a convert to Islam and you are Chavacano if you don’t adopt Tausug cultural ways you can never be a Moro but you remain a Muslim Chavacano.
If you read the history of the Huns of Attila the Hun fame, you will also find out that they started as disparate tribes that became later the Magyar of Hungary. It is the same with the Germanic tribes, who came from the Visigoths, the Goths, etc. and only became one country under Bismarck in the 19th century and yet we still have Austria, Switzerland and other parts of Europe who remain German in roots, origin and language. Do not believe that we are all Filipinos because we live in a Philippine State. As Joseph Fallon said in one article (Igorot and Moro National Reemergence, the Fabricated State) the Philippines is a fabricated state named after the syphilitic Philip II, who was at the same time Hapsburgh Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire while King of Spain. People need to study about history and identity before they make general statements about identity.