If you want to skip the ancient history part, go down to where is says EXPLANATION ON DEMOGRAPHIC SWAMPING STARTS HERE
To clarify the situation with Muslims in the Philippines, I will first explain how the Philippines came about as a country and a national identity. The Philippines as a political unit and identity was created by Spanish colonialism. The Spanish named the islands after their King Philip II. Before the Spanish there was no unity. The Filipino people themselves are made out of various ethnic groups, the majority of them Catholic Christians because of Spanish colonialism.
Ethnic groups in the Philippines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Spanish also implemented a racist hirearchy in Filipino society like they did in Latin America. Spanish and Spanish mestizos were at the top of the hirearchy above the natives.
The Philippines consisted of various Muslim, Hindu, or animist Sultanates, Kingdoms and chiefdoms before the Spanish conquest. The Muslim Sultanates like Sulu were allied to Ming dynasty China and China temporarily appointed a governor over Luzon Island during the Yongle era.
The Muslims were just Moros whose homeland is in the southern Philippines, but the northern Kingdom of Maynila right where the present capital of the Philippines is was ruled by the Muslim Rajah Sulayman, a relative of the Brunei Sultans. The Spanish defeated Rajah Sulayman and forced the Muslims and animists in the northern Philippines to convert to Catholicism.
Kingdom of Maynila - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rajah Sulayman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Castille War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rajah Sulyaman had granted Chinese merchants a tract of land on which to settle in Maynila.
The Cambridge History of China - Google Books
When the Chinese heard about the Spanish invasion a Chinese pirate named Limahong attempted to expel the Spanish invaders but failed.
After the Spanish asserted control over the northern Philippines (Luzon and the Visayas) they attempted to wage war against the Moro Sultanates in Mindanao and Sulu for over 300 years but failed to conquer them. The Sultanates were Sulu and Maguindanao and various breakaway sultanates and datus.
A Local Church Living for Dialogue: Muslim-Christian Relations in Mindanao ... - William Larousse - Google Books
THE MORO WARS
Chapter III - The Moro-Spanish War
Philippine History Module-based Learning I' 2002 Ed. - Ongsotto, Et Al - Google Books
The people who fought and rebelled against the Spanish the most were Chinese and Muslim Moros.
The Spanish Governor of the Philippines Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas was assasinated by Chinese while in office. His son, another Governor of the Philippines, Luis Pérez Dasmariñas was killed and beheaded along with all his Spanish troops by Chinese rebels in 1603. The Chinese rebels defeated the first Spanish attack to round them up and hoisted the Spaniards heads over Manila after killing all of Dasmariñas's men, but they were outnumbered by another attack of Filipino and Japanese setllers who were serving the Spanish and who crushed the rebellion.
While the Spanish committed massacres against ethnic Chinese in 1603, 1663 and other times in Manila and forced them to live in a ghetto and pay higher taxes, the Moros never did. The Moro Sultan even allowed a Chinese temple to be built in their capital. The most the Moro Sultan ever worried about was a Chinese monopoly on trade and his reaction was not to massacre the Chinese but just to import other foreign merchants for conpetition. In 1663 Chinese Ming loyalists under Koxinga threatened the Spanish with war which forced them to withdraw their forces in Zamboanga which were fighting against the Moros.
Chinese merchants supplied the Moros with rifles and gunpowder to wage war against the Spanish invaders.
The Sulu Zone, 1768-1898: The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery, and ... - James Francis Warren - Google Books
The Sulu Zone, 1768-1898: The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery, and ... - James Francis Warren - Google Books
The Sulu Zone, 1768-1898: The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery, and ... - James Francis Warren - Google Books
When the Spanish launched raids on the Moro capital of Jolo they burned both the Chinese quarter, the Sultan's palace and the mosque.
p. 14
In 1758 4,000 Chinese joined the Moros on Jolo to fight against Spain.
United States Congressional serial set - Google Books
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803: explorations - James Alexander Robertson - Google Books
Some Chinese have intermarried with the Moros. Most of the Chinese who had helped and married the Moros are Hokkien from Fujian.
Migration, Indigenization and Interaction: Chinese Overseas and Globalization - Google Books
The Spanish were always defeated until nearly the end of their rule in the Philippines. Only then did they managed to make Sulu and the other Moro states agree to become Spanish protectorates and not even integral parts of the Philippines.
The Filipinos started to revolt against Spanish rule under the leadership of Chinese mestizos. The major heroes who started and fought in the 1896 independence revolution in the Philippines against Spain were all Chinese mestizos. The Philipinne nationalist José Rizal was of Chinese descent through the patrilineal line, and Emilio Aguinaldo and Andrés Bonifacio were also both Chinese mestizos
After America defeated Spain in the Spanish American war, then the conflict with America and the Philippines government started.
The Moros fought against the Spanish, the Americans, the Japanese and then waged an insurgency against the Philippines government.
EXPLANATION ON DEMOGRAPHIC SWAMPING STARTS HERE
Moro Muslims were a majority a century ago in their homeland of Mindanao. They used to rule the entire island and the Sulu archipelago as well through various Sultanates like Maguindanao and Sulu
Dut to the policies of the American colonial administration and the subsequent Philippines government, the Moro Muslims now make up a minority. The American and the Philippines government encouraged massive immigration of Christian ethnic groups like Visayans into Mindanao in order to displace Moro Muslims from their land.
There are 22 million people currently on Mindanao today. Only 20%% of that are Moro Muslims. Just 20%, while they were previously a majority. The Maguindanao Sultanate used to extend across the entire island.
Islam and the Politics of Identity, UHM Center for Philippine Studies
Contested territory - Territorially, Mindanao is a contested region because many Muslims believe that this is their traditional homeland. They were a majority group in Mindanao and Sulu before the colonial period, but were reduced to a marginalized, demographic minority after 1960. Now they constitute only about 20% of Mindanao population, although they are predominant in five provinces under the jurisdiction of the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
The American administration was not even supposed to have jurisdiction over the internal affairs Moro Sultanates. The Bates Treaty signed by the Moros with the Americans guaranteed that and was supposed to leave the Sultanates intact with self governance.
Immediately after the Philippines American war was finished against the Filipino rebels in the Nortth, the Americans violated the Bates treaty with no provocation from the Moros and waged war against the Moros in the Moro Rebellion to incorporate them into the Philippines. They used brutal methods like tortures and massacres and committed many atrocities during the war.
Moro Rebellion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Americans began the process of shipping Christian Visayans onto Mindanao and displacing the Moros. They and the Philippines government have done it today and have been so succesful as you can see from the current demographic figures of the Philippines.
