Islam is part of the cultural identity of the Filipino nation (2)

This column is a continuation of the paper I presented in Al-Janadriya:

The founding of Islam. So why were the Filipinos in the South more successful than the non-Muslim indigenous peoples in the north. For this theme I relied heavily on scholarship already done by the Muslim Filipino historian, Cesar Majul, in his book Muslims in the Philippines.

But first we have to refer to the general history of Islam before it came to the Philippines. In her book History of Islam, Karen Armstrong says that "In Islam, Muslims have looked for God in history."

Their sacred scripture, the Quran, enjoins them to fulfill a historical mission. There is no understanding of what Islam is all about unless we dwell on the wellspring from which it developed. A Muslim’s chief duty was to create a just community in which all members, even the most weak and vulnerable, were treated with absolute respect. In the performance of that duty of building a just society will the Muslim achieve his divine destiny. He or she would be living in accordance with God’s will.

"A Muslim had to redeem history and that meant that state affairs were not a distraction from spirituality but the stuff of religion itself. The political well-being of the Muslim community was a matter of supreme importance. Like any religious ideal, it was almost impossibly difficult to implement in the flawed and tragic conditions of history, but after each failure Muslims had to get up and begin again," writes Karen Armstrong.

Although like any religion Islam developed its own rituals, mysticism, philosophy, doctrines, sacred texts, laws and shrines for its followers, its religious practices came from discontent with the political current affairs of Islamic society.

In her book on the history of Islam, Ms. Armstrong explains the roots of the Muslims’ unease about the modern world. "If state institutions do not measure up to the Quranic ideal, if their political leaders were cruel or exploitative, or if their community was humiliated by apparently irreligious enemies, a Muslim could feel that his or her faith in life’s ultimate purpose and value was in jeopardy. Every effort had to be expended to put Islamic history back on track or the whole religious enterprise would fail and life would be drained of meaning. Politics was, therefore, what Christians would call a sacrament: it was the arena in which Muslim experienced God and which enabled the divine to function effectively in the world. Consequently, the historical trials and tribulations of the Muslim community – political assassinations, civil wars, invasions, and the rise and fall of the ruling dynasties – were not divorced from the interior religious quest, but were of the essence of the Islamic vision. A Muslim would meditate upon the current events of his time and upon past history as a Christian would contemplate an icon using the creative imagination to discover the hidden divine kernel. An account of the external history of the Muslim people cannot therefore be of mere secondary interest, since of the chief characteristics of Islam has been its sacralization of history.

Although this is a paper on the history of Islam in the Philippines, it is important to write a brief account of how Islam as a religion came about. The central figure in the origins and development of Islam is The Prophet, Muhammad ibn Abdallah. He was an Arab businessman who had a mystical experience one Ramadan day while praying and fasting in a cave in the summit of Mount Hira just outside Mecca.

It is said that he had been brooding about the crisis in Arab society. As a member of the tribe of Quraysh, he was haunted by the ways of the decadent rich. The tribe had become rich by trading with surrounding countries. Mecca had become a thriving mercantile city but in the search for wealth some of the old tribal values had been forgotten. Instead of looking after weaker members of the tribe as the nomadic code prescribed, the Quraysh were now more concerned about making money. It did not matter if it had been at the expense of the tribe’s poorer families. This materialism gave rise to a spiritual restlessness not only in Mecca but throughout the Arabian peninsula.

In those times, Arabs knew that Judaism and Christianity in the Byzantine and Persian empires were more sophisticated religions than their own indigenous pagan traditions. They looked askance at Jews and Christians who probably worshipped the same al-Laht (the God) yet they had no prophet or scripture in their own language that might put them in the same religious heights. It is said that "Jews and Christians taunted the Arabs for being left out of the divine plan."

The general picture of Arab society at the time was a more primitive stage of culture and civilization, with constant internecine tribal warfare. More thoughtful Arabs were dissatisfied with their condition and the way they lived. Neither were they happy to being regarded as outside the civilized world or being taunted as ignored by God himself. But all that changed on the night of revelation to the businessman Muhammad who would later be known as the Prophet.

One account of this fateful night says "On the night of 17 Ramadan when Muhammad woke to find himself overpowered by a devastating presence, which squeezed him tightly until he heard the first words of a new Arab’s scripture pouring from his lips."

Nevertheless Muhammad did not claim that he was founding a new religion but that he was merely bringing the faith in One God to the Arabs, who had never had a prophet before. Coupled with this revelation of One God, he also taught Arabs the new way of life that made it wrong to make fortunes for oneself. Wealth must be shared.

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