Just reading in newsfeed that Rodrigo Duturte has declared Martial Law in Mindanao in order to rid the island of ISIS and/or other Islamic militants. I am not au fait with Philippino politics, so any opinions will be appreciated!
What do you want to know?
Sticking to the plain facts: The Maute Group is a splinter group of the Abu Sayyaf, Islamic separatists that have been a thorn in the side of Filipino society for decades. They have attacked public establishments and Army barracks in Marawi City, declaring allegiance to ISIS. The situation was serious enough that President Duterte cut short his state visit to Russia. Whether the situation was serious enough to warrant declaring Martial Law throughout the entire island of Mindanao remains to be seen.
The issue is that Duerte is very dictatorial and wants people to kill drug users and criminals, so, to me at least, it’s not clear if he will overreact.
That’s a big part of it, but I think what some people don’t know about the Philippines is that it has a significant Muslim minority, especially in Mindanao (in the south). Most Filipinos are Catholic, reflecting the centuries of Spanish rule, but Islam in that country predates the introduction of Christianity by a few centuries.
Not that I’m saying the native Muslim population is a bunch of terrorists, but there have been religious clashes going back many years now.
The president was brought up Catholic but as an ecumenist also affirms Islam — such cautious synthesizing may come more easily since he was also raised as a lawyer.
He’s not so much prejudiced as mentally different from normal people:
‘Duterte is an avid reader of Robert Ludlum and Sidney Sheldon novels.[’
300 years predating.
The southern Sultanates were almost never under effective control of the Spanish. It was the Americans that made them effectively part of the Philippine colony after they defeated the Spanish.
Duterte isn’t muslim (although it’s not clear what you mean by “affirm” here.) His remarks have been misconstrued by people who view themselves as ‘more christian’ than Duterte is (probably not a difficult feat, as his main claim to fame is the official endorsement of mass extrajudicial murder.)
He did say:
However, he self-identifies as christian:
And ‘Allah’ isn’t a word only used by muslims:
Rather, Duterte doesn’t appear to be any more faithful to a religion than to a wife (he has been open about his serial philandering when married,) much less be ‘ecumenical’ and have more than one:
I don’t think there’s anything cautious or synthesized about it - he just doesn’t follow religions.
Affirm = be part of
“If there is anybody who wishes that this bloody problem would end soon, it is I because I am both Moro and Christian,” Duterte said.
“I feel the fear of the Christians and share the dreams of the Moro people who feel that they have been dispossessed of their land and identity,” the City Mayor said.
Duterte admits publicly for the first time that his maternal grandmother had a Moro lineage.
“There is a part of me which is Moro,” he said.
Duterte’s ties with the Muslims of the South were made even stronger because his eldest son, Paolo who is now Vice Mayor of the City, embraced Islam when he married a Muslim Tausug girl.
“I have grandchildren who are either Muslim or Christian. Would I want to see a situation in the future where even my own grandchildren would be dragged into this conflict?,” he asked.
FaceBook — The Mind of Rody Duterte
However, he was devout enough to want to be a priest when young, but now thanks God he wasn’t or he would have ended up a homosexual.
Islamists have just beheaded a police chief, feeling the old ways are the good ways, so he may start getting nasty; however since Duterte was very vocal in wanting Hillary to become US president, Trump may be cool in support.
At the turn of the century - the 20th century, that is - Mindanao was predominantly Muslim except for a narrow strip of Christianized cities and settlements on the northern coast. The Americans acquired the Philippines from Spain at around this time - notwithstanding the fact that the Filipinos had already declared themselves independent and had backed up their declaration with force of arms. The Americans managed to convince the northern, Christian Filipinos that they were in charge, mostly by importing the same troops they had used to pacify the Native Americans. The Muslims in the south were having none of that, and treated the Americans the same way they treated Spanish.
The Spanish had invented a term, juramentado, for a sword-wielding Moro who would attack police and soldiers, expecting to be eventually killed themselves. When the Americans encountered them, they found that their sidearms - largely the .38 Long Colt revolver - were inadequate for stopping juramentado attacks. They would shoot them, several times, and they would keep coming. The Americans had to replace their pistols with more powerful .45 Colt revolvers. Legend is that the juramentados spurred the development of the M1911 Colt .45 semi-automatic pistol, still in popular today, although by the time the M1911 had reached troops in 1913, the Moros had already been pacified. (So the M1911 was never used against juramentados.)
After Muslim Mindanao had been pacified, the American colonial administration pursued a program of “Christianizing” or “civilizing” the island (as was the parlance of the day), by encouraging resettlement from the north. They also developed the infrastructure, building roads, bridges, and ports.
[As an aside, prior to WWII Philippine President Manuel Quezon looked into the possibility of large scale resettlement in Mindanao of Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler’s Germany, perhaps as many as 10,000. He ran into opposition from the US State Department, who still had final say in granting visas. As it was, the Philippines was only able to accept about 1300 Jews from Europe between 1937 and 1941.]
After the war and full independence, the Philippine government continued encouraging resettlement from the north. By this time, the island had been developed enough that spontaneous migration was also taking place. The result is that many areas that were majority Muslim are now majority Christian. This has led to inevitable conflict between the two groups, with Muslim separatist groups the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front arising in the 1960s and 1970s. The 1990s saw the rise of the Abu Sayyaf and now we have the Maute Group, both of which have pledged themselves to ISIS.
No, that guy is still alive. A widely-reported but false story.
You’ve mistaken a claim of ethnicity for one of religion - Duterte’s grandmother was Moro, and not just Moro, but muslim Moro (Moro’s etymology originates from Moors - so they are frequently thought of as muslims.)
But more importantly, Islam is not identified by heritage - one doesn’t become a muslim just because one’s grandmother was a muslim.
Since Duterte’s grandmother was muslim, it’s not surprising he has muslim and christian family members - his son Paolo converted to Islam when he married.
https://www.aseantoday.com/2016/05/difference-between-duterte-and-trump/
Also, in what might be confusing to someone without context, Duterte has courted the muslim population of the southern islands as a base of political support:
In context, Duterte courts both muslim and christian votes, by using the terminology of his muslim voters and bashing the “elites” of the north, and by bashing the “elites” of the Catholic church, the priests. His own religious actions don’t seem to reflect an actual belief in either Catholicism or Islam, and he openly denies being a believer in religion due to his experience in his youth -
If you didn’t know of his deliberate attempts to court muslim voters dissatisfied with the “elites” in northern/christian Filipino culture, and to court populist christian Filipinos dissatisfied with the “elites” of the Catholic Church, you might think Duterte was muslim instead of irreligious.
More rape “jokes” from Duterte.
I used to live in the Philippines, and I have been following Philippines politics for years.
Unfortunately I don’t think that Duterte is really joking. I think it is just part of the macho image he thinks he has, and that many Filipinos support.
Encouraging Filipino soldiers to rape other Filipinos is disgusting.
“Duterte jokes that his soldiers can rape women under martial law in the Philippines”
Filipino here. The 1987 constitution states that a president can declare martial law over a certain area of the country in times of invasion or rebellion. Terrorism has not entered into many countries’ constitution then and even now is not a likely justification for declaring martial law.
For martial law to be justified, this Maute/Abu Sayaf Group has to be elevated from a simple bandit group, with possible ISIS ties, to a certain status; something like a legal belligerent with rights under various international laws. And no one will want to give Maute/Abu that status.
So, was martial law declaration justifiable?
From “Moors”, really?
Moro: from Latin Maurus, “mauritanian”, and this from Greek Μαῦρος, (pr. Maûros) “dark”, alluding to the color of their skin.
Originally, the Spanish word moro referred to people from Northern Africa; eventually it came to get its other meanings, including “muslim” and “man who is too possessive of his women”. The “muslim” meaning is what in turn became the name of those people from Philippines who held the religion when the Spanish crown claimed the archipelago.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer today published an article explaining the various contemporary Philippine Jihadist groups and their relationship to each other and to the older Islamist groups from the 1970s (i.e., the MNLF and MILF):
nvm
Heh. MILF. Heh.
Sorry, sometimes I’m a 13-year-old-boy. , something I apparently share with the Daily Fail.
They were the Imelda Marcos faction.
How safe is the Cagayan de Oro area? I might be going there in late July.
^
Big, predominantly Christian, with sizable commercial and tourism activity (everything Marawi City is not.) To answer your question, it’s like any seedy third-world city. Enjoy but take care.