Page 243 - The Winter of Islam and the Spring to Come

HARUN YAHYA (ADNAN OKTAR)
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Some 90 percent of Filipinos are Catholic, although the situation is
very different in the southern islands, where the population is 70 per-
cent Catholic and 30 percent Muslim. The latter consist of the Moros of
the island on Mindanao and the Muslims on the island of Sulu.
Muslims make up 97 percent of the people of Sulu. 62
The origins of the conflict in the Philippines go back to 1946, when
the country gained independence after years of U.S. rule. Unlike the
Muslims on Mindanao and Sulu, the majority Christian population of
the Philippines offered no resistance to the colonialist American admin-
istration and accepted the governors imposed on them. The Americans
educated Filipino leaders in order to establish a pro-U.S. administra-
tion. When the United States finally withdrew, it therefore left power in
the hands of the Filipinos, and accepted Mindanao and Sulu as parts of
a single unitary state. So the Muslims on those islands were subjected to
Filipino rule.
The Filipinos embarked of a policy of reinforcing their supremacy,
and in particular of taking away the lands of the Muslim Moros. A new
law allowed a Filipino to take over 24 hectares of land, but this was lim-
ited to 10 hectares in the case of the Moros. The result was a wave of
Filipino migration towards land populated by Muslims. That in turn
had the effect of reducing the size of the Muslim majority. In the decade
between 1966 and 1976, 3.5 million Filipino immigrants settled in
Muslim lands.
On May 1, 1968, Cotabato Governor Datu Udtog Matalam set up
the "Muslim Independence Movement" (MIM), which sought to com-
promise with the central authority under President Ferdinand Marcos.
However, it failed to gather much support, and soon faded from the
scene. The central government did not underestimate the importance of
this development, and saw it as an opportunity to increase the pace of
its anti-Moro policies. At the same time, Marcos declared himself head
of the Philippines' Armed Forces. A short while later he announced
martial law, justifying this by citing the terrorist movement set up by
communists in the country, together with the Muslim resistance. He
then suspended the Constitution, and finally become dictator over the
whole country.