Monday, December 13, 2010

THE MORO STRUGGLE FOR SELF-DETERMINATION IN THE PHILIPPINES | THE PHILIPPINES MATRIX PROJECT

Muslim Protests in Manila

ETHNIC IDENTITY AND POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY: NOTES ON
THE BANGSA MORO STRUGGLE IN THE PHILIPPINES
[From: E. San Juan, US IMPERIALISM AND REVOLUTION IN THE PHILIPPINES, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008]

When this so-called battle [at Mt. Dajo, Philippines, where U.S. troops slaughtered 600 Moro men, women and children] was over, there were certainly not fewer than two hundred wounded savages lying on the field. What became of them? Since not one savage was left alive! The inference seems plain. We cleaned up our four days’ work and made it complete by butchering those helpless people.

–MARK TWAIN, “Comments on the Moro Massacre,” March 12-14, 1906 (1992)

Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child….

–RUDYARD KIPLING, “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands” (1899)

The working class cannot be indifferent to the most intolerably barbaric oppression [of any nation] …Even the most inhumane material oppression is not able to provoke such wrathful, fanatical rebellion and rage as…religious or national oppression.

–ROSA LUXEMBURG, Foreword to “The Polish Question and the Socialist Movement” (1905)

The young man whom you rejected / was a poor man, it’s true./ But now he is fighting for the homeland / and offering his life / in the struggle for the faith.

–from MILF Rebel Song from Campo Muslim (in McKenna 1998)

Oldest Mosque in the Philippines

[The Masjid (Mosque) of Simunul, Tawi Tawi is considered the oldest in the Philippines. The old structure is actually inside this building. The burial ground of Sheik Al Makdum, the missionary who brought Islam to this part of Asia lies just beside this mosque. As a Muslim, it was a priviledge to have visited this place on my way to Sabah.]