I am an awkward girl. But whenever I read, I feel bolder. I feel courageous. I suddenly become the girl who gets sad, who gets happy, who questions what doesn’t make sense no matter how popular. Everything I am made of is largely because of the books I’ve read. My tongue grew sharper because of the number of uncomfortable perspectives I confronted by reading about them.
I was not a good student back in college. I skipped classes. I didn’t attend school activities. I majored in philosophy yet I often submitted lazy papers because I was too insecure to bring my ideas up in class. It was only when I left school that my relationship with reading and writing boosted. Reading helped me break the monotony of motherhood. I knew motherhood might leave me intellectually unfulfilled.
I enrolled in a master’s degree when I found out I was pregnant in 2022 because if I quit my job when the baby came, I would face a loss of identity and sense of purpose, and I was right. Motherhood filled my days with feeding my baby and changing his diaper in 2023. In between, I picked up the books I didn’t have the time or energy to read back then. Engaging my mind and holding books in my hands reassured me that my body is still mine.
Bangsamoro history books were never among them. It wasn’t that I found them boring or unimportant, but as an ordinary Moro who didn’t come from a political clan, I considered it a waste of time to learn about injustices and wrongdoings that I had no power to change and that any attempt to do so might get me killed.
Then, one afternoon in 2023, after I put my one-year-old baby to sleep, I finally reached for the book that had been sitting on my shelf for months, recommended to me by my professor in master’s degree program.
It’s a book entitled Moro Armed Struggle: The Nonviolent Autonomy Alternative, written by former Mindanao State University President Dr. Macapado A. Muslim. He was also the MSU president when I was in college at Mindanao State University – Main Campus, which only made me more curious about the book.
It was his PhD dissertation at the University of Hawaii in 1990, but he published it as a book in 1994. Then, when Rodrigo Duterte became president, he reprinted it in 2017 to shed light on the recent Marawi Siege, reiterating that war doesn’t happen out of thin air.
He believed the book could help former President Duterte’s efforts to resolve the Bangsamoro problem. The government, then, should address it by curing its root causes rather than its mere symptoms. Dr. Muslim claimed that the only way to end the Mindanao conflict was to reconsider the government’s “misplaced peace-making approach” and give the Moros genuine autonomy. Aside from its unjust history, the archipelagic nature of the Philippines also made autonomy more sensible.
Packed with in-depth stories, the book aptly captures the history of the Moro Land before, during, and after Martial Law, which was, indubitably, the peak of oppression and atrocities against the Moros.
Unlike the usual history books about violence, you’ll read less about the men behind bombs and tanks and more about the ordinary people living ordinary lives dolefully disrupted by Martial Law. This includes a series of painful events in Moro history, such as the Jabidah, or Corregidor, Massacre, the Ilaga atrocities, the Manili Massacre, and others.
One thing I took away from the book was the author’s argument that the Moros didn’t initiate the war, despite how cruelly they were portrayed in the media. For a decade, they pleaded with the Marcos regime to stop the killings. It was only when the regime showed no intention of stopping them that our ancestors felt compelled to defend their land and their lives.
As the book progresses, you’ll also see that it was not a war of religion, either. Christians were not viewed as enemies. In fact, the leaders among our ancestors referred to them as “friends” in their manifestos and promised to protect them. The Moro fighters only highlighted their religion, Islam, to seek support from other Muslim countries, not necessarily as their driving force.
Of the book’s seven chapters, the third was the only one I found tedious. It presents statistics about how rich Mindanao was before Martial Law and how it eventually became the Philippines’ milking cow. Still, I’m glad I pushed myself to finish it because it helped me understand just how much our natural resources had been exploited.
It’s not a book you should read in one sitting because, since it was originally a dissertation, it’s too detailed. I read one chapter a day to fully digest the meat of each.
The book was a rude awakening to how little I knew about my own people’s history. And I regretted not learning about it sooner. I owe myself a lot.
