We Sing Here Like Birds in the Wilderness

Abstract

One century on from the establishment of the U.S. military government of the Moro Province, Muslim Mindanao remains a region apart from the rest of the Philippine Republic. Despite a century of political, social, and educational efforts to assimilate Filipino Muslims into the mainstream of Philippine society, they remain a collection of more or less distinct ethno-linguistic communities bound together by a widespread sense of alienation from the Philippine government and the Christian majority and a determination to preserve their distinctive identity as a Muslim community, part of dar-ul Islam. As an effort to integrate Muslim and Christian Filipinos into a unified Philippine society, the Moro Province failed. The Jones Law failed. The Commission on National Integration failed. Education for integration has failed. While the jury is still out on the newest policy experiment of political and educational autonomy embodied in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the results as of mid-2004 have not been encouraging.