Tag Archives: Gender Equality

Human Rights and Gender Equality

The millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with various concerns that include Human Rights and Gender Equality, envision a world where people are able to enjoy their human rights and equally regardless of race, sex, age, creed and background. Access to justice is an important concern of the MDGs. Governments of 189 countries all over the world have committed to ending gender based injustices by its target date of 2015. For women and children victims of violence all over the world, “Justice and Healing” is still elusive dream.

In the Philippines, the Philippine Commision on Women (PCW) is completing a program called ” Women’s Empowerment and Development Towards Gender Equality” (WEDGE). PCW asked me review Chapter 2 of the WEDGE Plan pertaining to “Protection and Access to Justice of women in especially “difficult circumstance”. The chapter addresses protection and access to justice of women who are vulnerable to and are victims of gender based violence, trafficking and prostitution; and women in general who should enjoy equal protection and just treatment under the law and by the legal and justice systems.

Deradicalization and the Defeat of the Feminist Movement: The Case of the Philippines

Past paradigms associate radical politics with waging a revolution that is class-based, armed, thorough-going. In the Philippines this was represented by the communist-led nationalist democratic liberation movement of the previous decades. After the fall of the socialist regimes and the split of the local leftist movement in the early 1990s, radical politics has become anyone’s claim. The national democrats, for instance, are now judged by its critics as stuck in the past, reduced from vanguard to rear guard of radical politics (Weekley 2001, 259). This viewpoint goes with the current civil society movement that debunks statism and class struggle. On the other hand, staunch proponents of revolutionary change regard civil society engagement as reformist, a cooptation with neo-liberalism.

So much harder to speak on today is feminism. While many women identify with feminist thoughts and live out in their personal lives what could be construed as feminist practice, a greater number are reluctant to be identified with feminism. Others outrightly reject the label. This can be attributed to an absence of a cohesive mass movement that engages the support and interests of women and an attendant lack of feminist theorizing to inform everyday politics.

A difficult question to ask in discussing feminist politics in the Philippines is whether the feminists of the 1980s and early 1990s fought (and were defeated) as feminists or as the women contingent of the national democratic forces. This paper argues for the latter and reiterates that: There is no longer a feminist movement to enlist oneself to in the Philippines today. The feminist and proto-feminist consciousness of the 1980s has been superseded by other competing cultures and ideologies that invaded in the aftermath of the 1990s Upheaval. Those who choose to carry on a radical position stand to be extinguished.

Feminism and the National Democratic Struggle

Women organizing in the national democratic revolution had been the task of the Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan (MAKIBAKA – Independent Movement of New Women). From a Women’s Bureau of the Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic Youth) in 1969, the national democratic organization’s women department grew into the MAKIBAKA in 1970, which later became the nationwide organization of women, mostly youth and students. In 1972 it changed its name to Makabayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan (Patriotic Movement of New Women) to emphasize the national democratic intent of the organization. During the Martial Law years MAKIBAKA activists were deployed all over the country to build a basic alliance of women across all sectors of society, specifically the workers, peasants and lower petty bourgeoisie to support the goals of the revolution. MAKIBAKA women became the progenitors of the national democratic feminism that always laid great stress on the need to unify. One of the oldest calls of this tradition is to combat wrong ideas that work against the solid unity of the oppressed class.

Many women writers trace the beginnings of the women’s movement in the Philippines to the anti-colonial struggle of 1890 when the revolutionary movement Katipunan produced heroes like Gregoria de Jesus, Teresa Magbanua, Melchora Aquino and Gabriela Silang (Pagaduan 1993, 106). While there had been various movements pushing for the advancement of women’s rights since 1891 when the right to vote was first waged by middle-class women, in contemporary time, the women’s movement was strongest from the mid-1980s to the beginning of the 1990s. Feminist critic Delia Aguilar (1993, 94) ascribed this to the declining influence of the Left, as well as the macho stance of the revolutionary movement at its height. At the time autonomous2 organizations were sprouting and GABRIELA, then claiming around a 100-member national federation of women-organizations, was leading the mobilizations of grassroots women and making national issues such as the U.S. bases, human rights, foreign debt, IMF-WB, etc. women’s issues. GABRIELA held sole claim to pursuing a “Third World feminism” that assigns gender oppression to problems of poverty and underdevelopment. Guided as it was by the national democratic project, GABRIELA sought to bridge head-on the inherently tense relations between women’s distinct concerns and pressing national interests (Aguilar 1993, 92).

As a federation of women organizations, GABRIELA has always been criticized as primarily a national democratic formation, rather than a feminist organization. As a movement, it had no autonomous agenda but anchored on the program of the national democrats. That GABRIELA’s mass organizations dispersed following the momentary demise of the national democratic agenda in 1993 must lend credence to this. While there were independent women’s movements that surfaced in the 1980s, these did not have GABRIELA’s number and mass character. These groups were easily dismissed by the national democrats as Western-influenced bourgeois feminist formations.

In the Philippines, women’s training in political struggles has always been in support of broader movements for freedom and democracy. The most intensive and extensive training they’ve had was in the national democratic struggle of the 1970s and 1980s. As enlistees to this cause, their first commitment was for the advancement of the revolution. As Aguilar asserts, “tied as it was to the orthodox Marxism guiding Party praxis,” feminism did not find a friendly home in the national democratic revolution (and in MAKIBAKA in particular) (Aguilar 1993, 92). The national democratic strut e of the previous decades always subordinated all other axes of oppression (gender, ethnicity, environment) to class strut: e. If a feminist consciousness did not fully develop in the women’s movement a good part of the blame can probably be laid on this continuing alliance with the male-dominated leadership of the national democratic movement (Angeles, cited in Aguilar 1993, 133).

Despite its hostility to feminism, the culture of radicalism fomented by the national democratic revolution brought on tremendous changes in the lives of people who were involved in struggle. Relationships were restructured as the needs of the revolution came first. Comradeship was replacing other bonds based on bourgeois institutions, and the nuclear-patriarchal family, although still regarded even by revolutionists as a site for reproduction (and women seen as bearers of sons who would carry on the struggle) was being complemented by the bigger family – the collective.; A proletarian worldview was being developed, denigrating middle-class values and institutions and condemning bourgeois consumerism and other MNC-friendly tendencies.

Retrenchments in the Camp: From Feminism to Genderism

The “post-revolutionary era” following the defeat of the national democratic program in the 1990s was a period of vigorous search for alternatives to past paradigms. While activists looked for “interstices and spaces within the political system to advance the progressive agenda” (FOPA 1993, 7), the Ramos government was hastening the country’s integration into the world market. Development aid poured into the country, a big bulk of which was re-channeled through non-government organizations. Activists were getting “new money” to do development work with and a whole new set of NGO jargon developed along with the new formations and relationships. With the passing into law of the Local Government Code of 1991, non-government organizations and people’s organizations were given more power in development policies. Gender projects likewise proliferated, redeploying feminist energies into new programs. This signaled the absorption of feminist-activists into aid agency structures.

With adequate support from funding agencies abroad, the women enterprise branched out into several directions: peace advocacy (gender and peace), eco-feminism (gender and environment), children’s rights, women spirituality, gender and micro-enterprise development, VAW (violence against women), and so on. This broadening of perspective worked two ways: it opened up more avenues to coalesce and work with other groups in important social issues; on the other hand, it further diffused if not finished off the unconsolidated feminist agenda.

This shift in political practice fell in line along the reform and renewal program being pursued by the broader progressive movement that now encouraged heterogeneity and pluralism (via participatory politics, legislation, community-based self-help projects, micro-enterprises, etc.) in development practice — in lieu of hegemonic social transformation projects. There was adequate financial support coming in this direction as traditional funding agencies were themselves reacting to what they felt to be a mistake they made in the past: backing up organizations that sought to destabilize government while incapable of responding to popular sentiments and not directly serving the socio-economic needs of the poor.

With no overarching national or class struggle to hem them in, women projects expanded, from women studies to socio-economic initiatives. Basic services likewise improved as more health centers, reproductive health clinics, and crisis centers were put up. Women desks, committees and GAD (gender and development)5 focal points were installed in both government and non-government offices – a landmark in the women’s struggle welcomed by many, but bothered some. Feminist critic Aguilar (1993, 94) expressed concern saying while it boded well for the women’s movement, it could also take an inauspicious turn of creating a (feminist) bureaucracy dependent on dole-outs from foreign sources.

As a strategy in development practice, the gender framework (also called the GAD framework) moves away from a feminist stance that challenges existing social relations (gender inequality, for one) to an accommodationist (gender) approach that tries to live within a given social order. A feminist approach is basically a political demand, while GAD is essentially an economic strategy which seeks to find relevance within the economic-development regime of the neo-liberalist era (1990s onward). In other words, GAD works within the interstices of the dominant capitalist system.

As what has been forwarded earlier, there is no longer a feminist movement in the Philippines. What we have now is a scattering of women’s causes and projects that serve women’s welfare without really hurting free-market and the neo-liberal regime on one hand, and male hegemony on the other hand. A real bane that many well-funded gender projects do is siphon off the political energies and resources of the women’s movement, contributing to a culture of indifference that is so hostile to radical politics.

In the branching out into multifarious gender interests, feminism thus becomes just one of the older twigs one need not hold on to. It is not surprising that not a few women activists now express queasiness over being called a “feminist,” others even preferring to call themselves “genderist.” Feminism is so associated with the confrontational politics of the 1980s and is seen as “anti-male,” ergo, has no place in a supposedly all-inclusive, enlightened, gender-sensitized civil society movement of the 1990s and 2000s.

Getting Rich on the Home Front?

The dismissal of the class struggle of the previous decades following the triumph of elite politics and the rise of the civil society movement in the 1990s likewise brought changes in the lifestyles of erstwhile proletarian practitioners. For one, the collective life withered away, as bourgeois institutions of old (the nuclear family, the conservative church, government) gained new ascendancy in the lives of former rebel-activists. For another, the pouring in of development money likewise created an NGO bureaucracy living under the employ of development aid, producing in turn a “new middle class” composed of activists formerly trained in the proletarian ethic of “simple living and hard struggle.” Joining them are young university graduates with varying political persuasions and vague ideas about previous social transformation projects.

The 1990s was also the time when people were trying to live down the upheaval of the previous decade. The anti-fascist struggle that claimed lives of family and friends; the discovery of the mass purges; all the aftermath of a failed revolution gave people a sense of disillusionment and a desire to withdraw from “bloody” political action. Self-transformation projects and spirituality quests, deemed to be what the last transformation project lacked, were drawing a number of ex-activists. There was also a sense among many ex-activists that the “post-conflict” climate (post-adversarial politics) might be their one opportunity to compensate for “lost time” to go back to a forsaken career, or to children and family. Guilt-tripped over past parental or filial neglect, the home gained new importance. Housing plans, educational plans, health insurance plans and car plans became “basics” as family life normalized. Under this arguably more peaceful and more affluent regime, a new (political) attitude has developed: one that attunes to, even embraces, capitalist modernity. Proletarian austerity is thus exiled, superseded by middle-class consumerism.

The Hegemony of the Family and Feminist Politics

In the Philippines, the family is decidedly a very powerful institution. The family is also the Catholic Right’s strongest argument against feminist politics. In its fight against Free Choice, for instance, it portrays the recently passed House Bill 4110 (Reproductive Health Care Act, which legalizes all forms of contraception, including post-abortion care) as the gravest threat in present time to the “sanctity of the Filipino family.” While “Third World feminism” has been always concerned with family welfare, reproductive rights and sexuality remain a thorny area that directly put it in direct collision course with the Church. The Catholic Right, in particular, shows great aversion to what it calls the “sexual revolution” ushered in by the invasion of Western products and information base via advances in telecommunications technology.

In the past, the Catholic Church had ironically been GABRIELAs moral ally, particularly in campaigns that had to do with sexual exploitation of women. Though each employed a different language,’ both the women groups and the Catholic Church are for the elimination of prostitution. The present dominance of the Catholic Right and the conservative view that looks at feminism or the idea of female independence as a toxic substance from the West has so much to do with present-day retreats and disavowals in the women’s front: There is no longer a coherent and strong voice — and a mass movement— to challenge misogyny and patriarchy. Besides, the broadening civil society movement draws forces from the multiplicity of voices from various social classes (that includes the religious and the middle-class based and conservative civic groups) that if one wanted to productively pursue advancement of equally worthy causes (e.g., anti-corporate, anti-globalization, peace, environmental protection, etc.), she has to be careful in treading the alliance ground. Feminism being a less attractive fight (since it also fights at home and fights men and bishops), some dissemblance and a little compliance had to be resorted to by practicing women advocates.

Conclusion

In the Philippines, a flowering of people’s initiatives and independent formations occurred following the crumbling of the once solid Left (due to strategic and tactical mistakes) that used to control and define the social transformation project. Abetted by a series of political reforms on the side of governments, e.g., decentralization with the enactment of the Local Government Code, and a system of representation that accommodated in Congress erstwhile state opponents and critics; the absorption of Left personalities in the Cabinet and strategic government agencies; and the pouring in of money in official development aid that has transferred billions of development money into the hands of non-government organizations; all combined to change the face of dissent, what is now called deradicalization. The defeat of adversarial radical politics in favor of an accommodationist, even cooptative, reformist politics. Taking place in an expanding job market and a flow of cheaper consumer goods (thanks both to trade liberalization), not to mention a climate of peace and greater “political freedom” (barring class politics) a better life seems to be “on sale.” The erstwhile activists (a good number of them, anyway), having left class politics and the trenches and having now joined the ranks of the middle class are inevitably trapped into reproducing a way of life that maintains middle-classness. Needless to say, they contribute to the creation of a neoconservative political climate.

For the feminist movement that always rallied behind the once national democratic cause, the defeat of the once Solid Left in the 1990s led to political disarticulation, disorganized the women forces, and demobilized them for a while. With the loss of the Left hegemony and with the emergence of pluralist politics (as encouraged by the State and adequately funded by Churches and governments abroad eager to sponsor political democratization and economic development in the country), new opportunities have been opened for their specific agenda to be heard. However, the sponsorship of gender by development organizations (and the concomitant resources allotted it), and its adoption by government (and the policies and laws enacted to support it) while helping to boost the women’s chances to be accommodated in the male structures of development discourse and processes, also co-opted them. Feminist dissent has been reined in – chastened and placated into complacency and compliance by the laws and institutions that are responsible for their subordination, in the first place. So that even as these women formations struggle to advance their gender interests, their own (feminist) energies get diffused in supposedly more encompassing projects: in the anti-corporate and anti-globalization movement; and in more “compassionate” projects (read as not anti-male): in the peace movement, in the gender and environment movement, in children’s rights, in welfare projects and socio-economic endeavors that do not carry a specifically feminist agenda. All these to reconcile women with, rather than question and challenge, traditional roles that spell their oppression. As feminist causes get institutionalized and the women’s movement relocated to the academe, government offices and other such safe places, adversarial politics and the equality project it seeks to install are demolished. For anyone who insists to stand by this oppositional politics, she stands to lose.

Building the Lumah Mehe: A Moro Muslim Alternative to Seclusion and Integration

This is a sharing of my personal journey as Moro human rights defender and peace activist, and a reflection on the experiences of my organization as Muslim civil society, as well as that of our partner communities in our work in Zamboanga City and Basilan, Southern Philippines.

It’s neither the east nor the west

Islam is beyond the boundaries of culture, beyond because Islam is a way of life which inspiration permeates all religions and cultures. The universality of religious values and unity of religion is a recurring theme in the Qur’an. For one, it is a prerequisite for every Muslim to believe in all the prophets and the books of revelation.

It is in this context of the search for the universal message of Islam that I, as member of a minority ethnic and religious community is a predominantly Catholic state, have come to realize that it is neither in isolation and seclusion nor in superficial integrarion and mainstreaming that Islamic mission is accomplished.

The current social upheavals that have been convulsing the world have in many ways showed to us the ugly faces of globalization, westoxification, and its attending Islamophobia that rides on the bandwagon of world campaign against terrorism. Within the backdrop of the ongoing Moro Islamic Liberation Front-Government of the Republic of the Philippines (MNLF-GRP) 1996 peace agreement, and the aftermath of the events of 9/11, two streams of reactions among the Bangsamoro community emerged. Each reaction harnesses its own support from Muslim traditional leaders and political and religious intellectuals who have defined the Islamic flavoring for the Manila government, particularly in finding projects for peace and development in Mindanao and Sulu.

Isolation, seclusion, and superiority complex

On the one stream is the extreme tendency for isolation ism, seclusion, and persisting superiority complex among Bangsamoro Muslims.

Many Bangsamoro leaders and intellectuals have unfortunately(mistakenly) chosen culture, often that of the Middle East, over the universal ideals and values in Islam. With all due respect to my Muslim brothers and sisters, I take the risk of hurting a cultural sentiment —our famous Moro maratabba—and dare to criticize how often we have misused our identity as Muslims as an excuse for retaining old habits. Wecling to historical myths and refuse to reckon with the present realities of a multicultural and multi-faith Mindanao.

In the name of culture and religion, recalcitrant conservatism and orthodoxy have been preventing the ushering of genuine change by conveniently hiding the inadequacies of traditional systems of patriarchy and old ideologies, eventually perpetuating inequality and injustice in our very homes. The challenge to democracy and good governance last national elections is but one case in point. The world witnessed massive fraud in Philippine electoral politics under the blatant sponsorship of local leaders in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Blind obedience in command voting is justified by misappropriating and wrongly attributing it to shura or consultation, and shamefully claiming it an Islamic obligation for literate leaders to rob the vote from illiterate followers. Outright cheating through vote-buying and hakot system is touted as exercise of democracy in Islam.

Mass ignorance of Islamic doctrine and the lack of knowledge of divine teachings even among progressive intellectuals have given full reign to ulamu and asatidz who arc vested the sole privilege of issuing opinions on contemporary political and social issues, which, more often than not, are characterized by deaf silence. Or, if ever any issuances are made, these are incoherent and confused mumblings.

A related issue to this is gender equality and reproductive rights where obscure and distorted Qur’anic texts and doubtful prophetic traditions have been carelessly quoted to disclaim that gender inequality exists in Moro society. Age-old a’dat or customary tradition persists because the voice of moral guidance is uncritical and silent. Meanwhile, women are routinely coerced to marry their abductors and rapists, or suffer in the hands of abusive husbands. Zeenah, otherwise known as crime of passion,is ambivalently defined. Having no adequate and proper legal assistance,women can be arbitrarily accused of tainting communal honor, providing enough reason for men to start a senseless war. Perpetually chained to their beds and kitchens, many Moro women, regardless of ethnicity or social status, continue to silently languish as they strive to be the ideal and submissive wives, daughters, and mothers. This culture of silence which draws approval by virtue of misappropriated Islamic wisdom has been a convenient excuse for denying women their rights in upholding their integrity as persons and in not entrusting them equal responsibility to lead and exercise reproductive roles in the family and society.

All these have continued because the Moro Muslims, on the veil of strangeness and given the mystery and sanctity shrouding its laws and culture, have the perfect excuse for impunity from scrutiny and criticism by rights’ groups or among the faithful who choose to use reason over blind submission to dogma and tradition. The same superiority complex has also persistently cast and excluded the non-Muslims as kafir.

Needless to emphasize, the challenge of the times is for us to come out from the shadow of this self-imposed seclusion and shed the false security in being of a different cultural mold.

Integration and mainstreaming Islam

On the other stream, we also have those who have succumbed to pacification and integration campaigns hook, line, and sinker. This strand comes from the Moro Muslim’s response to massive efforts toward Muslim integration in the peace and development projects in post-conflict Mindanao and Sulu, where most of the Official Development Assistance (ODA) and multi- and bilateral international donations go.Integration projects have taken the shape of mainstreaming the madrasa or including Islamic instruction in basic public education curriculum and in training teachers to teach Islam in the classrooms. It is also observed in the culture-sensitization of government programs by equally celebrating and promoting anything from the south that is Muslim,such as Muslim food, Muslim dances, and Muslim costumes, and in the legislative issuances for petty reforms such as public observance of Muslim holidays.

The more ambitious project of ushering in demobilized Moro combatants into national politics has proved to be a fiasco, exemplified by the incarceration of MNLF leader Prof. Nur Misuari and a number of MNLF ex-commanders now turned trapos. Though sounding magnanimous in name, these efforts have been lackluster, wanting in values and essence.

Time would not allow me to elaborate further than to say how the watered-down mainstreamed madrasa is faring in a national education system that is mired in its own crisis of quality and misdirected mission. The so-called Islamic values integration in the Revised Basic Education Curriculum (RBEC) are, at best, mere token of introductory Arabic grammar lessons, and in some cases, reducing lofty ideals of Islam to embarrassing antiquarian values. One clear fallout of this mainstreaming project has been the marginalization and the threatened obliteration of community-based religious education and home studies of Qur’an, where real value formation happens.

Yet another aspect of integration is in the power-sharing with Moro political aspirants and their participation in Philippine body politic. This prospered especially in turning Moro ideologues and mujahideens into politicians. As a result, we have dynastic monopolies entrenched in government positions where among the infamous cases in the island provinces in the ARMM have been husband-with-two-or-three-wives occupying choicest positions as congressman, governor, city mayor, and heads of strategic local government agencies.

In both streams of Moro Muslim responses, there seems to be a common denominator in demonstrating Islam as lame acts of external display of piety or as superficial cultural show of rituals and ceremonies. Worse, this Islam has become a mere dress code and stamps of clerical approval where to be Muslim or be Islamic is to be confirmed by the anointing powers of the ulama, the imams, the asatidz, or by just any male leader who identifies himself to be a Muslim.

Response from the Moro civil society

From where civil society stands in the periphery, these paradoxical streams of reactions put us at a crossroad. Our only choice as it appears now is to favor a stance allowing the voice of the grassroots to be heard. Without critically examining and reconstructing the local environment that breeds violence and injustice, the collaboration of Muslim religious leaders and intellectuals might have succeeded in accommodating a few into the Manila-centric government. However, such accommodation might fall into the trap of trivializing and diluting the mission in overhauling the system where the very roots of Dar-ul Kufur and human sufferings thrive.

On the other hand, the Bangsamoro nationalist cause has increasingly drifted towards elitism and isolation from the masses who come in and out of evacuation centers in hoards each time the Moro liberation fronts and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) declare a resumption of war. The social and economic costs of a long and protracted war put the Moro liberation movement in danger of losing its mass base, as hunger and deprivation render multitudes of civilians into apathy and desperation. Its factionalism within has deeply cleaved a sense of otherness even among Bangsamoro majority and minority ethnic groups. In stubbornly straddling its high horse, the Moro liberation movement carelessly disregards the Lumad and Christian settler’s questions and stake in the homeland, what with its exclusively of the peace process and non-transparency of its political and economic agenda for the autonomous republic it wants to build.

Crisis in development framework

As part of the civil society, there are at least two significant experiences of the Lumah Ma Dilaut Center for Living Traditions that I could share. Lumah Ma Dilaut is an affiliate of the Asian Muslim Action Network in the Philippines (AMANPHIL), which is a local chapter of the Asia-wide umbrella where Dr. Chandra Muzzafar and Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer are the founding fathers.

Like any self-respecting organization, AMANPMIL and Lumah Ma Dilaut went through a period of discernment in the midst of a crisis of framework that came in the wake of the declaration of the all-out war in 2000 and the continuing militarization in most of the countrysides in Bangsamoro villages. Despite the supposed lull and post-conflict reconstruction scenario in the aftermath of the 1996 peace agreement, violence marked the communities we worked with. This dilemma was intensified by the 9/11 attacks on US cities in 2001 when Islamic extremism was at its re-surging peak.

The first realization which came out of this discernment was the need to shift gears: From focusing our work in supporting what we have come to perceive as narrow politics of Bangsamoro nationalism, to continuing and reaffirming our rights-based approach to development and advocacy for peace based on social justice and equity. The Bangsamoro nationalist project has no doubt been an important ground for the intellectual and political maturation of the Moro activists, yet it is disappointing to see that its ideology and claimed aqueedah or faith-inspiration have yet to be translated into action on the ground.

The second realization was not only the need to emphasize secular approaches to our activism but also to broaden our perspectives and to ground our work in deep knowledge of Islam. First and foremost was the need to actualize our being Muslims working for human rights and building lasting peace based on social justice and equitability as mission towards humanity. In the process, we experienced a painful period of ideological and spiritual self-examination and, hopefully, renewal. Some of us stuck to the old mission of da’wah in the purely the line of the Moro nationalist political agenda. A few of us who were caught in between hung in limbo to see through the birthing of a humble and oft-sidelined program on women and children in vulnerable minority ethnic Moro communities. This rebirth became the Lumah Ma Dilaut Center for Living Traditions.

The creation of Lumah Ma Dilaut necessitated the dramatic transition of our educational work which, in AMANPHIL Culture of Peace (COP) Manual (2001), we described as applying the jihadic paradigm in a da’wah jama-a, with the unspoken mission of inviting non-Muslims to turn to Islam. AMANPHIL committed itself to human rights and development work using the Islamic perspective. The COP module it developed in 2001explored the concrete applications of Islamic precepts in development work and initially siiaped and defined its methods of work based on the principle of social change in the jihadic paradigm. Its vision of peaceful co-existence and process of social reconstruction is anchored in the concept of Tawheed or unity and holism.

From Qalam to KAALAM

In more concrete terms, the reform included shifting from QALAM to KAALAM. QALAM (i.e., inspired by a Qur’an verse The Pen) stands for Qur’an based Alternative Learning and Social Action module that AMANPHIL implemented in Jolo as a pilot study of integrating Islamic values into mainstream public secondary schools by trign to model a pesantren-type education and volunteerism project. KAALAM, acronym for Katutubong Alyansang Lumad-Moro para sa Angkop at Mapagpalayang Edukasyon, is translated as Lumad-Moro indigenous alliance for appropriate and liberating education. Lumah Ma Dilaut does not describe its work to be jihadic and the da’wah in promoting indigenous knowledge systems and practices and in modeling appropriate and empowering program for reviving the spiritual and cultural energies of the Sama ethnic communities. It is nonetheless a self-fulfillment for its mostly Muslim staff as their own personal jihad and a way of da’wah. We take pride in our home-made curriculum for the three iskul-iskul ma Lumah ma dilaut that we are nurture in small Sama Dilaut villages in Zamboanga City and Basilan. At iskul-iskul, we teach the values of pag-omboh or ancestral reverence, a form of animistic practice by the indigenous Sama Dilaut; we also imbue the learners with the appreciation and valuing of extent cultural traditions of the rural Muslim communities, for example the Taitih or Nisfu’Shaban (or remembrance of the dead) and the Rabbana tradition during Isra wal mi’raj. Side by side with teaching the basic Islamic pillars of faith, we tell stories of the Prophet Jesus’ nativity as narrated in Surah Maryan in the Qur’an. More than being religious these traditions and practices have been perfect opportunities for reinvigorating the spirit and binding the force for forging communal harmony.

Implications and challenges in community development work and peace advocacy

In a nutshell, these two strategic moves have great implications in our community work and peace and rights advocacy. First, the Lumah Ma Dilaut refuses to blindly submit to integration or mainstreaming into the national systems without first ensuring a systemic recognition, empowerment, and institutionalization of traditional systems of governance and justice, and in ensuring a place for the perpetuation of our indigenous knowledge systems and practices where values and spirituality that our faiths teach are embedded.

Second, it is suspicious of isolationist and elitist-sectarian moves . by nationalists, especially of agenda that pit oppressed communities against each other, pitch issues of Muslim-Christian conflict, or endorse Bangsamoro nationalist unilateral interests without due respect for the Lumad and other inhabitants in still much contested Moro territories or ancestral domains.

Third, we realize the need to give voice to the most marginalized, excluded, and vulnerable Moro communities. So we chose to work with the Sama Dilaut or Bajau. The Sama Dilaut, considered a Moro people only because of their traditionally plying the Sulu seas, is an interesting case. Narratives from the remnants of this passing traditional society portray a nostalgic story of their transition from sea-nomadism to urban mendicancy. The Philippine Bajaus are largely practicing an indigenous religion. Although a growing number are Islamized, most are only nominally Muslims mired in massive poverty and illiteracy. By and large, they are not considered a political threat by the national government on account of their non-integration into the Moro nationalist movement and their non-inclusion in traditional politico-social structure such as the sultanate or data systems. As such, they stake the least in power and prestige in current politics. Remaining as fluid, free-spirited communities, they are free citizens of the Malaysia-Philippine-Indonesia-Brunei Darussalam sea basin.

To us, the unique position of the Sama Dilaut could be the ultimate test of the limits of our political and economic tools for empowerment, challenging our sociocultural, even religious and spiritual, constructs of human development and human rights. At the psychological and moral level, it measures the sincerity of our intentions and the degree of tolerance that we put to volunteerism. In sum, it challenges the appropriateness of our framework for development and grassroots empowerment and in establishing social justice.

In closing, I would like to reiterate that empowerment does not lie in the seclusion and isolation of Islam in a political or nationalist cause, nor in integrating or mainstreaming Islam to the mold of a particular culture. It is erroneous and presumptuous even to say that as Muslim civil society, our project is to evolve an alternative Islamic ideology or Islamic culture as Islam cannot be reduced to a particular theory or cultural face. Our mission is to rediscover the universal message in Islam as the common thread, a unifying force, for all religions and cultures of the world to be comfortable and accepted. Our humble mission is to build a Lumah Niche, a big home that brings together every culture and religion into one big family of the Islamic way of life.