FIRST RELIGIONS

The story of Magellan’s arrival is a well-known illustration of how the locals became Catholic, but the history of the other great Middle Eastern religion Islam in our country is less well-understood.

While Christianity came here as a deliberate political strategy of conquest, Islam arrived more organically through traders from India, Arabia, China and other Malay states. Scholars estimate 1380 as the possible construction date of the first mosque in Simunul, Tawi Tawi, coinciding with the escalation of maritime trade across Southeast Asia. Experienced Filipino sailors — mainly merchants from Sulu and Luzon — participated in these inter-island trading networks and became exposed to Islam in their travels. 

Hence, while datus were the first Filipino Christians, merchants were the first Filipino Muslims and the main conduit for the spread of Islam in the Philippines. Filipino traders wanting to be taken seriously in Brunei or Malacca would have had to give up their tattoos and tree-fiber bahag, dress themselves in Malay cotton and silk fashions, and eventually accept the new belief system. As the Filipino traders grew wealthy, their offspring would become eligible to marry into the ruling local datus and rajahs, attracting them and their followers to the new religion, and integrating the entire barangay into the growing network of Muslim Malay trading hubs. 

The royal alliance between Rajah Sulayman’s Manila with Brunei during the 1570 arrival of Legazpi’s fleet is the perfect illustration of the link between the seaborne trade and the Muslim faith. Scholars opine that had the Spanish not arrived and provided the more economically lucrative trans-Pacific trading network from which the ruling class could benefit, Manila would be as Muslim as Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta are today. 

The irony here is that the faith that has the political and violent history in the Philippines is the one that attributes political violence to the other set of believers. And more depressingly, the faith that entered the country through the people’s search for economic mobility is mostly practiced by those who remain economically deprived.