Islam in the Moro-Sulu Sultanate

[Part 1 of Draft E-Book]

RT Oliveros, Ph.D.

Moro history in Sulu is shrouded with stories of the Taosug’s struggle to

understand and remain faithful to their religion Islam. Through the centuries they were
recipients of interpreters of the Qur’an at every specific period in their history. As late
as the American period in Sulu in the 20th century, the religious observance of Islam is
centered on their loyalty to the Sultan. For centuries it has always been submission to
Allah resulting to wars and towards longer periods of peace (kalinaw). Deviation from
the teachings in the Qur’an resulted to a practice of Islam not in accordance with Allah’s
will. The times they deviated from the teachings of Islam resulted to wars and violence
inconsistent with Islam.

The Taosug are not indigenous to the Sulu area. They were immigrants from
Northern Mindanao. The Taosugs were originally from Butuan of northern Mindanao.
They migrated to Sulu in the 11th century, and since they were more advanced than the
indigenous Samal, the original settlers of Sulu,1 they displaced them and inhabited Jolo,
the main port of the Sulu islands. Sulu appears in Chinese sources only during the
Yuan dynasty (1278-1368) and the subsequent Ming dynasty (1368-1644), the Chinese
recorded that as early as 982 AD, Mayi2 ships were repeatedly seen in trading ports in
southern China. “China reported that the boats were constructed of several thickness of
side planks. They used the fibrous bark of the coconut tree to make cords to bind the
planks together. There are no nails or clamps used.”3 This description fits the boats
built in Butuan, circa 320 AD.4

So the Butuanons migrated to Sulu not by land but they rode the winds
in their balangay (literally means ‘boat’) to reach the Sulu zone that became
the center of trade with China. To this day, the Taosug as people are still riding
that balangay boat akin to their religion Islam. They were the first Moro to
embrace Islam as their religion. May their search for its true meaning lead
them to the meaning of the religion that they embraced for more than eight
centuries bring them salaam- peace.

1
William Henry Scott, Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society (Quezon City:
Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994), 178.

2
‘Mayi is the old Chinese name for the Philippine Islands given by the Sung and Yuan
cartographers,’ Patanne, The Philippines in the 6th to 16th Centuries as quoted in Ututalum and Hedjazi,
39.

3
Manguin, Catalogues raisonne’ De L’oeuvre Peint (1980), quoted in Ututalum and Hedjazi, 25.

4
Ibid, 25.
This book is strictly not a work on history. Integrated within my research is my story
as a Taosug, a former Jesuit who has specialized in Islamic and Moro Studies, and who
grew up in a family of a Muslim-Taosug mother married to a Catholic. My mother
Rahma Rasul Taib, a Taosug, belonged to the Rasul clan of Jolo, Sulu. With sadness she
consented to the desire of her five sons to become Catholics like their father Pedro.
Nonetheless, Rahma managed to give each of her sons an Arabic name. She named me
Ombra. Although my brothers and I went to Catholic schools we never entertained the
idea of converting our mother to our religion. We love her so much that we respected
her being a Muslim.

Living in a predominant Catholic Cagayan de Oro, Rahma associated more with

Catholics than with Muslims. The only opportunity she had to associate with fellow
Muslims were on Saturdays which she called ‘market day.’ There are many Muslims,
mostly Maranao and a few Taosug, who own stalls in Cagayan’s marketplace. She
bought stuff from her Muslim friends to support their business but her closest friends
were all Catholics. Her affection for Catholicism deepened when I was ordained to the
priesthood. She gave her whole support to my calling to be a Jesuit priest. But after 25
years as a Jesuit I called it quits. [But that is all together another story so dear to me that
I promised Fr. Jojo Magadia, SJ, my last provincial, that I will bring it to my grave.]
Rahma shed tears when she heard that John Paul II died. I remember saying that the
Pope John Paul was a holy man.

My mother did not teach me the rudiments of Islam. What she taught me was a
spirituality of Islam. She taught me sensitivity and tolerance for people of all faith. She
treated all peoples who pray to God as partners and companions in bringing greater
good in the world. I learned the rudiments of Islam from formal schooling when the
Jesuits sent me to Hartford Seminary in Connecticut (1997-2000) under the tutelage
Muslim professors like Ibrahim Abu-Rabi and Ingrid Mattson, and to Temple
University in Philadelphia (2000-2005) to be mentored by Mahmoud Ayoub and Khalid
Blankinship. From my study I encountered the works of influential historians and
anthropologists who are not Muslims nor Filipinos but have great and deep respect for
the Moro people. They are James Warren, Peter Gowing, Thomas Kiefer and Gerard
Rixhon. Their integrity and commitment to tell the story of the Moro people remain my
inspiration. Truth will always inspire and at times hurt but in the end will liberate the
Taosug. Not driven by politics nor to romanticize Moro history for it is in telling the
true story that the Moro people can learn from their past and discern their future as
Muslims from within a pluralist Philippines.

It was my graduate degrees in both Catholic and Islamic theology that helped me
shape a way of reading into sacred events in the lives of the Moro people which from an
Islamic perspective are considered iconic because Allah has entered and intervened in
their history. They prayerfully remember (dhkr) these sacred events with gratitude to
Allah for he has shown His mercy and saving power to their Muslim community
regardless of the outcome of those significant events in their history. If Catholics are
helped in their prayers when they contemplate on icons of the sacred images of Jesus
Christ, Mary and the saints; for Muslims, on the other hand, are also helped in their
prayers by remembering (dhkr) iconic moments and events in their history. Significant
events in the history of every Muslim community worldwide are celebrated to
commemorate Allah’s intervention in their history.

Islamic Resistance in the Moro World

Consistent with the teaching of Islam, Rahma was a woman of peace. She was
silent and refused to talk about the times that Islam is dragged in the news in 9-11. The
only moment she broke her silence is to say that people are no longer afraid of God, and
even used God’s name in vain. Yet despite the message of peace in Islam, the Taosug
narrative within the scope of this book is marred with conflict and violence.

Islam has been popularly defined as ‘the religion of peace’ because the Arabic
word, Islam, as they say is derived from the Arabic word ‘al-salaam’ which means peace.
The root of Islam, however, is not ‘al-salaam’ but ‘al-silm’ which means ‘submission’ or
‘surrender.’ The verbal noun ‫إسْ الم‬ (ʾislām) literally means ‘submission,’ and the active
participle of  ‫أَسْ لَ َم‬ (ʾaslama) is ‘he submitted.’ The Arabic word for a person who is
a ‫مُسْ لِم‬ (muslim) literally means as ‘someone who submits’ as the Qur’an ascertains that
the ideal Muslim is someone who submits totally to God. For it is in submitting to
Allah’s will that a person can truly live a life of peace. Peace is a consequence of
Submission. The same meaning and message can be extended and applied to the
person’s community, and furthermore, to the whole of humanity. For it is only when
man submits to Allah that true peace will reign on earth.

Despite the message of peace in their religion, the Taosug narrative in the scope
of this study is marred with violence. From Sultan Jamal ul-Azam I, the last great
Sultan of Sulu who reigned from 1862-1881, up to the Battle of Bud Bagsak [1913], the
Taosug resistance against the American Policy of Disarmament. It was against this
background of continuous conflict that Islam in the Sulu Sultanate was played out.

From the pre-American period of Sultan Jamal ul-Azam I, the last great Sultan of
Sulu who reigned from 1862-1881, and American period of 1899-1913 culminating in
the Battle of Bud Bagsak [1913] which was the Taosug resistance against the American
Policy of Disarmament. It was against this background of continuous conflict that Islam
in the Sulu Sultanate was played out. Islam, nonetheless, in those periods, will play a
central role in the lives of the Taosug as an occupied people.

“In the American scheme of things, religious factors had no place in politics, and so in
planning political arrangements for the Moros, Americans felt little or no need to take
religion into account. ... The Moros saw themselves as Muslims in everything they
did. ... They believed that their laws and customs were consistent with the commands
and teachings of the Holy Qur’an. Any move to change their society or enforce to
obedience to the laws of foreigners was seen as a fundamental challenge to their religion
 and to the very existence as human beings.” Peter Gowing5

The Moros6 saw themselves as Muslims in everything they did—and so it is

imperative that Islam, as interpreted and practiced in the Sulu Sultanate, be considered
to best understand the conflicted relationship between the Moro belief system and the
American policies in the Sulu Sultanate at the turn of the 20th century. General Leonard
Wood concluded that “Islam accentuates the Moros’ opposition to control by
Christians.”7 This resonates with the conviction of General John Pershing8 that
although the individual Moro knew “little of the Mohammedan religion, as his
instruction amounts only to be a poor reading of the Koran without understanding
much about its meaning,”9 Islam as the Moro’s religion was “responsible for the vigor
of Moro resistance.”10 Whatever was flawed in their rendering of Islam by the time the
Americans arrived, to the Moros it was nevertheless Islam.

On the contrary, anthropologist Thomas McKenna has disputed that Islam

strengthened the Moros’ resolve to resist the colonial intrusions by Spain and,
subsequently, the United States. There was little, if any, Islamic foundation to the Moro
resistance because the Moros were merely superficially Muslim at the time of American
occupation. McKenna argues that “while there exist several accounts of religious
observance by the high nobility of various sultanates, descriptions of the level of
religiosity of Muslims subordinates are quite scarce.” 11 Religious observance, if there
was any, was reserved to the elite and that consisted of the sultan, the datus and their
families, and the imam(s). American colonial administrator Najeeb Saleeby,12 had also
questioned the extent of religious opposition when he concluded that “religion has
never been a cause of hostility between Americans and Moros.”13 He based his
5
Peter Gowing, Mandate in Moroland, New Day Publishers, Quezon City, 1983, p. 323.o

6
There are thirteen Moro ethnolinguistic tribes. This study limits itself to the Taosug tribe of
Sulu, the third largest tribe and the first to be converted to Islam.

7
Report of the Governor of the Moro Province (RGMP), 1906, p. 8 in Gowing, 1983,
143.
8
Governor of the Moro Province, 1909-1913.
9
Gowing, 1983, 143.
10
Gowing, 143.
11
Thomas McKenna, Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism in the Southern
Philippines (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 82.

12
Lebanese-American Christian who was colonial administrator of the Moros
during the American occupation.

13
Najeeb Saleeby, “The Moro Problem: An Academic Discussion of the History and Solution of the
Problem of the Government of the Moros of the Philippine Islands” (Manila: Press of E.C. McCullough and
Co., 1913), 24.
conclusion on his findings that the Moros “do not understand the principal doctrines of
Mohammedanism, and have so little religion at heart that it is impossible for them to
get enthusiastic and fanatic on this ground. They do not know the five prayers and
seldom enter a mosque.”14 Elsewhere in Mindanao, this too was the observation of
William Dampier, an English navigator who visited the Sultanate of Maguindanao in
1686, when he noted that “Friday is their Sabbath; but I did never see any difference
that they make between this Day and any other Day; only the Sultan himself goes to the
Mosque twice.”15

Although McKenna and Saleeby were accurate in their observation that Moros
had little knowledge of Islam, what they failed to grasp was that for the Moros, even as
late as the turn of the 20th century, Islam was not about ilm (knowledge of Islam) or
about the practice of the “five pillars.” Islam for the Moros had more to do with loyalty
to their sultan. “They believe that it is not possible to be a true Moslem without loyalty
to a sultan who is compared to God’s representative on earth.” 16 Without the sultan,
there could be no community, nor Moros could properly claim to be Muslims, for in
order to acknowledge the sovereignty of God, it was necessary for them to also
acknowledge their sultan.17

This approximates the Muslims belief in their caliphs during the early period of
Islam; obedience to the caliph was deemed necessary for salvation because his authority
came straight from God. The choice to submit and give one’s allegiance to the khalifah
was a matter of salvation.18 Salvation entails a witnessing to God’s sovereignty and
submission to his will, and this was concretely expressed through their loyalty and
submission to their caliph. Whether the Taosug understood it this way, nonetheless,
they have institutionalized their loyalty to their sultan as integral to their practice of
Islam. They were loyal to the extent that they were even willing to do parrang sabil or
jihad in the defense of their sultan which for the Moros was Islamic. One must
understand how Islam was understood and practiced at that time.

A Sultanate in the Sulu Zone

14
Saleeby, 24.

15
William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (New York: Dover Publications, 1968), 231.
(1st published in 1697)
16
Kiefer, 1972, 107.

17
Thomas Kiefer, “The Tausug Polity and the Sultanate of Sulu: A Segmentary State in the
Southern Philippines,” in Sulu Studies I, ed. Gerhard Rixhon (Jolo, Sulu: Notre Dame of Jolo College,
1972), 33.

Andrew Rippin, Muslims, Volume 1: The Formative Period (London: Routledge,

18

1990), 57.
 Pre-Islamic Barangay19 System

Before Islam first reached Lupah Sug (Land of Sulu) in the 13th century and
established a sultanate in the 15th century, peoples in Sulu, as in the rest of Philippine
archipelago, developed settlements called banua, or a barangay, the basic unit of a
settlement. The generally accepted theory is that the Sulu sultanate appears to have
developed from the indigenous barangay system. The barangay type of native social
and political organization was based on kinship that expanded beyond family
relationships, and was ruled by a datu (Malay) or a rajah (Hindu). These datus ruled as
feudal lords of fortified kuta’(s) (walled villages) scattered throughout the Sulu
archipelago.

A turning point in Sulu‘s history was when Sayyid20 Abu Bakr reached Sulu. In
the annals of Malacca it is recorded that Abu Bakr was regarded as a famous authority
on law and religion. Having heard of Abu Bakr, the people of Sulu sent Orankaya Su’il
to Basilan to invite him to Buwansa near Jolo. This invitation was accepted by Abu
Bakr.21 Although Sayyid Abu Bakr was most probably Malay, Taosugs claimed that he
was from Arabia and a descendant of Muhammad, thus legitimizing his status as
sultan. This is why that even though the Taosugs made contacts with Muslim
merchants from China, India and the Malay Archipelago, they attribute their origins as
Muslims to the Arabs. Abu Bakr married Paramisuli22, the daughter of Rajah Baguinda,
the reigning Rajah of Sulu. When Rajah Baguinda chose Abu Bakr to be his successor,
Abu Bakr took the name Sharif ul-Hashim and established an Islamic system of
government, a sultanate, and him as its first Sultan23. British ethno-linguists who
studied the Malay language defined sultan, as understood by the Malays, as a title
assumed by several native princes, implying an independent sovereign and recognizing
no other sovereignty or paramount power.24

Saleeby observed that the Moros believed that their sultan was of noble birth and

19
Literally means ‘boat.’ A barangay is a village, the basic social unit of government in pre-Islamic
and Christian Philippines. Northerners call a village a barangay, the southerners like the Moros call a
village a banua/banwa or balangay.

20
For the Moros, “Titles such as sharifs and sayyids imply that they are descendants of the
Prophet as in the case of Sayyid Abu Bakr an Arab who arrived from Brunei who arrived in Sulu to
establish the Sulu Sultanate.” (Kiefer, The Tausug: Violence and Law, 34)

21
Saleeby, 1963, 45-46.

22
Some Sulu traditions say that Abu Bakr actually married the young widow of Rajah Baguinda. In some
traditions it was the widow who married Sayyid Abu Bakr (Saleeby, 1963, 11).

23
Its literal meaning is “strength” or “might”, in the Qur’an it means “authority” or “power”. In the era of
Sultanates it refers to a ruler or king. [Thomas Hughes, Dictionary of Islam, 1885, 622.

24
Wilkinson, R.J., 1959 [1932], A Malay-English dictionary (London: Macmillan; New York: St.
Martin's Press, Two Vols.), 396.
the Prophet’s blood runs through his veins.25 The Taosug may not fully understand the
basics of Islam and a Caliphate type of governance, the notion that the blood of the
Prophet runs in the sultan’s vein is sufficient enough to merit their respect and make
them submit to their sultan. For them, fundamentally, by submitting to their sultan
they are Muslims. For the Taosug, the leadership of the community was symbolized in
the sultan … Without the sultan, there could be no community, nor men properly claim
to be Muslims, for in order to acknowledge the sovereignty and unity of God, it was
necessary to give a similar acknowledgement to the sultan.26

The Muhammadan Paradigm

In Medina, the Prophet Muhammad was both Imam and political leader of the
first ummah (Muslim community) in Medina. The first four rightly guided Caliphs
emulated the Prophet Muhammad in terms of governing the Islamic state starting in
Medina, to Damascus and then Baghdad in the 8th century. The Muhammad paradigm
of governance was operative in the Ottoman Empire, and in the sultanates that
sprouted in Southeast Asia.

So it is but logical that Abu Bakr patterned the Sulu Sultanate after the other
sultanates in existence in Southeast Asia. What system or manner of governance that
Sayyid Abu Bakr introduced in the Sulu Sultanate? It was a Caliphate-- headed by the
Khalifah or successor to the Prophet of Islam. In the 14 centuries since its foundation,
the Muslim world has the Caliphate in the Arab world and sultanates outside the Arab
world as a political system. “Sultan” is a title given to local princes and rulers outside of
Mecca and Medina, the two major Islamic centers in Saudi Arabia, wherein the
exclusive title Khalifah (Caliph or successor to the Prophet) is reserved.

The term ‘sultan’ occurs in the Qur’an:

Surah 17.33: Ja’alnaa li-waliyyihii sultaanan falaa yusrif-fil-qatl.

[We have given his next of kin authority.]

Surah 51.38: Wa fii Musa ‘iz ‘arsalnaahu ‘ilaa fir-‘awna bi-sultanim-mubiin.

[We sent Moses to Pharoah with a manifest power.]

After the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, the title “sultan” became
synonymous with the rulers of Saljuk dynasty (11th-12th centuries) who dominated and
replaced the Caliphs of Baghdad. The sultans gained greater prominence under the
Mamluks in Egypt (mid-13th-15th centuries). The title resurfaced in the Ottoman dynasty
under Sultan Selim in 1517. When Malay kingdoms in Southeast Asia began
transforming into sultanates in the late 12th century, the local rajahs (rulers) along the
25
Saleeby, 1913, 17.

26
Kiefer, The Tausug Polity, 34.
Straits of Malacca adopted the title sultan.27 British ethno-linguists who studied the
Malay language defined sultan, as understood by the Malays, as a title assumed by
several native princes, implying an independent sovereign and recognizing no other
sovereignty or paramount power.28

The Khalifah “represents” the Prophet of Islam, and such authority is “delegated”
to the local ruler or sultan.29 This status is affirmed by Jama ul-Kiram II in April 1904
when he wrote to Governor-General Luke E. Wright stating Article 4: “that U.S.
guarantee the sultanate ‘for ever and ever’ because the Sultan is head of the
Muhammedan religion, the representative of Muhammad –- .” Even such prestige was
given to the Sulu Sultan it, nonetheless, recognized that the the legitimate successor to
the Prophet resided with the Khalifah Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire in
Turkey.30 In order to arrive at a sound interpretation of Islam, the Taosug sultan Kiram
II sought the advice of foreign qadis (judges or legal expert), his wazir (prime minister)
and the ruma bichara (council of datus). Thomas Forrest, who was in Sulu in 1776, wrote
that the high priest in Sulu was a Turk.31

A sultanate form of Islamic governance was operative in Turkey at the turn of the
20th century as succeeding sultans in the Ottoman Empire claimed themselves to be
Caliph. Nathan Straus, the American Minister to Turkey, had to appeal to Sultan of
Turkey to convince the Sultan of Sulu not to war against the Americans when they first
landed in Sulu in 1899.32 So when Turkey sided with the Axis Powers against the Allies
in World War I, American authorities were concerned about where the sympathies of
the Moros would be since Moros recognized the Sultan of Turkey as caliph and spiritual
head of Islam in the world.33

So when Sayyid Abu Bakr established the Sulu Sultanate in the 15 th century, the
only available model of Islamic governance was the Caliphate as established by the
subsequent successors to the Prophet Muhammad. Even if Sayyid Abu Bakr did not

Michael Laffan,
27

[Link]

Wilkinson, R.J., 1959 [1932], A Malay-English dictionary (London: Macmillan; New

28

York: St. Martin's Press, Two Vols.), 396.

29
F.E. Peters, A Reader on Classical Islam, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1994, 120 and 147.

30
Recent scholarship state that the title to the Caliphate ‘disappeared’; its transference to the Ottomans
was a fiction invented in the 18th Century. [Cyril Glasse, 1999, 305].

31
Forrest, A Voyage to New Guinea and the Moluccas (1774-1776) (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford
University Press, 1969), 331. (1 st published in 1729)

32
Gowing, Mandate in Moroland, 30.

33
Rogers, 114.
claim to be Khalifah, his sultanate was patterned after other sultanates in the region of
Southeast Asia. That is, the sultan as a ruler, is a humbler version of the actual Caliph
of Islam who is generally believed to be in Arabia. Even the first caliph of Islam, Abu
Bakr (632-34 C.E.), adapted a humble position, one reserved for the great prophets in
the Qur’an, when he adapted the title khalifat rasul Allah (successor of the messenger of
God).34 The Taosug identified their sultan as halip tul rasul (successor of the
messenger/ prophet). Over time they accept that the sultan is the Prophet’s khalifah or
local representative. As khalifah he executed God’s will.

ISLAM in the Sulu Sultanate

The Islam that was practiced in Sulu during the American occupation did not
emphasize rituals. Instead, it was centered on the sultan whose status they had so
sacralized. As early as the 17th century, William Dampier, an English navigator, who
visited Sulu in 1686, observed that it was only the sultan who observed the salat
(prayers) at the mosque. He observed a typical Friday, the day of prayer, and wrote: …
only the Sultan himself goes then to the Mosque twice. Raja Laut35 never goes to the
Mosque but prays at certain Hours, Eight or Ten times in a Day; where-ever he is, he is
very punctual to his Canonical Business. … His Servants and Wives and Children talk
and sing, or play how they please all the time, but he himself is very serious. The
meaner sort of People have little Devotion: I did never see any of them at their Prayers,
or go into a Mosque.36 Although Dampier’s observation was of the Maguindanao
Sultanate, a sultanate east of Sulu, Najeeb Saleeby had a similar observation of Sulu at
the turn of the 20th century. As the very nature of the sultan’s office, it was expected
that he perform the religious duties. The only rituals in which the common Moro
participated were the rites of circumcision for adolescent boys, performed by an imam,37
and the rites of parrang sabil, in which a sabil takes a holy oath before a pandita that he
will defend Islam. Other than that, it was the sultan who performed the daily rituals,
particularly the salat (five daily prayers), which otherwise would be obligatory to all
Muslims as a pillar of faith.

The loyalty to their datu was a significant factor to the mass conversion of
Moro’s to Islam. Once the datu was converted to Islam, practically all in his barangay
also embrace the new religion of their datu. The sakop(s) followed their datu’s shift in
religion out of loyalty and allegiance to him and trust in his good will. The introduction
of Islam further deepened the bond between the datu and sakop by giving it a religious
and transcendent dimension. As a consequence, the datus and their sakop(s) became
bound to one another by enduring Islamic bonds. A Moro’s loyalty to his datu was
34
Ibid, 19.

35
Brother of the Sultan and heir apparent to the Sultanate.

36
Dampier, 231.

37
Dampier, 1968, 232.
now seen as a religious obligation. Najeeb Saleeby was aware of this when he
recommended to the American colonial authorities in Sulu that “Islam should be
encouraged by colonial authorities because it is which binds the Muslim populace most
indelibly to their leaders.”38

Sacralizing the Taosug Sultan

For the Taosug, the leadership of the community was symbolized in the sultan …
Without the sultan, there could be no community, nor men properly claim to be Muslims,
for in order to acknowledge the sovereignty and unity of God, it was necessary to give a
similar acknowledgement to the sultan.39 Thomas Kiefer

Moros were led to believe that the blood of the Prophet Muhammad ran in his
veins. The Moros were loyal to the Sultan as well as to their datus as expression of their
fidelity to Allah.40 They believed that the sultan was the successor to the Prophet
Muhammad, and so they associated their sultan with the puunan sin agama, foundation
of the faith. Saleeby observed that the Moros believed that their sultan was of noble
birth and the Prophet’s blood runs through his veins.41 The Moros celebrated this status
of the sultan through an annual religious ceremony during Maulud-al-Nabi (birthday of
the Prophet). On that day they pay homage to their sultan by kissing his forehead
which for them like kissing the nabi.42 The participant of this rite was believed to
receive the barakat, God’s blessing or grace, because God’s charismatic grace (barakat)
surrounds the person of the sultan.

As one representing the prophet Muhammad, the person of the Sultan was so
sacred and no man can do him bodily harm without incurring God’s wrath and terrible
punishment in this life and in the life to come.43 His wrath (mulka) was similar to the
wrath of God.44 Moros believed, too, that at the end of every Moro’s lifetime, the sultan
“was said to witness in the afterlife and at the day of judgment to his subjects’ faith in
Islam; without the sultan there would be no intermediary between God and man.” 45

38
McKenna, 1998, 106.

39
Kiefer, The Tausug Polity, 34.

40
In the late 18th and 19th centuries, the primary loyalties of a Taosug were to his immediate
leader rather than towards Sultan.

41
Saleeby, 1913, 17.

42
Kiefer, The Tausug Polity, 34.

43
Saleeby, 1913, 17.

44
Kiefer, The Tausug Polity, 35.

45
Tausug Polity, 35.
 The Moros had so sacralized the status of their sultan and their datus, that they
religiously interpreted their personal loyalty to the sultan and their datus as a religious
obligation. Kiefer has argued that Sufism contributed to raising the religious status of
the sultan to an awe-inspiring level by “sacralizing”46 it. Sufism preached that the office
of the Sultan was shrouded with barakat, a state of religious blessing or grace. When a
man was appointed sultan, he was said to acquire more barakat from God, empowering
him to embody the ideals of Islam and be the ultimate interpreter of the law. However,
the sultan’s judgments were not infallible. He could commit sins and go to hell like any
man. Only when he was acting in the ideal manner was God’s will manifested through
him. 47 This was why he consulted with his ruma bichara (council of datus), his wazir
(prime minister), and a “kadi (qadi or judge), a judical advisor trained in the canon law
of al-Shafií, who more often than not was a foreigner: Arab, Malay, or Bugis.” 48

From the time that the Moros were introduced to Islam in the 13th century, they
saw Islam not about ilm (knowledge of Islam) or about the practice of the “five pillars.”
Islam for them was about loyalty to their sultan. “They believe that it is not possible to
be a true Moslem without loyalty to a sultan who is compared to God’s representative
on earth.”49 Without the sultan, there could be no community, nor they can properly
claim to be Muslims, for in order to acknowledge the sovereignty of God, it was
necessary to give a similar acknowledgment of the sultan.50 This approximates the
Muslims belief in their caliphs during the early period of Islam; obedience to the caliph
was deemed necessary for salvation because his authority came straight from God. The
choice to submit and give one’s allegiance to the khalifah was a matter of salvation.51
Salvation entails a witnessing to God’s sovereignty and submission to his will, and this
was concretely expressed through their loyalty and submission to God’s deputy the
caliph. It was by this theological interpretation that Moros institutionalized their
loyalty to their sultan as integral to their practice of Islam.

As successor to the Prophet Muhammad, the sultan was the highest datu, highest
religious official, and highest legal authority. He had the authority to interpret Islam
and execute the sara (shariáh). He was the Law, the interpreter of the Sara52 par excellence.
46
For a discussion of the doctrinal support for sanctified inequality in Islamic (particularly
Philippine Muslim) tradition, see Majul (1999, 3-6).

47
Kiefer, Parrang Sabil, 53-54.

48
Kiefer, The Tausug Polity, 37.

49
Kiefer, 1972, 107.

50
Thomas Kiefer, “The Tausug Polity and the Sultanate of Sulu: A Segmentary State in the
Southern Philippines,” in Sulu Studies I, ed. Gerhard Rixhon (Jolo, Sulu: Notre Dame of Jolo College,
1972), 33.

51
Andrew Rippin, Muslims, Volume 1: The Formative Period (London: Routledge, 1990), 57.
52
Taosug for Shariáh. The customary law or adat was absorbed into the Shari’ah. This is
discussed in Chapter 2.
But in the end, it was the sultan who had the last word on how Islam and its laws and
precepts should be interpreted, and the Moros, as Muslims, had a religious obligation to
submit and obey the sultan. Through Islam, status of the sultan is raised as the leading
datu of all datus, to the level of God’s deputy who was worthy of submission.

Kiefer stressed the importance of seeing the sultan and datus, particularly the
royal datus, as mirror images of each other. This inspired the sakops who worked and
fought for him. “If he was insulted, belittled or injured, so were they--and they would
not rest until he was avenged.”53 This explained the willingness of Moros to do parrang
sabil (jihad) to defend their sultan and datu. In a situation of war, giving up one’s life
for the sultan to gain paradise became more valued.

Datu-Sakop. A Moro’s primary allegiance was to his immediate datu. William

Henry Scott pointed out that loyalty to the person of the leader was a priority, and the
number of followers was the primary determination of datu’s strength. “Generally,
society was constituted by the commoners who were joined to the datu, and the
slaves.”54 The primary basis for interpersonal and social relations in the Moro society
was the Datu-Sakop relationship. What contributed to its strength was it was mutually
beneficial for both sides. A form of mutual obligation developed between the datu,
who had authority, social status, wealth, and the sakop, who gained a sense of security
from his datu’s protection and sustenance. In exchange for his sakops’ loyalty and
service, the datu’s primary interest was their economic welfare. The Datu-Sakop
relations may be likened to a patron-client. Both benefited economically and politically.

As for the sakops, who were mostly the datu’s kinsmen, their primary loyalty
was to their immediate datu, rather than to the sultan. It is only if their datu was loyal
to the sultan, then they too ought to be loyal to the sultan, according to the degree of
loyalty their datu had for the sultan. However, some datus were loyal only to gain
more prestige and win more concessions from the sultan.55 Power remained diffuse
within the sultanate as factional politics revolved around the more powerful datus.
“[I]t was not uncommon for strong leaders to use raw power in the appropriation of
rights theoretically attached to the sultan in order to further their personal interests and
prestige.”56 A datu’s power and prestige was based on his personal wealth, the number
of sakop who rallied around his leadership, and the number of slaves he owned. The
banyaga or bisaya57 not only labored in his house and fields, adding to the datu’s prestige

53
Gowing, 1983, 48.

54
Larousse, 32.

55
In today’s parlance, Filipinos call this “sipsip” which literally means sucker.

56
Warren, xxv.

57
The common words for slave in Taosug were Bisaya and banyaga, a proper noun referring to a person from the
Visayan islands of the central Philippines where most raids were carried out.
and economic strength, but they sometimes augmented his military force as well. 58 His
power depends on how he wielded his authority over his people, and how can he can
mobilize them for work or war at any given moment.

GEERTZ

The terms “sultan” and “khalifah”, however, were not indigenous to either the
Moro or the Malay cultures. These are Arabic titles source is Arabia, the birthplace of
Islam. Arab traders introduced both concepts into Southeast Asia’s predominantly
Malay culture, of which Sulu is a part. Geertz elaborates that the first important
characteristic of the system of symbols is that they are not indigenous but are an
extrinsic source of information. It is information that is foreign to the local culture. The
thing that was indigenous to the Moros was the barangay (village) wherein a ruler was
called datu (chief). But with the advent of Islam, the leading datu appropriated the title
“sultan” and the baranganic system gradually transformed into a kesultanan (sultanate).

The shifts from Sanskrit to Arabic of titles such as Rajah to Sultan signify the
gradual Islamization from a Hindu-Buddhist culture which was mixed with the Malay
culture. A.C. Milner argues that “... the usage of Arabic titulature in the Malay context
is more an aspect of the harmonization of the Islamic regal tradition than the translation
of its forms and erasure of existing local structures. All such titles were most likely
adopted by the Southeast Asian rulers as part of the continuing process of adhesion to
Islam (c.f. Levtzion 1979).”59 When Malay kingdoms in Southeast Asia began
transforming into sultanates in the late 12th century, the local rajahs (rulers) along the
Straits of Malacca adopted the title sultan.60 British ethno-linguists who studied the
Malay language defined sultan, as understood by the Malays, as a title assumed by
several native princes, implying an independent sovereign and recognizing no other
sovereignty or paramount power.61 The Taosug political ideology of the sultanate was
“interwoven and syncretized both with notions unique to the Taosug, as well as
conceptions of state and kingship common to Southeast Asia as these had filtered
through Malay influence. These multiple influences are understandable in the light of
the fact that the Sulu sultanate was perhaps more distant from the Islamic heartland
than any other Muslim state.”62

Clifford Geertz, in his classic 1966 article “Religion as a Cultural System,”

58
Gowing, 1983, 48.

59
A.C. Milner, “Islam and Malay Kingship” (Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1981), in Laffan, p. 6.

60
Michael Laffan, [Link]

61
Wilkinson, R.J., 1959 [1932], A Malay-English dictionary (London: Macmillan; New York: St.
Martin's Press, Two Vols.), 396.

62
Kiefer, The Tausug Polity, 33.
developed a theory of religion based on the view that it is distinctively a part of the
cultural system. He defines culture as "a historically-transmitted pattern of meanings
embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by
means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and
attitudes toward life."63 And he defines religion as “a system of symbols which acts to
establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by
formulating conceptions of a general order of existence….”64 In the case of the Moros,
the concept of “sultan” served as the most powerful and pervasive symbol that fired
their imagination and practice of their religion, Islam.

Geertz elaborates that the first important characteristic of the system of symbols
is that they are not indigenous but are an extrinsic source of information. It is
information that is foreign to the local culture. The thing that was indigenous to the
Moros was the barangay (village) wherein a ruler was called datu (chief). But with the
advent of Islam, the head datu appropriated the title “sultan” and the baranganic system
gradually transformed into a kesultanan (sultanate). The head datu adopted the title
sultan from as-sultan zill Allah fi al-ard (the shadow of Allah on Earth). This
approximates the title khalifat ul-Allah (God’s deputy or representative). The terms
“sultan” and “khalifah” definitely were not indigenous to either the Moro or the Malay
cultures. Arab missionaries introduced both concepts into Southeast Asia’s
predominantly Malay culture, of which Sulu is a part.

SEGMENTARY STATE. One cannot stress enough the powerful and lasting
influence that the traditional barangay system of Datu-Sakop relations had upon the
subsequent sultanate that replaced it. The Islamization of the barangay system had
further consolidated local datus, and facilitated political centralization. The datus ruled
as feudal pirate lords who formed fortified “kutas” (forts) scattered throughout the Sulu
archipelago. Through the establishment of the sultanate, the local datus of various
barangays who ruled as feudal lords throughout the Sulu archipelago, were united
under the sultan and represented by select datus who comprised a council, the ruma
bichara, to advise the sultan on the affairs of the sultanate. An account of a traveler in
Sulu during the late 18th century describes how a ruma bichara operates. “About fifteen
Datoos ... make the greater part of the legislature ... They sit in council with the Sultan.
The sultan has two votes in this assembly, and each datu has one. The heir apparent
(rajah muda), ...if he side with the sultan, has two votes; but, if against him, only one.
There are two representatives of the people, called mantiris, like the military tribunes of
the Romans. The common people of Sooloos... enjoy much real freedom, owing to the
above representation.”65 The idea of representation may pass for a democratic system
except that the members of the ruma bichara were not elected but ex officio, included by
63
Geertz, 89.
64
Ibid, 90.
65
Forrest, 326.
virtue of their status as royal datus.

From the beginning, the sultan had never acquired absolute power over the
datus. When Abu Bakr established the sultanate, he wanted to bring the whole land
under his name, or at least subject to his authority. The local datus opposed this
because it meant they would lose their authority since one of their bases of power was
their actual control of their barangay(s) or territory. Given the political structure of the
sultanate, the power of the sultan waned as barangays under a datu got farther from
Jolo, the center and capital of the sultanate. And so the signing of peace treaties with
foreigners, usually reserved to the sultan such as that of 1878, did not guarantee
approval from the datus.

To resolve this, Abu Bakr and the datus arrived at an agreement, the tartib, which
continued the influence of local datus over their respective territories and communities.
The tartib indicates that the sultan, however, may send his panglimas (representatives)
all over Sulu. Given his status as the highest-ranking datu, the sultan had privilege of
assigning his panglimas all over Sulu, thus ensuring links and promoting unity
throughout the sultanate.

The Taosugs of Sulu

Taosug refers to the ethnicity or name of the tribe from within the broader Moro
identity. Tausug, on the other hand, refers to the language they spoke. Moros consist
of 13 subgroups defined on the basis of language and geographical location. This study
limits itself to the Taosug tribe of Sulu, the third largest tribe and the first to be
converted to Islam. The locus of the study is the Sulu Archipelago particularly the
island of Jolo.

The usage of the term Moro is a matter of identity politics rather than genuine
religiosity, and bears a closer resemblance to national identity and ethnicity than to
religiosity. I remember my Muslim mother Rahma who would admonish us every time
we addressed her as a ‘Moro.’ For Rahma, the term ‘Moro’ does not reflect her true
identity as a Muslim woman. She chose to be known only as a ‘Muslim.’ Rahma Rasul
Taib from Jolo, Sulu, was raised and died a Muslim. Furthermore, being a Moro does
not necessarily imply that one is a Muslim since not all Moros are Muslims. Some
Badjaos or Samals are Moros but are not necessarily Muslims. I have Taosug blood.
My birthplace is Basilan City. For my primary education—I studied at Notre Dame in
GenSan, and Xavier University in CDO. I would consider myself a Moro from
Mindanao but as a Moro, I am not a Muslim but a Christian. In as much as not all Moro
are Muslims, the usage of term ‘Moro’ today has gradually shifted and synonymous to
being a Muslim.

My eldest brother Elvin was born in Jolo in 1953, and was given by my mother
the “Muslim name” Kemal Passah. In the past four decades, Cagayan de Oro of
Northern Mindanao has been his home. One day he overheard someone speak in
Tausug, and so he excitedly approached the person and introduced himself as someone
born in Jolo. To his great surprise the guy said that he is actually from Butuan and that
he actually was speaking Butuanon.

The theory that the Taosugs did not originate in Sulu is supported by a linguistic
analysis. “Tausug,” the language of the Taosug, has no marked dialectical variation to
the Visayan language group. This lends support to the hypothesis that both the Taosug
and their language were alien to Sulu.66 “Butuanon,” a language belonging to the
Visayan language group, is in many ways close to the Tausug being spoken in Sulu
today. “There were scholarly observations that point to the same view. Alexander
Spoehr confirmed, in noting similar works by other linguists, that ‘on the basis of
present knowledge, the Tausug language is mostly related to the southern Visayan on
the north coast of Mindanao [Conklin 1955; Chretin 1963]. The similarity of Tausug to
the Visayan languages has been noted by observers as far back as the 18th century
[Dalrymple 1808; Hunt 1837; Belcher 1848; Baranera 1899; Orosa 1923]. Kiefer [1969]
further notes that Tausug does not exhibit significant dialectical variation. This leads to
hte conclusion that Tausug does not exhibit significant dialectical variation. This leads
to the conclusion that Tausug is an intrusive language in Sulu.”67

Butuan was the first Philippine “state” to establish diplomatic relations with
China when on 3 October 1003, envoys from Butuan petitioned the Chinese Emperor in
Peking to establish legal trade. 68 There was development of a metal industry and a
ceramic industry, and active participation in foreign trade in Butuan long before the 10 th
century.69 Considering that Butuan was an established state, and the Butuanons were
already active in international trade particularly with China. But what triggered them
to migrate down south of Mindanao? There is still no convincing theory being proposed
to explain why the Butuanons migrated to Sulu, except for that of the burgeoning trade
in Sulu with China and rest of the Malay world.70 “One of the mysteries still to be
unraveled fully is the uncanny coincidence of the decline of the ancient trading port of
Butuan around the 13th century, with the entry of the Tausug language to Sulu...” 71

66
Alexander Spoehr, “Zamboanga and Sulu: An Archeological Approach to Ethnic Diversity” (Jolo:
Sulu Studies 2, 1973), 22.

67
Alexander Spoehr, Zamboanga and Sulu: An Archeological Approach to Ethnic Diversity, Department
of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, 1973; in Greg Hontiveros, Butuan of a Thousand Years, Ateneo
Press, 2004, p. 46.

68
W.H. Scott, 1994, 164.

69
Patanne, 1996, 110.

70
James Francis Warren, The Sulu Zone 1768-1898, New Day Publishers, Quezon City, 1999.

71
Greg Hontiveros, BUTUAN of a Thousand Years, Ateneo de Manila Press, 2004.
 Products of Sulu reached southern China mainly through Arab traders. 72
Chinese ports were most probably reopened during the Sung/Sing Dynasty (960-1280),
after Arab and Persian merchants were driven out of China in 878 C.E.
When South China resumed trade, Sulu was included early as one of the major ports,
and was one of the centers of trading activity in Asia by the late 13th to early 14th
centuries. Chinese account of Sulu appears in the Yuan Dynasty (1278-1368)73 which
recorded an increase in direct trade relations between China and Sulu, and the
subsequent Ming dynasty (1368-1644).

The Jesuit Missionary

In 2016, the film SILENCE of Martin Scorsese created great interest in the SVD Seminary where
I teach because it is about the apostasy of a Jesuit missionary, and the mission of the Church in 17 th
century Japan. Understandably, since most seminarians at DWST74 are being prepared for mission after
their ordination. My interest in the film is personal because I was once a Jesuit.

The Jesuits are mandated by the Catholic Church to proclaim the Gospels and preach Jesus Christ
for the salvation of souls. The Jesuits were the most insistent on the evangelization of Muslims in
Mindanao. This extreme zeal can be attributed to the missiology in the 17th century-- Extra Ecclesiam
nulla salus (Outside the Church there is no salvation.) For the Jesuits conversion to Christianity meant
salvation. They may have meant well to ‘save’ the Taosugs through conversion but history has shown
that there were adverse consequences to it.

Life in the missions is tough. I can attest to this from my experience at Olutanga Island (1996-
1998) in Zamboanga del Sur, and at my short stay at the Kalinga Province of the Apostolic Vicariate of
Tabuk. Although it was just a two-week stint in 2007 it was most memorable, and most difficult I have
experienced in the missions. The Kalinga mission was part of my Jesuit tertianship. It was a blessing to
be accepted in the tertianship program of the Society of Jesus—the last phase of formation before one can
be considered for final vows. So in December of 2007, I was sent by Tertian Master Fr. Roger Champoux,
SJ to assist in the Simbang Gabi masses of the Apostolic Vicariate of Tabuk in the municipality of
Tanudan’s upper Lubo. Accompanied by a deacon and parish workers, we climbed the Sleeping Beauty
also known as Mount Patukan, Mount Mating-oy Dinayao, Mount Mantingoy. Quiet a hurdle for
someone who is used to climbing hills. For someone like me who grew-up near the sea in Mindanao, the
Mountain province climb would demand a climbing skills so differentm from my swimming and diving
skills. Upon reaching the ridge of Matingoy-- the view from that height was breath-taking. I am glad I
had a strong heart and strength to trek the ridge. I was scheduled to say masses in nine barangays
located around the mount. For the next nine days it was an uphill and down-hill trek.

At Kalinga, it became clear to me why missionaries tend to be stubborn it is just that they have to
be have to be stubborn to survive the missions. A life of hardship in the mission has formed a character
trait so resilient and tough in missionaries to let them survive the missions. I recall Fr. Rene Ocampo, SJ

72
Majul, 1999, 411.

73
Majul, 411.

74
Divine Word Seminary Tagaytay
(+), who was my superior in the Juniors-Philosophers Community at Loyola House of Studies in the late
1980s before he was appointed Provincial of the Philippine Province. After listening to my account of
conscience he bluntly told me that I was stubborn as a bull, and that I am like a raging bull that must be
tamed. However, he added that St. Ignatius of Loyola would prefer a one like me in the Society of Jesus
because a passionate can still be formed which in end can be effective in the missions. But a seminarian
who is so pious but devoid of passion is better be in monastic life but not the missions. Fr. Rene cited that
it could be my Taosug background, environment and genetic makeup could be the reason. He advised
that I must pray hard to discipline my passion. As an intervention he arranged that I see Fr. Roger
Champoux, SJ—the psychologist in-charge of Jesuit formation. Indeed, the Taosug men in my family have
second or even three wives save for my grandfather Abdul Razik Taib who was a Muslim Chaplain. May
Allah bless him for he faithfully committed himself solely to my Lola Anang Rasul.

The Jesuits and Sultan Azim ud-Din I

In 1737, Sultan Azim ud-Din I entered into a "permanent" peace treaty with Governor General F.
Valdes y Tamon. Realizing this opportunity to his hope to convert the Moros to Christianity, Jose Calvo,
Jesuit procurator in Madrid, was able to convince King Philip V of Spain, to address a letter to Sultan
Azim ud-Din in 1744, requesting him to allow Jesuits to preach Christianity in the Sulu Sultanate.75 In an
apparent show of loyalty to the King of Spain, the sultan allowed the Jesuits to open missions in Jolo and
Tamontaka in June 1748.

However, some Taosugs, particularly Raja Muda Maharajah Adinda Datu Bantilan, son of an
earlier sultan and next in line as sultan, perceived the sultan’s bringing of the Jesuits to Jolo as an offence
to Islam. By September, after only three months in Jolo, the Jesuits with Sultan Azim ud-Din had to leave
for Zamboanga because of an assassination attempt on the sultan. In the absence of the sultan, Datu
Bantilan proclaimed himself as the new sultan. He took the name Mu’izz ud-Din, which means “Honorer
of the Religion.” When Azim ud-Din left Jolo, Datu Bantilan was declared sultan.
By 1749, Sultan Alim ud-Din I reached Manila to be prepared for baptism. Of the 15
theologians who examined the sultan, the two who opposed the sultan’s baptism were Jesuits who
seriously doubted the intention of the sultan.76 Despite strong opposition from the Jesuits, the sultan
was baptized on 29 April 1750 by the Governor-General, who at that time was bishop of Nueva
Segovia.77 The Jesuits were exonerated when on 15 October 1752, Juan Angles, a Jesuit missionary to
Jolo, interviewed the sultan at Fort Santiago, and asked him whether the sultan had the intention of
being baptized, the sultan’s reply: “I never had the intention of being baptized.”78 Governor-General
Juan de Arrechederra, O.P. intention to baptize Azim ud-Din was part of the Spanish political plan
to win more Taosug converts because they know that by converting the Sultan of Sulu the subjects
will follow. This strategy worked with the conversion of Rajah Humabon of Cebu and the
subsequent conversion of his subjects. But the Spanish mission under-estimated the influence of
Islam on the Tausug because for the Muslim-Tausug would rather die than give up their religion—
Islam.
The Jesuits Proposed War

75
Majul, 245.

76
“Manifesto en defensa del Rey de Jolo Fernando I ...”, folio 41 in Majul, 1999, 274.
77
Najeeb M. Saleeby, The History of Sulu, Bureau of Printing, Manila, 1963, p.72.
78
Majul, 1999, 275.
 By 1748, because of the failure of their missions in Jolo and Tamontaka, the Jesuits became
proponents of an all-out war against the Moros.79 They convinced a high council of war convened in
Manila in 175280 that the conquest of Jolo was an easy matter.81 The council of war that met in Manila in
1752 instructed the officers and volunteers that it would be “an unmerciful campaign and a war of
extermination to be conducted with the utmost conceivable cruelty. ... (U)nlimited authority was granted
them to annihilate the foe, burn his villages, destroy his crops, and desolate his lands.”82 According to
Cesar Majul, the Visayans were there to take advantage of the booty offers from the Spanish government.
As reward for volunteering, the Visayans were permitted to retain all their booty, tax exempt, and were
“allowed to keep or sell all female captives and all males under 12 and over 30 years of age. Old men and
crippled persons were to be killed. Male captives between 12 and 30 years of age were to be turned in to
the government; the captors to receive in compensation from P4 to P6 per man. Nursing children were
ordered to be baptized.”83

By May 1752, a force of 1,900 men led by Antonio Ramon de Abad attacked Jolo. The Spanish
fleet bombed Jolo for three days before troops comprised of Spaniards and their native allies, the
Visayans, landed in Jolo and engaged the Sulus in combat. The Moros, however, were prepared for the
Spanish invasion and counterattacked. They inflicted great losses on the Spaniards and Visayans who
retreated, making the expedition a failure. The defeat made the Spanish commander Antonio Ramon de
Abad so upset and blamed the Jesuits for it because they claimed that the conquest of Sulu was an easy
matter.84

The failed invasion of 1752 had so angered the Moros that made them retaliate with impunity in
1753. This attack is said to have been one of the bloodiest85 in the Moro war against Spain. “The Visayas,
especially Samar and Panay, were hardest hit. The Calamianes, Mindoro, and Romblon took their usual
share of Sulu reprisals.”86 The Camarines, Batangas, and Albay were also ravaged, and thousands of
captives carried south into Malay slavery.87

20th Century Jesuit Mission in Jolo, Sulu

As late as the 19th century, the Jesuits continue to labor to baptize the Taosug to Christianity.
They studied the Moro culture and learn the Tausug language, taught reading, writing and music in
79
Majul, 287.

80
Saleeby, 1963, 76.

81
Majul, 1999, 281.

82
Ibid, 75.

83
Saleeby, 1963, 75.

84
Majul, 1999, 281.

85
D.P. Barrows, History of the Philippines, p. 228 in Saleeby, 1963, 76.

86
Majul, 1999, 282.

87
Saleeby, 1963, 77.
Spanish, and establish deep friendship with the people. Despite their lack of knowledge on Islam and its
centrality to the lives of Tausugs, the Jesuits were, nevertheless, sensitive to the condition of the common
Moro under the rule of datus who at times were abusive.

There was a shift in the policy of conversions of Taosug to Christianity. This is seen in Rev. Pio
Pi, SJ’s recommendation that the American Government should not discard its principles of religious
liberty “in the sense of dispensing protection to any one communion in preference to another. We aim at
much less; as it is unlawful, anti-Christian … that the Government should use physical force to oblige any
infidel to become Christian. Even though the Government were Catholic as was that of Spain, it could not
infringe in the least on the liberty of its subjects by forcing them to embrace or not to embrace the
Christian faith.”88

In 1901, Rev. Pio Pi (Jesuit superior of the missions in the Philippines), in his monograph on “The
Moros of the Philippines,”89 proposed to the American policymakers that the common Moro be separated
from their sultans and datus whom he sees the ones responsible for propagating everything that is evil
and shameful in the Moro people; and that the sultans and datus as lazy, abusive and control their
subjects like slaves. He also recommended that police be posted to protect the Moros from abusive sultan
and datus.

Rev. Pio Pi’s recommendations were realized when the American colonial government instituted
the decentralization of power from the datu class to the new elite, the educated class. The common
Moros were gradually freed from a “myth of sanctified inequality”-- that the sultan and the datus had
been destined and blessed by God to rule over them. Exceptional amongst the American Administrators
were James Fugate and Leonard Wood who refused to restore the royal family, curtailed the datus’
power, and did not recognize the authority of some of the datus.

Padre Pio Pi, SJ in the 20th century was well aware of this as well the Jesuit missionaries a
century before him. By the end of the 20th century, the Jesuits in Mindanao have then shifted their
evangelization of Muslims in Mindanao from conversion to conversation.
Xxxxx
Not Nation-State but the Sultan is the State

Bangsamoro literally means “Moro Nation” or Morohood –as coined by the

Americans in the 1920s. Anthropologist-historian Thomas McKenna elaborates
“... American colonial policies had the effect of ethnicizing Muslim identity in the
Philippines. By ‘ethnicizing’ Islam it meant that American colonial rulers encouraged
the development of a self-conscious Philippine Muslim identity among a generation of
educated Muslim elites who were otherwise divided by significant linguistic,
geographic, and, to some extent, cultural barriers.”90 The person particularly

88
Gen. George Davis Report, Appendix X.

89
Annual report of Major General George W. Davis, United States Army commanding Division of the Philippines, Washington,
D.C., 1903, Appendix X.

90
Thomas McKenna, Muslim Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism in the Southern
Philippines, University of California Press; 1998, p. 132.
responsible for such policy was Arab-American Najeeb Saleeby who campaigned for
the unification of Moro tribes during the pacification campaigns of 1900-1912. For
Saleeby, the development of Morohood (Bangsamoro) could best be achieved if the
Moros developed a sense of transcendent Muslim identity, making the Moros
understand that as ‘Moros’ they are Muslims and that they belong to a larger
community beyond their tribe.

Anthropologist Thomas McKenna argued that there was little, if any, Islamic
foundation to the Moro resistance because the Moros were merely superficially Muslim
at the time of American occupation. He argues that “while there exist several accounts
of religious observance by the high nobility of various sultanates, descriptions of the
level of religiosity of Muslims subordinates are quite scarce.”91 Religious observance, if
there was any, was reserved to the elite and that consisted of the sultan, the datus and
their families, and the imam(s). Similarly, American colonial administrator Najeeb
Saleeby,92 had also questioned the extent of religious opposition when he concluded
that “religion has never been a cause of hostility between Americans and Moros.” 93 He
based his conclusion on his findings that the Moros “do not understand the principal
doctrines of Mohammedanism, and have so little religion at heart that it is impossible
for them to get enthusiastic and fanatic on this ground. They do not know the five
prayers and seldom enter a mosque.”94 Elsewhere in Mindanao, this too was the
observation of William Dampier, an English navigator who visited the Sultanate of
Maguindanao in 1686, when he noted that “Friday is their Sabbath; but I did never see
any difference that they make between this Day and any other Day; only the Sultan
himself goes to the Mosque twice.”95
McKenna and Saleeby were accurate in their observation that Moros had little
knowledge of Islam. But what they failed to grasp was that for the Moros, even as late
as the turn of the 20th century, Islam was not about ilm (knowledge of Islam) or about
the practice of the “five pillars.” Islam for the Moros had to do with loyalty to their
sultan. “They believe that it is not possible to be a true Moslem without loyalty to a
sultan who is compared to God’s representative on earth.”96 Without the sultan, there
could be no community, nor Moros could properly claim to be Muslims, for in order to
acknowledge the sovereignty of God, it was necessary to give a similar
acknowledgment of the sultan.97 This approximates the Muslims belief in their caliphs
91
Thomas McKenna, Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism in the Southern
Philippines (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 82.
92
Lebanese-American Christian who was colonial administrator of the Moros
during the American occupation.
93
Najeeb Saleeby, “The Moro Problem: An Academic Discussion of the History and Solution of the
Problem of the Government of the Moros of the Philippine Islands” (Manila: Press of E.C. McCullough and Co.,
1913), 24.
94
Ibid, 24.
95
William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (New York: Dover Publications, 1968), 231. (1st
published in 1697)
96
Kiefer, 1972, 107.
Thomas Kiefer, “The Tausug Polity and the Sultanate of Sulu: A Segmentary State in the
97

Southern Philippines,” in Sulu Studies I, ed. Gerhard Rixhon (Jolo, Sulu: Notre Dame of Jolo College,
during the early period of Islam; obedience to the caliph was deemed necessary for
salvation because his authority came straight from God. The choice to submit and give
one’s allegiance to the khalifah was a matter of salvation.98 Salvation entails a witnessing
to God’s sovereignty and submission to his will, and this was concretely expressed
through their loyalty and submission to God’s deputy the caliph. It was by this
theological interpretation that Moros institutionalized their loyalty to their sultan as
integral to their practice of Islam. They were loyal to the extent that they were willing
to commit parrang sabil to defend their sultan.

The modern concept of nation-state refers to land that has a status of

independence and a government that has complete authority to make and implement
laws and rules, and to engage in economic, political and social relations with foreign
countries of their own choices.99 It is a government of the people, by the people and for
the people. This, however, even at the turn of the 20th century, was not the case in the
Sulu Sultanate.

It is not the people (bangsa or nation) that but it is the sultan that is the state. . is
not the case with the Sulu Sultanate. As in the past, Islamic political theory did not
start with the idea of the state, per se, but rather with the notion that the community of
the faithful must possess leadership and that such leadership must ultimately be
derived from a divine source. The Taosug had absolutely no conception of the state
apart from the sultan for the sultan was the state.100 As sultan, he owned the state.
The sultan alone could negotiate and make trade and peace treaties with foreigners. It
was not the choice of the people, but the sole prerogative of the sultan. When the
sultan negotiated and signed treaties he was doing it as God’s representative, not as a
representative of the ummah (Muslim community). God alone is sovereign, and as
God’s deputy, the sultan was sovereign on behalf of God.

Until the American occupation of Sulu, it was the sultan, not the ummah, that
served as the legitimizing principle in the interpretation of the shariáh or adat local law
operative in Jolo, Sulu .
Thomas Patrick Hughes defined an ummah as a people, e.g. ummatu Ibrahim (the
people of Abraham),101 and is certain that it always refers to “ethnical, linguistic or
religious bodies of people who are objects of divine plan of salvation.”102 In the same

1972), 33.
98
Andrew Rippin, Muslims, Volume 1: The Formative Period (London: Routledge, 1990), 57.
99
Benny Lim, “Nation-State,” National University of Singapore, CCWP10, 2000.
100
Kiefer, The Tausug Polity, 34.
101
T.P. Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam, Chicago 1994, 654. (1st published in 1886)

Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam, H.A.R. Gibb and J.H. Kramer (eds.) (Netherlands: E.J. Brill,
102

Netherlands, 1991), 603. (1st published in 1953)

way, the Tausug Moros be defined as ummatu sultan (the people of the sultan) and
without the sultan, there could be no community for the Taosugs, and in fact, nor could
they claim to be Muslims for in order for the Taosug to acknowledge the sovereignty
and unity of God, it was necessary for them to give a similar acknowledgement to the
sultan.103

When the Moros fought in battles, they did so neither for a nationalistic ideology
nor for the geographical island of Sulu; they fought for their religion, which was
embodied in a person, the sultan. They owed their allegiance to the sultan, who
symbolized everything about their identity as Muslims. Their religion prescribed that it
was their allegiance to the sultan, not to the land, that would make them good Muslims.

A document translated by Harold C. Conklin of Yale University, reports that in

1878 Jamal ul-Alam, Sultan of Sulu, granted a “Permanent Lease Covering His Lands
and Territories on the Island of Borneo.”104

Although the Sulu Sultanate was abolished in 1915 under the Carpenter
Agreement, the heirs and successors of the sultanate are still contesting ownership of
this region, now known as Sabah, a territory of Malaysia.

According to Kiefer, the segmentary state105 is the model that best describes the
traditional Taosug polity. “A segmentary state is composed of sub-units which are
structurally and functionally equivalent at every level of the political system.” 106 In the
case of the Sulu Sultanate, the sub-units would be the barangays ruled by individual
datus. The barangays existed independently of each other, but they were linked to each
other to organize trade under the leadership of the Sultan. “In a traditional segmentary
state, territorial sovereignty waxed at the centre and waned at the periphery.” 107 The
Sulu Sultanate was a centralized political system whose territorial sovereignty was
centered in the Sultan, who was based in Jolo. The Moros were loyal to the Sultan as
well as to their datus as expression of their fidelity to Allah.108 Kiefer stressed the
importance of seeing the sultan and datus, particularly the royal datus, as mirror
103
Kiefer, The Tausug Polity, 33.

Copy of lease translated by Conklin in Ututalum and Hedjazi, Rise and Fall of the Sulu Islamic
104

Empire, North Carolina, 2002. See also Nicholas Tarling, Sulu and Sabah, Kuala Lumpur, 1978.

This section is primarily based on Thomas Kiefer’s field research in Jolo, Sulu in 1966. Although the
105

sultanate had already collapsed in 1915, remnants of its political system lingered until the 1930s.
106
Warren, xxiv.
107
Ibid, xxiv.
108
In the late 18th and 19th centuries, the primary loyalties of a Taosug were to his immediate
leader rather than towards Sultan.
images of each other. In fact, the Taosug generally believe that the blood of the Prophet
Muhammad ran in their veins.

As for the sakops, who were mostly the datu’s kinsmen, their primary loyalty
was to their immediate datu, rather than to the sultan. If their datu was loyal to the
sultan, then they too ought to be loyal to the sultan, according to the degree of loyalty
their datu had for the sultan. However, some datus were loyal only to gain more
prestige and win more concessions from the sultan.109 Power remained diffuse within
the sultanate as factional politics revolved around the more powerful datus. “[I]t was
not uncommon for strong leaders to use raw power in the appropriation of rights
theoretically attached to the sultan in order to further their personal interests and
prestige.”110 A datu’s power and prestige was based on his personal wealth, the
number of sakop who rallied around his leadership, and the number of slaves he
owned. The common words for slave in Taosug were Bisaya and banyaga,111 a proper
noun referring to a person from the Visayan islands of the central Philippines 112 where
most raids were carried out. The banyaga or bisaya not only labored in his house and
fields, adding to the datu’s prestige and economic strength, but they sometimes
augmented his military force as well.113 His power depends on how he wielded his
authority over his people, and how can he can mobilize them for work or war at any
given moment.

It can be said that the Sulu Sultanate was pyramidal in structure. “The pre-
eminent position of the sultan at the apex of the political system was expressed by
certain rites and symbols which validated his authority.”114 In gatherings, his seat
would always be higher than the rest of the datus symbolic of the dignity of his office.
The court ritual was highly elaborate, “all letters, official dispatches, and verbal
requests were addressed to the sultan in a special court vocabulary through an
interpreter. Richly textured clothing, ceremonial paraphernalia such as umbrellas and
weapons, especially ornate kris, and bronze and brass domestic utensils and households
ornaments were additional evidence of the sultan’s symbolic strength and sacred
character.”115 In the pyramidal form, as one moves from the apex toward the base, one

109
In today’s parlance, Filipinos call this “sipsip” which literally means sucker.
110
Warren, xxv.

Banyaga literally means a foreigner, anybody not from Sulu. A captured banyaga is a slave.
111

Most Bisayans are Christians.

112
Salman, 63.
113
Gowing, 1983, 48.
114
Ibid, xxvi.
115
Ibid, xvii.
sees the sultan’s power and influence diminish and the datus take over. The Sultan’s
power and influence waned as it got farther from the center, and datus at the periphery
had more influence and control on the Moros. If the Sultan departs from the ideals of
Islam, then a datu or datus would take the responsibility to uphold Islam and defend it.

Sacralizing the Sultan

For the Taosug, the leadership of the community was symbolized in the sultan …
Without the sultan, there could be no community, nor men properly claim to be
Muslims, for in order to acknowledge the sovereignty and unity of God, it was
necessary to give a similar acknowledgement to the sultan.116 Thomas Kiefer

This study applies theories of culture and religion as guides to understanding

conflicts. Clifford Geertz, in his classic 1966 article “Religion as a Cultural System,”
developed a theory of religion based on the view that it is distinctively a part of the
cultural system. He defines culture as "a historically-transmitted pattern of meanings
embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by
means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and
attitudes toward life."117 And he defines religion as “a system of symbols which acts to
establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by
formulating conceptions of a general order of existence….”118 For the Moros, the concept
of “sultan” served as the most powerful and pervasive symbol that fired their
imagination and practice of their religion, Islam. The term ‘sultan’ occurs in the Qur’an:

Surah 17.33: Ja’alnaa li-waliyyihii sultaanan falaa yusrif-fil-qatl.

[We have given his next of kin authority.]

Surah 51.38: Wa fii Musa ‘iz ‘arsalnaahu ‘ilaa fir-‘awna bi-sultanim-mubiin.

[We sent Moses to Pharoah with a manifest power.]

After the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, the title “sultan” became
synonymous with the rulers of Saljuk dynasty (11th-12th centuries) who dominated and
replaced the Caliphs of Baghdad. The sultans gained greater prominence under the
Mamluks in Egypt (mid-13th-15th centuries). The title resurfaced in the Ottoman dynasty
under Sultan Selim in 1517. When Malay kingdoms in Southeast Asia began
transforming into sultanates in the late 12th century, the local rajahs (rulers) along the
Straits of Malacca adopted the title sultan.119 British ethno-linguists who studied the
116
Kiefer, The Tausug Polity, 34.
117
Geertz, 89.
118
Ibid, 90.
119
Michael Laffan, [Link]
Malay language defined sultan, as understood by the Malays, as a title assumed by
several native princes, implying an independent sovereign and recognizing no other
sovereignty or paramount power.120

Furthermore, Geertz elaborates that the first important characteristic of the

system of symbols is that they are not indigenous but are an extrinsic source of
information. It is information that is foreign to the local culture. The thing that was
indigenous to the Moros was the barangay (village) wherein a ruler was called datu
(chief). But with the advent of Islam, the head datu appropriated the title “sultan” and
the baranganic system gradually transformed into a kesultanan (sultanate). The head datu
adopted the title sultan from as-sultan zill Allah fi al-ard (the shadow of Allah on Earth).
This approximates the title khalifat ul-Allah (God’s deputy or representative). The terms
“sultan” and “khalifah” definitely were not indigenous to either the Moro or the Malay
cultures. Arab missionaries introduced both concepts into Southeast Asia’s
predominantly Malay culture, of which Sulu is a part.

Semblance of a Caliphate. Islam at the turn of the 20th Century

As sultans, the succeeding rulers saw themselves as God’s khalifah. Two Qur’anic
verses were customarily invoked: Qurán Surah. 2:28, in which God announces “I am
placing a khalifah on earth” (with reference to Adam), and 38:25, in which God tells
David that “we have made you a khalifah on earth.” While the conventional view is that
khalifah meant succession to the prophet, other scholars argue that it meant deputyship
on behalf of God.121 When `Uthman bin Affan (644-56 C.E.), the third caliph of Islam,
declared himself to be khalifat Allah, meaning someone who stands in place of God, it
was considered controversial because this was not the idea of khalifah with which
Muslims were familiar. The first caliph of Islam, Abu Bakr (632-34 C.E.), adapted a
more humble position, one reserved for the great prophets in the Qur’an, when he
adapted the title khalifat rasul Allah (successor of the messenger of God).122 In fact, the
Qur'an emphasizes this type of vicegerency as exemplified by the Prophets Adam and
David, and for that matter, Muhammad.

As taught in Muslim history, however, the Moros had adopted the two notions
of khalifah. They believed that the sultan was both God’s deputy and the successor to
the Prophet Muhammad, and so they associated their sultan with the puunan sin agama,
foundation of the faith.

120
Wilkinson, R.J., 1959 [1932], A Malay-English dictionary (London: Macmillan; New York: St.
Martin's Press, Two Vols.), 396.
121
Crone and Hinds, God’s Caliph (Great Britain: University of Cambridge Oriental Publications,
1986), 4.
122
Ibid, 19.
 Some sultan that extends to the datus, to legitimize their stature they will argue
that the blood of the Prophet Muhammad is in their blood.

As God’s deputy and successor to the Prophet Muhammad, the sultan was the
highest datu, highest religious official, and highest legal authority. He had the authority
to interpret Islam and execute the sara (shariáh). He was the Law, the interpreter of the
Sara123 par excellence. In order to arrive at a sound interpretation of Islam and just
execution of the Shariáh the sultan, however, sought the advise of foreign qadis (judges),
his wazir (prime minister) and the ruma bichara (council of datus). These qadis (legal
experts) were present to advise the sultan. Thomas Forrest, who was in Sulu in 1776,
wrote that the high priest in Sulu was a Turk. This qadi was a learned man and traveled
a good deal in Europe.124 But in the end, it was the sultan who had the last word on
how Islam and its laws and precepts should be interpreted, and the Moros, as Muslims,
had a religious obligation to submit and obey the sultan.

The Islam that was practiced in Sulu during the American occupation did not
emphasize rituals. Instead, it was centered on the sultan whose status they had so
sacralized.125 The only rituals in which the common Moro participated were the rites of
circumcision for adolescent boys, performed by an imam,126 and the rites of parrang sabil,
in which a sabil takes a holy oath before a pandita that he will defend Islam. Other than
that, it was the sultan who performed the daily rituals, particularly the salat (five daily
prayers), which otherwise would be obligatory to all Muslims as a pillar of faith. J.
Hunt, an English explorer who reached Sulu in 1814, observed that:

Considering that Sulo was once reputed the Mecca of the East, and a great
proportion of her population converts to Islamism, it is astonishing how little they
know and how much for many years past, all religious observances entirely neglected;
the only precepts of Mahomed, either observed or known, is the abstaining from
swine’s flesh, being circumcised, and enjoying a plurality of women. They are less
bigoted and less attached to the tenets of their religion than the Malays; of liquors and
wines they are excessively fond, and when procurable, indulged in to excess, with as
much glee and with as little scruple, as any dram-drinking Christian.… 127
123
Taosug for Shariáh. The customary law or adat was absorbed into the Shari’ah. This is
discussed in Chapter 2.

Forrest, A Voyage to New Guinea and the Moluccas (1774-1776) (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford
124

University Press, 1969), 331. (1st published in 1729)

. Sacralization of the sultan and datuu system is discussed in Chapter 2.

125

126
Dampier, 1968, 232.

J. Hunt Esq., ‘Some Particulars Relating to Sulu, in the Archipelago of Felicia,’ Notices of the
127

Indian Archipelago and Adjacent Countries, J.H. Moor [ed.] (Singapore: 1968), 37. (1st published in
1837)
 William Dampier, an English navigator, who visited Sulu in 1686, also observed
that it was only the sultan who observed the salat (prayers) at the mosque. He observed
a typical Friday, the day of prayer, and wrote: …only the Sultan himself goes then to
the Mosque twice. Raja Laut128 never goes to the Mosque but prays at certain Hours,
Eight or Ten times in a Day; where-ever he is, he is very punctual to his Canonical
Business. … His Servants and Wives and Children talk and sing, or play how they
please all the time, but he himself is very serious. The meaner sort of People have little
Devotion: I did never see any of them at their Prayers, or go into a Mosque. 129

Although Dampier’s observation was of the Maguindanao Sultanate, a sultanate

east of Sulu, Najeeb Saleeby had a similar observation of Sulu at the turn of the 20 th
century. As the very nature of the sultan’s office, it was expected that he perform the
religious duties. If the sultan is at the center of their religion, how then are we to
understand the notion of a Moro ummah (community) in this study? The designation
ummah (pl. uman), derived from the Hebrew (umma) or Aramaic (ummetha), is used in
variety of ways in the Qur’an, making it difficult to arrive at a single clear definition.

xxxx Parrang Sabil [1645]

Anthropologist Thomas M. Kiefer, in his article Parrang Sabil: Ritual Suicide

Among the Taosug of Jolo, wrote that Parrang Sabil are borrowed from Malay, parrang (or
perang) meaning “war,” and sabil, short for the Qur’anic phrase wa qatiluwa fi-sabil-Allah
(and fight in the way/path or cause of Allah). (Qur’an 2:190a) For the Moros the
expression fi sabil Allah also meant Jihad fi sabil Allah or to struggle in the name of God.
Parrang sabil, being Quránic, is proof enough that the Moros struggle against the
Americans was religiously motivated. It was Islam that strengthened their resolve, and
that they were even willing to lay down their lives to defend their sultan and their
datus.

The Moro sabils felt it was their sacred duty to follow the Islamic precept to ‘strive in the
Way of Allah’ [jihad fi sabil-Allah]. (Q. 4:97) Parrang sabil was the Moros’ jihad against those
who threaten their religion, Islam. In Islam there are two types of jihad, the greater and the lesser.
The ‘greater jihad’ means a personal and spiritual struggle against one's inner sinful inclinations.
The second type, the lesser jihad, would be parrang sabil which is a defensive action against
those who threatened the sanctity of Islam. In the context of the Sulu Sultanate, the enemies who
threatened Islam were the Spaniards and the Americans. Parrang sabil was perceived as a Moro
institution that called all Moros to defend Islam.
The Spaniards, uninformed of the religious dimension of parrang sabil, simplistically
128
Brother of the Sultan and heir apparent to the Sultanate.
129
Dampier, 231.
labeled the Moro sabils as fanatic juramentados, from the Spanish verb juramentar meaning "to
swear an oath." The Americans, like the Spaniards, also misconstrued the practice of parrang
sabil by reducing it to a psychological disorder exhibited by becoming senseless and committing
suicide. They regarded Moros who demonstrated such behaviors as ‘amoks’ or ‘running amuck.’
Some historians bought into this propaganda and rendered the practice of sabil an act devoid of
religious meaning, but Gerard Rixhon noted that parrang sabil is a complex, mysterious and
harsh action to take and that its socio-economic and mystical contexts cannot be ignored.
3.2.1 Sabil Theology. The Moros who have been introduced to the Shafi’i law have
embraced some of Shafii’s ideas regarding jihad in the defense of Islam. The belief in jihad
stems from a dualism in official Islamic teaching which projects a perpetual struggle between
God and Satan; good and evil; belief and unbelief; Islam and non-Islam; Muslim and non-
Muslim. Shafií on Islamic jurisprudence, number 40,states that “God has imposed the (duty of)
jihad as laid down in His Book and uttered by His Prophet’s tongue. He stressed the calling (of
men to fulfill) the jihad (duty) as follows--God has bought from the believers their selves and
their possessions against [the gift] of Paradise. They fight in the way of God; they kill and are
killed; that is a promise binding upon God in the Torah and Gospel and the Qurán; and who
fulfils his covenant better than God? So rejoice in the bargain you have made with Him. That is
the mighty triumph. (Q 9:112)”130 God has given precedence to those who fight over those who
sit at home. Although God has promised the best for both, He has preferred those who fight by
granting them a mighty reward.131
3.2.2 Sabil and Sufism. Gerard Rixhon posits that parrang sabil has a Sufi background or is an
aberrant offshoot of Sufism. Once the Sufi becomes constant in dhikr (remembrance) of Allah,
Sufis claim that he acquires sense of inner salaam (peace) to be in a state of delusion or trance
making him fully absorbed to the point of becoming unaware of himself or the objects around
him. He feels free of every barrier and not even pain nor suffering could stand in the way of
fulfilling Allah’s will. The dual purpose of parrang sabil was not so much to kill but to be killed
by the evil enemies. Since Americans, during the occupation of Sulu, were considered evil, death
in their hands was considered innocent and thereby religiously meritorious.132 The sabil who was
victimized or killed by the Americans was snatched up after death by a white horse and
immediately transported to paradise. To die in innocence, especially at the hands of an evil
person, insured a place in paradise. Although disputed in some traditions of orthodox Islam, this
is widely believed in rural Jolo for the Moros saw the act as Quránic. In Surah 4:74, the Qurán
says to those who fight in His path: “Let those fight in the cause of Allah who sell the life of this
world for the Hereafter. To him who fighteth in the cause of Allah—whether he is slain or gets
victory—soon We shall give him a reward of great (value).” Another Quránic text is: “But those
who are slain in the way of Allah—He will never let their deeds be lost. Soon will He guide
them and improve their condition, and admit them to the Garden which He has announced for
them.”(Q. 47:4-6)
Moros believe that those who die in the struggle are pronounced shuhud (sing. shahid) or
martyrs, and as a reward for their sacrifice they are promised entry to paradise, and a place in
As-Shafií’s Risala: Treatise on the Foundations of Islamic Jurisprudencet, translated by Majid
130

Khadduri (The Islamic Texts Society, 1961), pp. 82-83.

131
Ibid, 84.
132
Kiefer, The Tausug: Violence and Law, 133.
sulga (heaven). This so inspired the sabils to fight to death since they are certain that they will
enter paradise. They do not fear death, and in fact they seek death for they see it as a blessing.
This belief was so strong that it led to the Moros downfall. They barricaded themselves in kutas
to face a formidable US forces in order to be killed. General Leonard Wood concluded that the
Moros are fanatics and care nothing about being killed.133 He described U.S. Army strategy this
way: after shelling the kutas, they corner the Moros and positioned themselves over the ditch and
smother the Moros with

rifle fire killing them “like rats in a trap. They never surrender. Our losses if the troops are
handled carefully are usually very small.”134

Sabil: Rite and Act. Kiefer identified two forms of parrang sabil. The first form, the
juramentado135 proper, by an individual or with a small group. The second form is “said to occur
whenever a Tausug is innocently killed in battle with a non-Moslem, whether or not he has
formally prepared for it. All Tausugs killed in battle with the Spanish, Americans, or Filipinos
were automatically sabbil.”136 The second form, which was common in kuta warfare, would still
be qualified as a parrang sabil despite the absence of the rituals performed for individual sabil.
The salat they recited in community in the presence of the pandita137 would suffice.
As for the individual sabil, the rite begins with a bath in a spring stream Moros believed
to be sacred. He shaves off his eyebrows, and binds his body with leather. After dressing all in
white, he would pledges a holy oath before the pandita that he would die killing the enemies of
the Sultan. The pandita would then offer prayers for his cause, after which the sabil is resolved
to die for the cause. Kiefer observed a quasi-sexual aspect to the rite. The penis of the sabil was
bound tightly in an erect position to insure the success of the mission. Upright penis symbolizes
an erect body which also meant that the sabil would not fall easily.138 This ritualistic act,
however, is not Islamic and can be traced back to the Hindu lingam rituals that remained
operative in Moro culture. In an interview with Moros from Zamboanga del Sur, I gathered that
the sabils tied their scrotum so tightly that the pain is so excruciating, thus raising their tolerance
to pain from bullets, and making them seemingly not vulnerable to injury. The extraordinary
tolerance to pain is a form of mysticism inherent in parrang sabil, no matter how deviant one
may find it.
The weapons of the Moros are particularly suited to man-to-man close combat. The main
weapon is called kris, a wavy-serpent like two-edged sword which was about nine inches long
thus making it easy to hide it under their clothes. Sabils also used a barong, a weapon with a
thick back and a razor thin cutting edge 16” long. Both weapons are capable of inflicting deadly
133
Gowing, 1983, 156.
134
Ibid, 155.
135
A Moro who took an oath to die for Islam.
136
Kiefer, ‘Parrang Sabil,’ ed. Gowing, 1988, 54.
137
A religious scholar. Today they are called ustadz.
138
Kiefer, ‘Parrang Sabil,’ Gowing, 1988, 58.
wounds. A sabil then would enter the nearest town and strike when and where least expected,
possibly on a quiet street or in a crowded marketplace. The sabil would swing and swirl his kris
and kill American soldiers in his path. Major Hugh Scott witnessed that “[O]ne Moro of Jolo was
shot through the body by seven army revolver bullets, yet coming on with enough vitality and
force to shear off the leg of an engineer soldier, more smoothly than it could have been taken off
by a surgeon.”139 The sabil would hack and stab until he was killed. Muslims were specifically
excluded, and if they were accidentally killed the sabil could lose his merit to enter paradise.
Although one may find the theology and practice of parrang sabil as deviant indeed, one
needs to understand that the ‘Islam’ shaped in Sulu that gave emphasis to parrang sabil was a
result of three centuries of persistent Spanish aggression. Even without Islam, there was a crude
logic that would justify, as in the case of parrang sabil, the use of violence by the Moros, an
occupied people.

139
Scott, Some Memories of a Soldier in Mandate in Moroland, Gowing, 99.