Introduction to The Many Ways of Being Muslim

By Coeli Barry

This collection brings together short stories by Muslim Filipinos written over nearly seven decades,
beginning in the 1940s. The first story in this volume was published on the eve of World War II and the
most recent contributions were written in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Muslims are a minority in the
predominantly Catholic Philippines and while Muslims’ sense of place within the Philippines is mediated
by this minority status, it is by no means fully defined by it. This collection of stories reveal how Muslim
Filipinos from different backgrounds—but especially those from the college-educated middle classes—
assimilate with non-Muslims and yet remain aware of the cultural and political differences that
distinguish them from the Catholic majority. By bringing these stories together this anthology invites
readers in the Philippines and elsewhere to trace the development of short story writing in English by
Muslim Filipinos across time and to enjoy the stories in and of themselves.
The short story in English was adapted and naturalized by the middle-classes of the Philippines,
both Muslim and Christian, and it became the most popular literary form of the twentieth century. By the
1920s and 1930s the short story in English became the genre that attracted most aspiring writers. English-
language schooling from primary level through college and universities was a keystone of American
colonial policy and the use of English in politics, media and social life under American colonialism
helped create a cross-regional market for short stories. Writers published in other Philippine languages
and oral story-telling and other narrative forms continued to be practiced throughout the country, but to
be read by a national audience increasingly came to mean writing English-language publications.
English-language magazines established in the American colonial were vital to the short story’s
popularity and they nurtured and showcased a literary style that was modern, secular and national.
Though the readership was concentrated heavily in the largest cities—Manila and Cebu—it also extended
to other urban areas throughout the Philippines and included provincial and rural-based school teachers
and civil servants as well. The best-known of these magazines was the Philippines Free Press and during its
heyday in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, its editors actively solicited writing by authors from provinces
throughout the Philippines. Though the stories might reflect the ‘local’ landscape of the contributors, the
style of the story writing had to have cross-regional appeal. In this volume the first male and female
Muslim writers were each published in the Free Press: one of Ibrahim Jubaira’s early writings was
published in 1941 and Noralyn Mustafa published some of her stories there in the late 1960s and early
1970s.
There are many languages spoken among the different Muslim communities, but English became
the lingua-franca of Muslims from the educated classes starting in the American colonial period, though
English-fluent Muslim-Filipinos comprised a small group at that time. From the late colonial period and
into the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s typically the path towards higher education led Muslims to the Christian-
dominated urban areas of Mindanao, to the cities of the central islands called the Visayas or to the capital
city of Manila. (The majority of Muslim Filipinos live in the Southern Philippines on the large island of
Mindanao and the cluster of smaller islands in the Sulu Sea.) The decision to write in English can be seen
as coming out of these educational opportunities and out of a desire to be a writer in this very popular
genre but one for which, until recently, there were few vernacular Muslim-language publishing outlets.
The short story in English was the vehicle through which Muslim Filipino writers could express
themselves in a modern literary form, though only to other English-educated readers. Many of the stories
in this volume intersperse the English narrative with words from languages including Tausug and
Maranao, Arabic as well as Tagalog, attesting to the fact that other languages are never out of ‘listening
range’.
The singularly prominent place the short story was granted in the Philippines suggests that it not
only resonated with existing narrative styles in the vernacular languages but that it also could convey
newer sensibilities in ways preferable to older cultural forms. Generational struggles, romantic love and
coming of age crises were the themes the short story took as their own. Muslim Filipino writers mastered
this genre and made those themes their own, creating fictional landscapes that drew on the world they
knew as children or as young adults, the point in their lives during which many of the authors in this
volume did most of their writing.
High school and college courses on the short story as well as student publications provided
young writers the chance to practice their art. The short story became a fixture in literature classes
ensuring that it would be taught and practiced by younger generations. While short story classes
included short stories from North America, Europe and England, by the 1960s there were enough stories
authored by Filipinos to be compiled into anthologies and the beginnings of a canon of Filipino short
stories took shape. Ibrahim Jubaira was the only Muslim writer old enough and widely published at that
time to have been included in those anthologies. Consequently he was the best—and for a long time only
—known Muslim short story writer in English. When anthologies were subsequently produced in the
Philippines, Jubaira’s writings were selected.
The generation of Muslim Filipino writers who emerged after Jubaira published under different
conditions. Owing to the social and political changes that gripped the country from the late 1960s through
the 1980s, literary production became more constrained by politics. Many of the older flagship magazines
were shut down and writing in languages other than English became more popular, especially as an
expression of criticism against the deteriorating conditions in the Philippines. Jubaira had been granted a
place in the canon of Filipino literature, but the very creation of that type of canon implied a consensus of
sorts about what constituted mainstream English-language Filipino writing. This consensus became
harder to hold on to as the divisions wrought by the politicized climate of the 1970s became more acute.
Additionally, to the degree that Christianized Filipinos thought about Muslim literary life at all at this
time, they likely thought in terms of ‘Muslim literature, a term defined by scholars to include oral
narratives, ballads, songs and some written sources. The Muslim Filipino writers who came into their
own in the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, did so after the lines had been drawn around Muslim
literature and Filipino literature, the latter being un-problematically modern and the former remaining
confined to the ‘traditional.’
Muslim-Filipinos’ short stories fell beyond the pale of Muslim literature defined this way. By
consigning Muslim-Filipino literature and arts to the realm of the traditional, boundaries were
constructed by these studies that kept ‘modern’ Muslim Filipino writing—such as the short story—from
view and reinforced the perception of Muslim separateness as an enduring and unchanging aspect of
their lives in the Philippines.
But the place of Muslims in the modern Philippine nation-state and the impact of Philippine
government (and Christian Filipinos) on Muslims’ lives was more complex than the labels ‘traditional’
and ‘separate’ implied. Muslim-Filipino identities developed across the twentieth century within a
political system that encouraged some kinds of participation (at least among Muslim elites and middle-
classes) and excluded other avenues of integration and inclusion.
The divides between Muslim and Christian Filipinos that existed in the first half of the twentieth
century were exacerbated and became the source of tension and later violent conflict in the second half. In
the 1950s and 1960s there was large-scale migration from the overcrowded and politically restive
northern and central islands of the country into the large (and then much less populous) island of
Mindanao. Government policies and everyday political practices combined to privilege the Catholic
Filipino population. This migration changed the demographic character of the island and generated
tension between Muslims and Catholics. Violent confrontations (isolated and small-scale at this stage)
between Muslims and Christians ensued throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and by the early 1970s the
government of Ferdinand Marcos ordered tens of thousands of soldiers into the Southern Philippines to
quash the separatist movements which arose then. Over the next twenty years, some 100,000 civilians
were killed or displaced from their homes. The repercussions of these violent conditions continue to be
felt into the present, and consciousness of being Muslim in the Philippines continues to take different
forms in the wake of it.
Separatist leaders drew their ideological inspiration (and in some cases, material support) from
many areas. Among the first generation of leaders included those who were drawn to Marxist-Maoism, if
not to the, anti-Marcos Communist Party of the Philippines, which became deeply entrenched in many
parts of Mindanao. But other leaders and followers worked within pan-Islamic networks centered in the
Middle-East; and through these networks Muslim Filipinos studied and worked in Saudi Arabia and
other countries. Money for religious schools in the Southern Philippines and for the movements’ material
support also came from overseas. During this period many Muslims—not only those who favored all-out
separatism—pushed for greater appreciation of the political and cultural histories of Muslims in the
Philippines. Nationalists pointed with pride to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Muslim sultanates
for example which, as autonomous states in economically vibrant maritime Southeast Asia, successfully
avoided full-scale colonization by European powers. This cultural nationalism continues to have great
appeal for many Muslims irrespective of the type of political resolution they support. The troubled
political history of the modern Philippines has framed the way Muslim identities took shape and it
continues to do so into the present.
Political conflict, uneven economic development, and cultural and religious movements are
aspects of Muslim lives evident in this collection, though often these themes are treated as backdrop
against which other stories are told. The collection is divided into three sections, each corresponding to
the literary output of different generations of writers and together spanning the last years of American
colonization of the Philippines on the eve of World War II and the development of the nation-state in the
second half of the twentieth century. The stories reveal how Muslims have negotiated their identities in
the Philippines whether through assimilation or separateness or through some combination. But they also
illustrate how Muslim authors might choose to set those more overtly political themes aside for others
that fuel their imaginations.
In this volume Said Sadain’s story, “Spirits in the Box,” takes one phase of the violent conflict of
the 1970s as its frame. Set against the backdrop of the destruction of the city of Jolo in 1974, Sadain’s
young narrator, the twelve-year-old narrator Ghafur, has been forced to leave his home with his mother
for shelter in a camp while the city below burns. He has lost his father to the war and now his teenaged
brother has taken up a gun. Ghafur is confused about what is going on and why he’s been forced to leave
his home; Said himself gives his readers only small pieces of information that might clarify what is going
on and why. Said wrote this story when he was a teenager himself and not long before writing the story
he had witnessed the burning of his hometown, Jolo, as the Philippine Navy went house to house there,
battling with separatist rebels and destroying much of the town.
In Mehol Sadain’s “The River Below,” published in 1991, he writes that ‘the violence had come to
Mindanao like a sudden moonless night after a bright day.’ The heaviest toll is endured by those who
take up arms, but others were pulled into or affected indirectly by the war and militarization. In another
story, Pearlsha Abubakar’s “Maghrib,” the long years of violence from the 1970s on have left deep
divides between the military and local Muslim leaders. In “Maghrib,” the father’s life in Southern
Philippines politics leads him to seek financial support from sources in the Middle East, and when the
father takes to wearing Arab dress he comes under suspicion in the eyes of the local police and military.
The theme of leave-taking and returning comes up frequently in the stories and strangers appear,
disrupting and enlivening life in the villages and towns into which they come. In Mehol Sadain’s “The
Old Father”, the story-telling grandfather traveled to Manila as a child where he learned ‘the American
language.’ He also sought employment and adventure along routes Muslim Filipinos had traveled for
hundreds of years before American colonialism: south and west to the areas that are today parts of either
Indonesia or Malaysia. Although the imposition of national boundaries makes the back and forth across
the Sulu Sea more difficult, these routes continue to be plied for trade (legal or illegal), for employment in
the wealthier Malaysian state of Sabah, and for the pursuit of Islamic learning.
In Jubaira’s “Sheik Abu Jahar,” the Sheik arrives as an immigrant to the Southern Philippines but
little is known about his ‘previous career.’ And in “The Tall Big Man” also by Jubaira, a phantom-like
presence takes refuge briefly on the outskirts of the village. Children are terrified of this mysterious
figure and the adults are unsure of whether he is real and what to do about him, knowing well that if
they try to report the presence of the ‘Tall, Big Man’ to the police, they will be laughed at.
In Mehol Sadain’s “Ocean”, two ‘returnees’ meet each other back in their home village: the
narrator has returned from Manila, where he studied philosophy, and the other young man has returned
from neighboring Sabah, where he studied with a mystic. The latter challenges the ‘Manila boy’ as well as
the local religious teacher on the grounds that they are untutored in true Islam. The narrator realizes that
the divide between the Western philosophy he pursued in Manila, the study of the Qur’an as taught by
the local religious teacher and the spiritualistic approach within Islamic mysticism may widen to
dangerous effect. The presence of all three types of knowledge in this small village in the Southern
Philippines reflects the hybrid influences that inform Muslim Filipino life. Even as some groups within
the Muslim Filipino populations presently embrace more politicized Or fundamentalist Islam, the scenes
depicted in this story are important reminders of how diverse and varied Islamic traditions and
contemporary religious practices are in the Philippines. The desire for higher education leads many
Muslims to Manila or to Other urban centers. While in the eyes of their community that experience
destines young people for a more promising life, this promise is not necessarily realizable. In Elin Anisha
Guro’s story, “The Homecoming,” a long-standing feud between families destroys the bright future of a
newly graduated engineer. In Noralyn Mustafa’s story, “A Day in the Life of Dr. Karim,” the eponymous
Karim has chosen to return and work in the impoverished conditions of the provincial hospital near his
home, even though he finished his studies at one of the country’s best medical schools. His friend and
classmate working in the United States writes him regularly about the easier life that could be his if he’d
just leave the Philippines.
The Muslim communities in the Southern Philippines live with an awareness of non-Muslims
and this awareness pervades these stories. The term Christian is used by Ibrahim Jubaira in his story,
“Blue Blood of the Big Astana,” to refer to those who have the power to influence and even shape how
Muslims live, but there is an ambiguity about the identity of that state. The reader is not told if this state
is that of the American military rulers (and the civilians who joined them) who governed the Muslim
provinces after the end of the brutal Philippine-American war or if the ‘Christian state’ refers to the
lowland Christian Filipinos who served as appointed officials in the government that eventually became
the independent Philippines. Jubaira published “Blue Blood” in 1941 at a time when the government of
the Philippines—though still a colony of the United States—was administered by Filipinos. The state and
its representatives in Muslim areas were regarded as ‘Christian’ (even if some Muslims might also be
among their number) not because of religious affiliation per se but as a marker of the fact that they were
the ‘Other’.
The awareness of non-Muslims and the desire to explain different aspects of Muslim life to them
generates a kind of double consciousness in “Blue Blood.” Jubaira writes at certain points as though he
were the observer of a different culture, one whose customs he needed to ‘translate’ for a foreign
readership, describing the ‘natives’ dancing, for example, and the ways of the ‘Mohammedans.’ It is
worthy noting, however, that Jubaira as a more mature writer (and especially in his nonfiction works of
the 1950s) was very critical of the prejudicial ‘official’ history writing of the Philippines that gave Muslim
Filipinos occasion to question their place in the new nation.
Writing some sixty years after “Blue Blood,” the youngest author in this volume, Arifah Macacua
Jamil, writes in a very different voice from that of Jubaira’s. Gone is the sense that Muslim customs need
explaining. In contrast to Jubaira, Jamil does not shift voice to describe the customs of the ‘natives.’ She is
not a ‘translator.’ Her tone is immediate and inclusive as though she is confident that the readers will be
prepared to join her in the homes and lives she depicts, regardless of how unfamiliar the settings or how
intimate the issues being discussed. In “Initiation,” for example, we listen in as a girl comes home from
school with her blood-stained skirt, signs of her first menstruation.
Among the writers that form the last group in this volume, all but one are women. The themes
they take up are different from those of the older writers. These writers address the hierarchies of class,
status and gender within Muslim communities and expose the tensions within families. In Loren Lao’s
“The Trip to a Forbidden Land,” a mother is enraged that her daughter went to her husband’s hometown
without having waited for the formal rituals of introduction and welcoming. The mother will hear
nothing of the daughter’s protest that those rituals are costly and impractical and out of date. The young
women in these stories may be forced to accept certain things that they do not approve of.
The women in these stories are often ambivalent about—or opposed outright to—the
expectations their families have for them, expectations based on ideas about ‘proper’ conduct of Muslim
daughters and wives. In Abubakar’s “Ayesha’s Pretty Hate Machine,” a first wife is forced to welcome
the woman her husband chooses as his second wife. The first wife uses a video camera to simultaneously
record and observe her own life as it change before her eyes. This second wife is a Christian from Manila
who works on TV—hence the video camera—and the first wife observes with a combination of bitterness
and humor how ignorant this woman is of her husband’s family customs. In Abubakar’s story,
“Mahgrib,” the narrator is the daughter of a second wife who converted to Islam on marriage. The father
abandoned this family and returned only when the daughter was nearly grown. The resentment she feels
towards her father finds expression in her attitude towards her obligations as the daughter of a Muslim:
she is reluctant and slow to reconcile herself to her father’s ways.
Young women in many of these stories are conscious but not necessarily accepting of the
expectations that are placed on them by their families and communities. In the eyes of the parents and
other relatives in these stories the family’s reputation rises and falls on a daughter’s appearance and
conduct. In Jamil’s “Aesthetics,” a mother teaches her daughter how to choose what veil to wear with
what clothes. The selection of the right color is much more than fashion; on the basis of the daughter’s
appearance the family will be judged. In Jamil’s “Mukna,” a teenaged-girl rebels against the forms of
Muslim life she must master and abide by if she is to live within her family. She forgets the prayer she
should say before her morning bath and is restless at the community’s prayer session throughout which
she must sit properly alongside her mother. Her father’s strictures on her dress and conduct at a party
force her to choose between the claustrophobic atmosphere at home and escape. But escape is not
possible for the teenaged-girl in Lao’s “Good Old Bapa” who must live a dual-existence as a student and
wife to a man who is clearly not of her choosing.
Religion and culture can be mutually reinforcing when they appear together under the name of
tradition, and often it is women who bear responsibility for preserving traditions. But tradition doesn’t
always wear a religious face. In social settings where ‘new knowledge’ based on science sits
uncomfortably alongside traditional knowledge, a child crossing the boundary from one to the other feels
the tension between them. In a story written in the 1980s by Calbi Asain, “Panunggud” (The Rebel), a
young boy on the brink of adolescence is torn between believing the ‘Northerner’ (the non-Muslim
teacher in the village school) with his/ her scientific knowledge and following his grandmother’s
‘superstitions.’ Nor do Muslim Filipino authors invariably set their stories within Muslim contexts. Some
stories are set squarely within Catholic Filipino communities and they offer a glimpse of what this
dominant culture looks like through the eyes of someone who is familiar with it but not fully a part of it.
In Noralyn Mustafa’s story, “Obituary for Today,” there is nothing to indicate that the author is not a
Christian. Yet in drawing attention to the smallest details of a landscape dominated by Catholic symbols,
Mustafa achieves a critical perspective on the routine rituals—and cruelties—of the dominant culture that
is hard to find in other Filipino short stories. Other stories in the volume make no reference to any
religiously informed social life. Jubaira’s “Bird in a Cage,” Mustafa’s “Termites,” and Said Sadain’s
“Pages” are stories set in offices, homes and colleges where the battles are those between husbands and
wives, middle-aged managers and young employees, and in the mind of a solitary student clinging for
life to what remains of his sanity. “Babel Rising” by Said Sadain is set in the future and, though names
indicate that the teenaged narrator is from a Muslim family, it is the effects of technology on human
interaction that appear to concern the author most.
The ways in which Muslim identities are revealed in this volume is related to the complex ways
members of this minority have assimilated themselves or been kept apart from dominant cultural and
political life of the Philippines. Muslim Filipino identities are not uncontested, least of all by those who
embrace them, nor are they fixed across time. The writers in this anthology demonstrate the diversity of
meanings being Muslim Filipino can have.
How ‘Muslim’ their writings appear depends a good deal on the time frame, the theme of the
story and the interests of the writer. There is no one way to be Muslim in the Philippines and no one
voice can capture the experiences of Muslim Filipinos. While the writings have been written from and
open up a critical space from which Philippine life can be viewed in the end, they are stories. Whatever
sociological or cultural perspective these stories may represent, they take us into fictional lives and
fictional worlds. In anthologizing these stories, we hope that they can be read in such a way as to
illuminate the literary imagination of Muslim Filipino writers across the generations.