The tragic events in Zamboanga manifest the intolerable tension. It is more than a conflict: it is a crisis which is ultimately dissatisfying for all the involved. Bloodshed and destruction rather than success or hope entered the city of Zamboanga, a gem of Our Sultanate as well as “the Latin City of Asia,” and the home of various cultures and ethnicities.
Peace was broken, as usual, and both sides fought in this name of justice and freedom. But to oppose freedom and justice to peace is not admissible. Freedom and justice must be brought to all the Moro peoples, not only to the lucky survivors of armed conflicts.
The Tausugs constitute a brave nation always ready to the self-sacrifice; but there is no glory in easy pouring either the noble Tausug blood, or anyone else’s blood, as far as reason could be used instead. The city of Zamboanga is currently a border city: in some aspects it belongs to the Moroland and in some, to the outer world.
It is telling that this did not prevent the city from being affected so gravely by the current tension. Bangsamoro, as a historically formed phenomenon, is a complicated reality. The effective creation of a formally outlined entity of this name, either as autonomy or a state, is commonly recognized as imminent.
The aim of this reform (whatever are the given programs suggested by the parties) is evident: to provide the Moslem population of Mindanao and Sulu with a just, adequate administration, not culturally alien to the majority of the citizens.
It is the general Moro population whose interests are to be thought of, and ultimately met. It is useful to remember that the current Filipino laws protecting the traditions and customs of the native peoples of the Republic provide the citizens with broad liberties and advantages. Would these laws be properly observed and implemented, the level of the current tensions would be significantly lower.
The laws, states and autonomies, pacts and negotiations are all tools, not aims, and may be used effectively or not. The aims are the Islamic values of justice and kindness, in their quotidian practical application. Some of our compatriots believe that the creation of the Bangsamoro entity, just like in the Big Bang theory, will constitute a decent social and political entity from nothing. This is understandable as a spontaneous aspiration but naive as a view.
It would be pointless to substitute the current model of state as it exists in our lands with any other model imposed “from above” in an artificial way, be it a “Western democracy”, or an “Islamic democracy”, or anything else.
It is absolutely necessary to recognize the authentic traditions of the Moro nation, or, more precisely, of the Moro peoples of the region, as the fundamental values of the future entity. The Tausugs and their brotherly Moro peoples, splendidly rich traditions and sublime cultural legacy, will make their unique contribution into the international Moslem community and the modern civilised world.
The traditional Sultanates and chiefships constitute a genuine and organic element of this legacy and should be accepted as integral in the course of formation of the modern land of the Moros; not only for the obvious reason that these historical structures embody the true national and religious identity, but also because they would counterbalance the risky novelties, populist tricks and arbitrary decisions which are always unavoidable in the course of a rapid political development.
I say this all as a Sultan of the Tausugs who have a bitter multi-secular experience of resistance and mass slaughters. The Moro peoples suffered enough and deserve freedom and their own home, not a newly built faceless barrack to be thrown into. We must remain ourselves, the proud and dutiful heirs to our fathers and grandfathers.
20