Pastor Matthew Sucky here from Verity Baptist Church Philippines and I'm making a quick
missionary moment on the religion of Islam as it relates to the Philippines and the Filipino
people.
Now the purpose of this video is not to critique the religion or explain to you why I disagree
but to give you an informative, non-biased perspective of Islam, specifically as it relates
to the Philippines and to the Filipino people.
Number one, what is the percentage of Muslims in the Philippines and what is the location
of the Muslims in the Philippines?
The percentage of people in the Philippines that adhere to Islam is actually seven percent
of the population.
I would have guessed it to be a lot lower than seven percent before I lived here in
the Philippines and the seven percent is not equally distributed throughout the entire
country.
In fact, where I live, the percentage is actually not that high.
I certainly do run into Muslims but it's certainly not seven percent of the population
and in the area of Luzon, which is where I live, you have Metro Manila, you have a lot
of the major provinces, sixty percent of the population in the Philippines and there's
a pretty low percentage of Muslims here in Luzon.
In Visayas, which is where Cebu is, you have a pretty low percentage of Muslims but if
you go to Mindanao, which is the other third major group of islands here in the Philippines,
you have a large number of Muslims, said to be around twenty three point three percent
of the population of Mindanao is Islamic and ninety three percent of the Muslims that live
here in the Philippines are said to live in Mindanao.
And so even there in Mindanao, I mean in Davao itself, the percentage is less than four percent,
which is the major area there in Mindanao, but other parts of the Philippines are completely
a Muslim majority.
And so most of the Muslims here in the Philippines follow the religion of Sunni as opposed to
Shia.
But there are in the provinces of Lanao del Sur and Zamboanga del Sur and Mindanao, there
are some Shiite communities of Muslims there worldwide.
The only countries that I know of that are predominantly Shia are Iran, Iraq, Iran and
Azerbaijan.
There's other ones that have a large number, but most Muslims in this world are Sunni,
over 80 percent.
Same thing here in the Philippines.
There is an area there in Mindanao, the B.A.R.M.M., the Bong Zamora, officially the Bong Zamora
Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, B.A.R.M.M., and it is an autonomous region located in
the southern part of the Philippines.
And so it is a Muslim dominated area in that part.
Number two, besides the percentage and location, what about the overseas Filipino culture,
the OFW culture of the Philippines?
The Philippines, along with the country of India, are probably the two most dispersed
countries in the world in terms of their residents living in other locations.
There are countries like Russia and Mexico that have a large number of people living
elsewhere, but they're not as widespread in different areas.
There are Filipinos all over the world.
And so OFW is a term for overseas Filipino worker.
There are a lot of people that consider the Philippines their home, but they're living
overseas at least for a time period.
And there's about 15 million Filipino citizens overseas, and here are some of the areas where
they have a lot of members, 5 to 6 million in the United States and Canada.
And then if you look at Muslim areas, 0.9 million in the U.A.E.
I know a lot of people, a lot of Filipinos live in the U.A.E., 0.7 million in Saudi Arabia,
0.3 million in Kuwait, 0.25 million in Malaysia, 0.1, 0.25 million in Qatar, and 0.1 million
between Lebanon and Jordan.
And so those are areas that are very commonly, are mostly Muslims.
And what takes place when Filipinos work in those areas, some do keep their religion of
Catholicism or whatever their religion would be as they go over, but many end up converting
to the religion of the culture they're in.
Now, when it comes to this, there's a term for people that go over to a Muslim country
and convert to Islam, and they come back and they are now Muslim and they stay Muslim.
It's called Balik Islam, you know, returning as Muslim.
But there's also a lot of people that become Muslim when they live in these countries,
and when they come back, they convert back to Catholicism.
I've had a lot of interesting conversations with people that lived in Muslim countries,
and some of them have come back fully Muslim, and others have said that, yeah, I was Muslim
when I was over there, and I kind of came back to my religion, which shows that they're
not specifically tied down to any specific religion.
So, number one, we talked about percentage and location of Islam in the Philippines.
Number two, the OFW culture.
Number three, what is the history of Islam here in the Philippines?
There is actually a Muslim group of people already here in the Philippines before Ferdinand
Magellan came here 500 years ago.
And quite honestly, if the Catholic Church never came here 500 years ago, I believe this
would be basically a Muslim state, a completely dominated area by Islam.
The person who was the head of the group that killed Ferdinand Magellan, Lapu Lapu, was
said to be basically Muslim with also a mix of indigenous beliefs.
And what is taking place is the indigenous beliefs here in the Philippines are still
around.
The majority of people don't really have Muslim beliefs, unless they actually are Muslim,
although the indigenous beliefs are very widespread.
But I do believe that this country would be Islamic if Ferdinand Magellan, the Catholic
Church, had never come here.
But the start of this was in the 14th century, the Sunni Sheikh Makdoum Karim reached the
Sulu Archipelago in Jolo in the Philippines and established Islam in the country through
trade in several regions of the island.
Some people say even in the 10th and 11th centuries, Islam actually came here.
And then there was Indian Muslim missionaries traveling to Malaysia and Indonesia, and they
helped strengthen Islam in the Philippines.
There was also Chinese Muslims, Indian Muslims, and Persians as well that brought Islam to
this country.
It says, by the next century, conquest had reached the Sulu Islands in the southern tip
of the Philippines where the population was Buddhist and Hindu, and they took up the task
of converting the animistic population to Islam with renewed zeal.
And so that's kind of interesting because in today, there's not a lot of Buddhists or
Hindus in the Philippines.
And you kind of wonder why since it's an Asian country, but Buddhism and Hinduism actually
was here in the Philippines, but then Islam actually basically took over in those areas
and eventually, of course, the Catholic Church took over.
You know, lastly, number four, what about the friction between the Muslims and the non-Muslims
here, or even between Mindanao, which is where most of the Muslims are, and the other parts
of the Philippines?
You know, a couple of things to keep in mind.
One is that there's different laws in the BARMM, the Bangsamora Autonomous Region and
Muslim Mindanao.
And so they have some rules that are the same rules and laws as we have in the nation, but
in some ways, they act basically underneath their own law system.
And so that's a very interesting situation.
You know, I guess something similar in the U.S., there might be some Native American
populations that kind of get to go by their own rules in certain areas, but by and large
in the United States, you have one rule set.
Here in the Philippines, it's a little bit different in those areas.
You know, the people that are primarily Muslim there in Mindanao, if you trace back their
roots, they have a different origin, different ethnicity, and different languages is their
background.
Of course, over time, there's intermarriage, but there is also a difference in their ethnicity
in general from the group that are Muslim over there versus the people that are just
natively Filipino going back a long time.
There's always talk about Mindanao separating from the rest of the Philippines.
I don't think it's going to happen in my lifetime.
I don't think that we're near that point.
But it's something some people talk about and there are some people that would like
it to happen because Mindanao is a little bit different with the religion that's over
there and just various different things.
During the days of Ferdinand Marcos, not the current Marcos that is the president, Bong
Bong Marcos, but his father Ferdinand Marcos, in 1972 during the declaration of martial
law, it ended up leading to quite a rebellion and battle between the army or the military
of the Philippines and the Muslim people.
It says here from 1972 through 1976, a ferocious war between Muslim separate rebels and the
Philippine military raged throughout the Southern Philippines.
An estimated 120,000 people died in the fighting, which also created 1 million internal refugees
and caused more than 100,000 Filipino Muslims to flee to Malaysia.
The war was also extremely costly to the Marcos government.
It was reported that by 1975, as much as three-fourths of the Philippine army was deployed in Muslim
areas of Mindanao.
So there's certainly a lot of friction going back then.
There's definitely not as much now.
There's various laws in place to try to keep the peace between the Christians or the Catholics
and the Muslims and just the rest of society.
But it is a very interesting situation.
Now from my experience, I have definitely run into Muslims as I've gone out soul winning
and just gone about my routine and everything.
And there are some that are open to listening and they listen to what I have to say about
the Bible.
Most of them though are not that open.
They already know what they believe.
They're not interested in converting and usually they have not listened.
There are exceptions to that.
But I did wonder when I first moved here if the Muslims would be a lot more receptive
here than the United States, because a lot of religions are.
But in terms of the people that are Muslims here, from my experience in general, especially
if they're older, they've already kind of decided what they believe, they're not really
interested in listening.
And so it is an interesting situation that the Philippines has a variety of different
religions and there actually is seven percent of this country actually follows the religion
of Islam.
Anyways, thank you and God bless.