(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

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.