Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (62107)	12/16/2002 9:28:03 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

So, since we see this same phenomena all over the world, perhaps the Muslim Culture has something in it that produces these type of people? Superficially attractive conclusion, but in the specific case of the southern Philippines, I'm not sure it's really true. All evidence suggests that the 3 ethnic groups that are causeing the trouble here, the Tausugs (most of all), the Maranao, and the Maguindanao based their economies on piracy, banditry, and slavery long before Islam was introduced. In any event, the version of Islam practiced there would be almost unrecognizable to muslims from the middle east; it's hard to talk about "Muslim culture" as a consistent factor. Tausugs are muslims, but their culture is more Tausug than muslim. Religion has been an influence, of course. When the Spanish arrived in the Philippines they were horrified to find "Moors" already in place, and they fought them with their own particular blend of implacability and ineffectuality. The current isolation of this region from the rest of the country - if not for the drawing of colonial boundaries it would be part of Malaysia and/or Indonesia, to which it has much more cultural affinity - is largely a consequence of this long-term confrontation. Of course now we are seeing more importing of the muslim ideology from the middle east, a function of the arrival of radical "missionaries" and Saudi "charities", and of the experience of local muslims who fought in Afghanistan. As a whole, though, I would attribute the local conflict less to "muslim culture" than to a typical colonial accident: the incorporation of a population into one country despite a much closer cultural affinity with a neighboring country.