Abstract/Sommario: The A., Pime missionary in the Philippines for several years, treating of the islamization of the country, points to the core of the problem. The Muslim missionary activity to spread Islam and to convert local people was carried on with a sort of adjustment of a traditional Islamic institutions and belief-patterns to pre-Islamic Philippine traditions with great respect for elements of those traditional social and cultural organizations that were conformable to the Islamic creed and pra ...; [Leggi tutto...]
The A., Pime missionary in the Philippines for several years, treating of the islamization of the country, points to the core of the problem. The Muslim missionary activity to spread Islam and to convert local people was carried on with a sort of adjustment of a traditional Islamic institutions and belief-patterns to pre-Islamic Philippine traditions with great respect for elements of those traditional social and cultural organizations that were conformable to the Islamic creed and practice. Elements of the social traditional structures such as the datuship, are combined in the Filipino Islam, with more specific Muslim institutions like the Sultanate and other socio-political and legal institutions, meant to keep the cohesion and the stability of the locally organized society. The process of Islamization has been, for many centuries, a continuous struggle between those who wanted to heighten the Islamic consciousness of the Moros, through the adoption of purer and more orthodox practices, and those who considered some ancestral religious practices not in contrast with the orthodoxy of the Islamic creed. The Moros follow the five pillars of Islam and other Islamic practices: this gives them a sense of unity with other Muslims. However, there are some practices coming from their ancestral religiosity, such as community celebrations, healing practices, animistic believes in various spirits, supernatural powers attributed to amulets or anting-anting, etc. Therefore, among the local Muslim leaders, there are people who want to stress the process of islamization in order to make the Moro more Islamic. Actually, in the urban areas, such as Marawi City, Cotabato City, Zamboanga City, Davao and Manila, the Islamic orthodox consciousness is more developed, since the religious Muslim leaders control their followers more effectively, but people are more indifferent to religion. A different situation happens in the rural areas of Mindanao, where the people are less pressured by materialism and more attached to the traditional Islamic religiosity. In remote places such as hills or mountains, the orthodox practice of Islam is even more difficult, because of the strong isolation of the population