Societal transformation and the muslims in the Philippines : islamic legal and educational institutions since 1970s

Abstract

This study analyses government initiatives towards the transformation of Islamic law and Islamic education as well as the contribution of the "Mindanao Problem" to its development. It highlights the responses of Philippine Muslim intellectuals to those reforms and the implications of those reforms for Muslim communities. In particular, it analyses views of individuals or Muslim organizations associated with the reform of the Islamic institutions. It highlights the perceptions of Muslim intellectuals on the aims, policies, and scope of reform designed by the successive governments. In addition, this study examines the contribution of awqef institutions to the development of Islamic education as well as its implications for Muslim communities. This study is largely qualitative and utilized two methods of collecting data: library research and field interviews, which include informal and formal interviews with Muslim intellectuals and leaders who have contributed to the recent development of the Islamic legal and educational institutions. This study found that since 1970 Muslim society in the Philippines has been undergoing a gradual transformation as new ideas of Islamic thought, which stressed the importance of reviving Muslim culture and traditions, are sweeping through the lands of Mindanao and Sulu. However, little is known about the perspectives of the Philippine's Muslim intellectuals, the history of Islam and the development of Islamic institutions. The Philippine government has embarked intensively on the program of integration of Muslims into the Philippine's body politics. Thus, Muslim law and Islamic education have been revised in accordance with the dictates of postcolonial parameters of social change and development. The influx of new blends of educated and professionally oriented Muslim intellectuals, and with the aid and moral support of concerned individuals, organizations and governments who are interested in the growth of Islam in the Philippines have largely contributed to the perpetual renewal of Muslim society and Islamic institutions in the country. The steadily expanding influence of Islamic knowledge and practices against the stream of secularism as embedded in the system designed by the government for Muslim society, and the current efforts to organize Islamic institutions to serve members of the faith have attracted the scholars of religion, sociology and the like.