Who would know the plight of Filipino Muslims better than President Rodrigo Duterte. For 22 years of his political life, he was mayor of a city in the province of Mindanao. It is encouraging to know that he has pledged to fast-track new legislation granting self-rule to the Muslim-majority region in southern Philippines. Not that moves on these lines were not made by Manila in the past, but they were meant more to neutralize the struggle for autonomy by the Moro Muslims. But these were either vetoed by a national plebiscite or the country's supreme court found them unconstitutional. That may no more be the case, given the particular situation that prompted the president to make this pledge. It was the five-week long siege of the commercial heart of Marawi City by rebels inspired by Islamic State, declared Mindanao a province of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's "caliphate." The proposed legislation aims to make predominantly Muslim parts of the southern parts of Mindanao an autonomous region with its own executive, legislature and fiscal powers. Given the appeal Islamic State makes to the Muslim minorities in the Philippines, Thailand and Myanmar who feel treated as second-class citizens, there is a kind of realization that moderate Muslims are a better option than Islamic State terrorists. And that feeling has been conveyed to Manila by none else but the chairman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Al-Haj Ebrahim Murad. "These misguided people (IS militants who seized Marawi City) have filled the vacuum created by our failure to enact the basic law and they feed into the frustration of our people," he says.

For most of the Philippines' history, most of Mindanao has been a separate territory, or part of the Sulu sultanat, which enabled it to have its own culture and identity. Called "Moros" (Moors) by the Spanish, they have a history of resistance against Japanese, Filipinos, Spanish and Americans. If they could not be defeated in wars political sops like autonomy and self-rule were offered. For instance, escalating hostilities between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) prompted President Ferdinand Marcos to issue a proclamation forming an autonomous region in southern Philippines. But his move was rejected by a national plebiscite. The country being predominantly Christian and Muslims being only 5 percent of population the failure of the move was predestined. The kind of threat Islamic State presents in Southeast Asia is bound to change the dynamics of mistreatment that has been meted out to Muslim minorities. President Duterte has correctly read the writing on the wall, and he presents an example to others in the region where Muslims are in minority. But some have not, and Myanmar is one of them. It denied entry to a United Nations team to verify complaints of atrocities against Rohingya Muslims. There are a host of local groups and networks who owe allegiance to Islamic State. Given porous borders and unguarded sea routes, these militant groups have access to each other. For example, there are media reports suggesting that dozens of Indonesians and Malaysians had crossed borders to reach and join Islamic State fighters in Marawi city. The promised new legislations are therefore the only way to Mindanao, and to the Philippines.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2017