Assalamualaikum all Muslim friends, Did you know that a Malay country that was once a population of almost 100% Muslims then committed mass apostasy? it turns out that the country is the Philippines.
If you look at the history of the Philippines, there have been Muslims there since the 12th century. The Philippines itself at that time was not yet a state into a republic as it is today, this country was only an archipelago of the Malay family which was used as a place of commerce for Muslim traders and a stopover for scholars from Gujarat, India, and the Middle East.
For the first time they occupied the Sulu archipelago, at that time the Philippines was a Muslim country with a Muslim population of 98%. The rest were Hindus, Buddhists, and Animists. The name Philippines is derived from the name of the second Spanish king Phillips in the 16th century whose sailors discovered the islands and then arbitrarily declared them to be an archipelago belonging to the Philips kingdom.
In fact, who is the real owner of the islands?
Islam entered the Philippines through a cleric named Sheikh Karim Al Makhdum, then in the Philippines several Muslim Sultanates were formed, namely,
- Maynilla Sultanate
- Tondo dan . Sultanate
- Maguindanao Sultanate
The Sultanate was subordinate to the larger Sultanate, namely the Sultanate of Brunei and the Sultanate of Sulu. The Sultanate of Manila is the forerunner of the capital city of the Philippines today, the name Manila comes from the word Fii Amanillah which means under the protection of Allah. This name was declared by Sultan Bolkiah of the Sultanate of Brunei.
In 1521 the Portuguese-born Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan landed in Samar and Litik and claimed the two islands belonged to Spain, but then met resistance from the Sultanate’s army from the island of Mactan led by Datu Lapu-Lapu. The rest of Magellan’s troops fled to Spain and prepared a more powerful Fleet to colonize the Philippines.
In 1565 the Spanish explorer Miguel Lopez De legaspi came and formed the first European settlement on the island of Cebu, 6 years later they invaded the Sultanate of Maynilla and Tondo and declared Maynilla the capital of the Spanish East Indies.
King Solomon who led the Sultanate of Manila defended the city with 3,000 loyal troops to the last drop of blood. When all the courtiers of the Sultanate were wiped out, all remained of the people who were dealing with the Spanish colonizers, at that time Spain gave the choice to accept Catholicism or be expelled from their homeland, so Filipinos flocked to embrace Catholicism.
Spain then incorporated western elements such as western law, Latin script, Gregorian calendar, and Catholicism itself. Some of the Muslims who rejected Christianity fled to the southern Philippines, namely Mindanao, to save their faith.
This region is the only region in the Philippines that strongly rejects the presence of the Spanish colonizers and the religion they brought. They managed to make a strong defense and continue to fight Spain through guerrilla warfare. Then the Spanish gave the name of the Filipino Muslims to the Moro people. This name is taken from the term for the descendants of Spanish Arabs who are Muslims who once ruled Andalusia or Spain, namely the Moors.
Read Also: The Law of Dangdutan at Weddings According to Islam
The Proclamation of Philippine Independence was made on June 12, 1898, this independence occurred because the Philippines was sold by Spain to the United States under the treaty of the Paris Agreement. For generations, Southern Filipinos, namely the Moro, who are Muslims, consider their brothers in the north, who make up the majority of the Filipino population, to be people who have the heart to pawn their aqidah to the invaders. Because of this, the Moro people in Mindanao continue to struggle to separate themselves from the Philippines, which has differed in creed, and vice versa because of this, the majority Catholic population of the Philippines considers the Moros to be rebels and terrorists.
Currently the Philippines is a secular country with the lifestyle of most of its people who trace 100% of the lifestyle of the United States even though the natives of the Philippines still use names that smell Spanish, but it turns out that there are still a number of traces of the glory of Islam that still survive to this day in the Philippines. like
1. Sheikh Karim Al Makdum Mosque
2. Intramuros Walled City
3. Quiapo . District
This is the story of a Muslim country which then committed mass apostasy throughout the country except in the southern part which is still Istiqomah in the religion of Allah SWT to this day.
Wallahu A’lam Bishwab
