Histories and Discourses of Muslim-Christian Relations in the Southern Philippines: Toward an Understanding of Intermarriage

Abstract

This paper aims to provide the original approach to reconsider the relations between Muslim and Christian Filipinos in the southern Philippines including the flexibility of boundaries between them.

Previous studies have focused on the hostility in the histories of the colonial experience and the separatist movement by Muslim anti-governmental groups since the late 1960s. On the other hand, some scholars insist that there are cases of friendly and intimate alliances in business and politics and cooperative movements by religious leaders and civil activists for peace building. These studies, however, have disregarded the flexible and vague relationships in the everyday lives of ordinary people. It is necessary to pay more attention to these everyday practices because they exhibit the reality of religious mixture zones and question the major discourses of “religious conflicts.”

For this purpose, this paper firstly examines the historical process of how people in the southern Philippines have been divided into two social categories, Muslim and Christian. Secondly, this paper explores the importance of an approach focusing on “intermarriage,” defined as marriage across the boundaries, to reconsider the relations between Muslims and Christians in the southern Philippines. The lives of intermarried families show various relationships among members holding different beliefs and identities and the process of changing boundaries because of people’s everyday practices to reconcile the differences.