Scholar Examines Muslim Separatist Movement

The violence by Islamic rebels in the southern Philippines this week is said to be the worst in at least four years. The rebels’ plight is the subject of a recent book written by a UAB professor who spent years investigating the meaning and motivations for the separatist movements. The book is the first ground-level account of the Muslim separatist rebellion from the viewpoint of ordinary adherents.

May 4, 2000

The violence by Islamic rebels in the southern Philippines this week is said to be the worst in at least four years. The rebels’ plight is the subject of a recent book written by a UAB professor who spent years investigating the meaning and motivations for the separatist movements. The book is the first ground-level account of the Muslim separatist rebellion from the viewpoint of ordinary adherents.

UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) anthropologist Thomas M. McKenna, Ph.D., is the author of Muslim Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism in the Southern Philippines, (1998, University of California Press). The book examines the Islamic solidarity and social disparity in the Southern Philippines.

McKenna, an associate professor of anthropology at UAB, was in the southern Philippines last March of this year on the island of Mindanao for his research. Over the years, McKenna traveled to the southern Philippines to study the rhetoric and practice of Philippine Muslim politics. His research yielded the first contemporary anthropological account of the Magindanaon, a major Filipino Muslim ethnic group and the first depiction of the 15-year-old Filipino Muslim, or “Moro,” insurgency from the point of view of ordinary rebel fighters and supporters.

“Abu Sayyaf has stepped up their activities now because the government has chosen to negotiate with the MNLF and has been cracking down on the rest. The members of Abu Sayyaf are dissatisfied with the deal struck with the MNLF. They are poor and have been neglected, so they are taking dramatic action.” McKenna says that another group, the MILF has also begun fighting again for recognition and economic aid. “But the government has taken a more aggressive and less conciliatory stance toward the MILF. It’s not clear where it will lead.”