3 - Re-inscribing amity: American Empire and Christian-Muslim relations in the southern Philippines in the 1920s

Presentation Abstract
After years of a policy of “Filipinization” of the bureaucratic apparatus of the Philippines aiming towards its independence, a new governor-general attempted to slow down, or even reverse, the process by emphasizing the narrative of longstanding enmity between the Muslim peoples of Mindanao and the Christian peoples of Luzon and Visayas and arguing that independence would only lead to interfaith strife in Mindanao. Thus, the solution was either to delay independence indefinitely or partition of the colony into Christian and Muslim regions, with the island of Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago becoming permanent American possessions while the Christian regions became independent. Faced with this partitionist challenge, Filipino politicians and intellectuals sought to reframe the issue by bringing forth a narrative of amity between both communities. While there may have been clashes in the past, those were only the result of Spanish colonialism pitting them against each other; furthermore, recent history had shown that (Christian) Filipino administration of the Muslim regions—and immigration into those regions—had led to interfaith understanding, harmony, and brotherhood. This was an important shift in the way the matter was discussed in the very early American colonial period, during which Christian Filipinos recoiled at the use of Filipino Muslims as “representatives” of the country in expositions in the United States and openly mulled the military measures they would take against the Muslims in case they should rebel against the authority of an independent Manila. Friendship—or the lack thereof—had become an arena of colonial and anticolonial contestation.