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This chapter chronicles the political and demographic transformations of the early postcolonial period and the creation of self-consciously ethnic Muslims in Cotabato. It highlights the postcolonial migration of Cotabato Muslims to Cotabato City, and the continuation of traditional datu rule in postcolonial Cotabato despite political and economic changes. The chapter suggests that the investment in identity by the datu politicians was part of an effort to project an image of a unified and revitalized Muslim populace in order to gain purchase in a nation-state controlled by Christian Filipinos.

This chapter examines the mostly unarmed struggle waged in Cotabato from 1980 until 1986 between the political alliances expressed spatially by the polar positions in Campo Muslim. It discusses the emergence of a new group of well-educated and politically active Islamic clerics called ulama, and evaluates the reactions of urban Muslims to their teachings. The chapter also highlights the emergence of a consolidated Muslim counterelite who publicly challenged the political legitimacy of the datu establishment.

This chapter describes the reinvigoration of electoral politics in Cotabato with the removal of the martial law regime and the collapse of the Marcos regime in 1986. It highlights the unprecedented employment of Islamic and Muslim nationalist discourse in electoral campaigns in Cotabato, and also discusses four post-Marcos political events that involved active participation of the Muslim urban poor. These include two mass rallies in 1986 and two election campaigns in 1988.

This chapter discusses theoretical issues surrounding the politics of heritage, and analyzes them in light of the various configurations of culture and power evidenced in Cotabato from the precolonial period to the present. It considers how power in Muslim Cotabato has been both enunciated by rulers and questioned by those subjected to it, and discusses the problems concerning the nature of traditional Islamic rule in Cotabato and the derivation and prevalence of a transcendent Philippine Muslim identity. The chapter also proposes an alternative approach for analyzing ordinary and extraordinary resistance based on a radically reformulated notion of hegemony as public accommodation of power.

This book investigates the meaning and motivations of the movement for Muslim separatism in the Philippines as it occurred in Cotabato, tracing the development of a Muslim nationalist identity, the origins of Muslim insurgency, and the mobilization of popular support for the separatist movement. It explores the complex configurations of power and resistance in contemporary Cotabato by means of an ethnography and of a specific urban community, and provides an ethnographic account of economic survival and political mobilization in Campo Muslim.

This chapter introduces the analytical approach used in the subsequent chapters to understand Muslim separatism in Cotabato, arguing against the regnant view that nationalist mobilization is accomplished mainly through the hegemonic effect of nationalist ideas. It criticizes the core concept guiding cultural hegemony and explains that the hegemony concept fails to capture the dynamic and imaginative responses to power made by Cotabato residents.

This chapter examines the land, people, and contemporary political economy of Cotabato. It describes the community of Campo Muslim, which serves as an architectural testament to the peripheralization of Cotabato's Muslims under the Philippine republic. The chapter explains that most community members are acutely conscious of being poor Muslims in a city dominated by Christians, and that awareness has induced a tempered resentment toward city Christians which may occasionally be agitated into intense anger by a perceived offense.

This chapter explores the history of Islamic rule in Cotabato, evaluating various idealized versions of the precolonial past in Cotabato against evidence found in the historical record and unauthorized oral narratives. The chapter discusses an ancient myth about Muslim nationalist politics that explains social disparity among Cotabato Muslims by sanctifying it. It examines the ideological expression and practical operation of the system of Islamic governance in precolonial Cotabato, and attempts to characterize the political relations represented by the myth of sanctified inequality.

This chapter examines the modern myth of Morohood in light of historical evidence from Cotabato concerning the nature of armed resistance to Spanish aggression in the Muslim Philippines. It investigates how political and economic relations within and between the indigenous polities of precolonial Cotabato were shaped and transformed by external perturbations in international trade and European conquest. The chapter also evaluates assertions that an oppositional identity as Philippines Muslims is ancient, deep, and broadly shared.

This chapter focuses on the incorporation of the Cotabato sultanates into the Philippines colonial state. It argues that the origins of Muslim nationalism are to be found not in the anti-Spanish struggle, but in the practices of American colonialism. The chapter examines the depictions of Cotabato datus as both colonial subjects and rulers, and describes the complex power relations of colonial Cotabato and the construction of a transcendent Philippines Muslim identity during the colonial period.

This chapter describes the watershed decade of 1968 to 1979 in Cotabato, a period of sectarian violence and armed rebellion, and one of economic devastations for many Muslims. It discusses the emergence of a Muslim counterelite and explains how the declaration of martial law in 1972 ignited an armed separatist insurgency throughout the South. The chapter also highlights the decision of the established datus of Cotabato to denounce the rebellion and align themselves with the national state that had underwritten their local rule for more than seven decades.

This chapter considers the armed separatist rebellion in Cotabato and its immediate aftermath from the perspective of its rank-and-file supporters, describing the Bangsamoro Rebellion as experienced in and viewed from Campo Muslim, an urban poor community with a concentrated and self-consciously Muslim population. It suggests that the ordinary fighters and followers of the separatist rebellion held views and produced symbols of the armed struggle which differed markedly from those promoted by movement leaders.