Note 125 — Chapter XII · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO.

In the Philippine Islands we find a struggle between Christianity and Islam for the allegiance of the inhabitants, somewhat similar in character to that in Celebes, but more stern and enduring, entangling the Spaniards and the Muslims in a fierce and bloody conflict, even up to the nineteenth century. It is uncertain when Islam first reached these islands.125 The traditionary annals of Mindanao represent Islam as having been introduced from Johore, in the Malay Peninsula, by a certain Sharīf Kabungsuwan, who settled with a number of followers in the island and married there. He is said to have refused to land until the men who came to meet him on his arrival promised to embrace Islam, and these early records give the impression that the landing of Kabungsuwan and the conversion of the people of Mindanao at first proceeded quite peacefully; but after he had established his power, he began to conquer the neighbouring chiefs and tribes, and they accepted his religion in submitting to his authority.126 The Spaniards who discovered them in 1521, found the population of the northern islands to be rude and simple pagans, while Mindanao and the Sulu Islands were occupied by more civilised Muhammadan tribes.127 The latter up to the close of the nineteenth century successfully resisted for the most part all the efforts of the Christians towards conquest and conversion, so that the Spanish missionaries despaired of ever effecting their conversion.128 The success of Islam as compared with Christianity has been due in a great measure to the different form under which these two faiths were presented to the natives. The adoption of the latter implied the loss of all political freedom and national independence, and hence came to be regarded as a badge of slavery. The methods adopted by the Spaniards for the propagation of their religion were calculated to make it unpopular from the beginning; their violence and intolerance were in strong contrast to the conciliatory behaviour of the Muhammadan missionaries, who learned the language of the people, adopted their customs, intermarried with them, and melting into the mass of the people, neither arrogated to themselves the exclusive rights of a privileged race nor condemned the natives to the level of a degraded caste. The Spaniards, on the other hand, were ignorant of the language, habits and manners of the natives; their intemperance and above all their avarice and rapacity brought their religion into odium; while its propagation was intended to serve as an instrument of their political advancement.129 It is not difficult therefore to understand the opposition offered by the natives to the introduction of Christianity, which indeed only became the religion of the people in those parts in which the inhabitants were weak enough, or the island small enough, to enable the Spaniards to effect a total subjugation; the native Christians after their conversion had to be forced to perform their religious duties through fear of punishment, and were treated exactly like school-children.130 Up to the time of the American occupation of the Philippine Islands the independent Muhammadan kingdom of Mindanao was a refuge for those who wished to escape from the hated Christian government;131 the island of Sulu, also, though nominally a Spanish possession since 1878, formed another centre of Muhammadan opposition to Christianity, Spanish-knowing renegades even being found here.132