The New Settlers: Mindanao Muslims Head North

By Claire Delfin

It was 1984. Hadja Amina Jed, then 29 years old, packed her things, left Maguindanao in Western Mindanao and sailed north to Manila.

She is the second of eight children and her mother died while she was still a child. Her father was a fisherman. “Mahirap talaga ang buhay. Pag walang huling isda ang aming tatay, wala rin kaming makain (Life was hard. During times when father had no catch, we also had nothing to eat),” says Amina.

Amina was determined to change her family’s fortune. Going to Manila and finding work seemed the only option.

Twenty-three years later Amina works in Manila as an agent of a manpower agency that sends mostly Muslim Filipinas to the Middle East for work. She stayed single and was able to send all her siblings to school. Today she has a car and a comfortable house in Quezon City.

Lika Amina, Mosrifah Labay also saw the move north as the best option to change her life. She left Marawi City in Mindanao in the 1990s.

Ten years later, she runs a series of small market stalls, selling ready-to-wear clothes in Quezon City.

Amina and Mosrifah are just two of the 1.6 million Muslims who left Mindanao in pursuit of a better life in the capital.

The majority of the Muslims here belong to the three main Moro tribes — the Maranao, Maguindanao and the Tausug.

The Maranao, like Mosrifah, come from Lanao province and have a reputation and tradition for entrepreneurship. As a group, the Maguindanao from Cotabato, Maguindanao, Saranggani and General Santos tend to do less well and are generally the poorest of the three tribes. They come from provinces where the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is most active. Here, many families had already left their farmlands for fear of getting caught in crossfire between the MILF and government troops, as is happening once again this week.

Maguindanao peoples typically find work in companies or in small businesses in Manila. Many females go abroad to work as domestic helpers.

The Tausug hail from Jolo, Sulu, Basilan and Zamboanga provinces and also work as employees in businesses or else head overseas.

Former Lanao del Sur representative Benasing Macarambon, Jr. says that the Muslim departure from Mindanao started in the 1970s amidst widespread poverty at the height of armed Moro insurrection in the region.

“War was at its peak. People were starving. There was no choice but to leave,” says Macarambon.