morning and the muezzin's call at Manila's Blue Mosque in suburban Maharlika echoes across the run-down tenement blocks as men slowly walk towards its sky blue onion-shaped dome. Across the road, goats graze and women gather under trees, their heads covered by white or black scarves. A placard taped to the mosque wall reads: “Peace for MindaNOW”. The latest attempt to bring peace to the southern island of Mindanao and give the minority Muslims a homeland has been officially scrapped after 11 years of negotiations between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Both sides have struggled for a settlement through peace negotiations punctuated by bouts of bloodshed which had displaced more than a million people and left more than 120,000 dead over the past 40 years. Once the majority ethnic group in Mindanao, Muslims have been marginalized and are now a minority in their own land following massive Christian migration from the northern and central Philippines from the early 1900s. Many of the displaced have drifted to Manila over the years, settling in small Muslim communities scattered around the city such as that at Maharlika. Known locally as “Little Mindanao,” it is home to an estimated 50,000 Muslims. Some were born here, others were children when their parents fled the fighting in Mindanao and some are recent arrivals. “Without our own homeland we are nothing as a people,” said Kamim Macmod, 38, who was two years old when his family fled Sultan Kudarat in Mindanao. Casting his eyes around the faithful entering the mosque, he says: “Despite our clan differences we (Muslims) all share the same dream -- to live in peace and on our own land.” Although the latest attempt for a settlement was endorsed by negotiators from both sides it drew widespread condemnation from Mindanao's Christians and politicians who saw it as unconstitutional and a sell-out of Philippine sovereignty. The agreement has been dumped by the government and factions of the MILF have begun fighting, sending more than 500,000 civilians into refugee camps. Nur-ashree Dawani, 37, married with three children is out of work but he gets by selling cigarettes and sweets on the streets for a relative. “Muslims in this country are a bit like the Palestinians in Israel, lost in their own homeland,” he said. “The fight for a homeland has been going on for decades now and I would expect it will go on for decades more.” Historically Muslims dominated the islands of the Sulu archipelago, western and central Mindanao and the island of Palawan well before the Spanish colonizers arrived in the mid-1500s. Despite 350 years of Spanish occupation the Muslims were left alone where the local sultanates dominated Southeast Asia. After occupying the Philippine islands following its war with Spain in 1898, the US fought a series of brutal wars with the Muslims to bring them into what was then the Philippine Commonwealth. For most of the 20th century large scale emigration was encouraged, first by the US and the Filipinos themselves, urging Christians to populate Mindanao. In less than 60 years the Muslims were pushed into being a minority people in what was once their own homeland, and now no one knows how many Muslims have drifted to Manila in the past four decades. On one recent morning heavily armed police and SWAT teams keep a discreet distance from the mosque. Maharlika was set up during the presidency of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the early 1970s to provide a refuge for the wave of refugees who fled Muslim Mindanao when students began agitating for a homeland. After 40 years of false promises exhaustion and frustration are eroding the patience of many Muslims in the Philippines. “Our quest for a homeland is like a voice from the wilderness. It has haunted the American colonisers and successive Philippine governments since our independence in 1946,” said Norhaya Macusang, a 26-year-old engineer and mother of one. “Many Muslims here have not only escaped the fighting in Mindanao, they have also escaped the poverty it has created,” she said. “But that is not to say everything is fine here in Manila. We suffer from widespread discrimination because we are Muslims. We have lost our dignity and self respect as a people. “Yes, I could pack up and leave. But where does that leave my people?” she asked. “The only way this situation will be sorted out is when we get our land back and Muslims are in control of their own destiny. “It's not a question of not being able to live side by side with Christians, we do,” she said. “It's a question of political will on both sides.”
