By Roger Balanza
Would you believe that there are Muslims in Mindanao who hate being called “Moro”?
But it is not because they want to be called by other names, hate their blood brothers or sisters or that ethnic conflict is rending Moroland that Mindanao Muslins now hate each other and don’t want to be identified as Moros.
Moro here refers to the name ascribed to Mindanao’s first and original inhabitants, and its continuing use that Muslims perceive as derogatory.
Even Bangsamoro, the collective word used to refer to the Muslim population as an ethnic group with a distinct custom and tradition, is likewise frowned upon if used to refer to the “Moro nation.”
There had been for years intensive debates among the Muslims themselves on the Moro. At times at the sideline of the debates came mild threats against those who call Muslims in Mindanao as Moros.
Moro is a two-faced description to explain the debates. For those who despise it cite its history as a name that denigrates Mindanao Muslims with blasphemy. Those who stand proud to be called Moros praise it as a unifying factor among the Muslims.
The sentiment against being called a Moro is that it is, to some, an insulting colonial tag, that still persist today, heaped on them by Spanish conquestadores in the 16thcentury.
Making the name more repulsive is the violent adjective, juramentado, attached to Moro at the turn of the century by the Americans.
Mindanao Muslims fiercely opposed the occupation of their homeland and the Americans were forced to develop the powerful Colt .45 1911 semi-automatic pistol against suicidal Muslim warriors who armed only with a kris would face American soldiers in a man-to-man combat. The juramentado is a criminal running amok, an image that took Mindanao Muslims decades, after the Americans left, to erase.
Modern liberation movements starting from the 50s added further a bad meaning to the word Moro, as Mindanao Muslims’ demanded for self-determination and engaged a bloody war against the government. The Moro War killed thousands and displaced millions.
Happily, the bad connotations smeared in the past on the Moro, has been totally obliterated with acceptance of Moro as the name for Muslims of Mindanao, by Muslims themselves, the public in general and by government.
The recognition is enshrined in no less than the proposed law that aims to carve out parts of Mindanao as the Bangsamoro of the Moros of Mindanao.
Still, the debate over Moro and Bangsamoro as representative of the Muslims of Mindanao lingers.
Although the Muslim of today no longer abhor being called a Moro, the word having found acceptability, the debate over use of the Moro that in the past spawned conflicts among Muslims and between them and Christians, has been revived.
It is sad that the debate, particularly in social media, has caught in its web the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), the law that is on its last stretch of approval by Congress, that would give the Muslims a semblance of self-determination.

photo: Luwaran.com