Islamophobia Literature Review

Review of Related Literature The discussion of the literatures is divided into two – Islamophobia and the Marawi War, each will be discussed independently.

Islamophobia

Islamophobia has been much defined and much used but little understood term. The most comprehensive definition of Islamophobia has been offered by Bleich in 2011, he defined it as indiscriminate negative attitudes or emotions directed at Islam or Muslims. “It is indiscriminate because it implies negative evaluation of all or most Muslims or aspects of Islam. Negative attitudes and emotions encompass a wide range of evaluations and affects covering aversion, jealousy, suspicion, disdain, anxiety, rejection, contempt, fear, disgust, anger and hostility. It also covers the phobic

A significant minority of the current population of Mindanao is Muslim which are composed of a variety of ethnic groups and are referred to as Moro or Bangsamoro (World Population Review, 2017). In 1990, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao was established and the region consists of five predominately Muslim provinces in the western part of Mindanao (World Population Review, 2017). According to Philippine Statistics Authority (2016), Marawi City is the largest city in ARMM and the largest Muslim-majority city in the Philippines with a population of approximately 200,000. But according to Rasul (2017) Muslim Mindanao has been described as the poorest of the poor that for instance, militants like Abu Sayyaf Group are motivated more by poverty and political disenfranchisement than militant jihad that during the first six months of 2016, ASG made the equivalent of $7.3 million from ransom (Hincks, 2017) and they envisioned a pure Islamic State for the Republic of the Philippines (RAND Corporation,

The character of armed Muslim rebellion in the Philippines is rooted in their struggle for sovereignty, first against the colonialism of the Spanish and then the Americans, and later against colonization by the newly independent Philippine government itself (Rasul, 2017) this agony continued through the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, whose soldiers massacred thousands of Moro under martial law (Hincks, 2017). In 1935, as the American government prepared to give independence to the Philippines, Muslim chieftains petitioned the US president not to include them in the new republic because they recognized that they would become second-class citizens of a Catholic-dominated country but their petition was ignored and the Catholic majority gained their independence and control over the Muslim territories (Rasul, 2017). The Southern Philippines experienced a regional separatist insurgency since the early 1970’s led by the Moro National Liberation Front who negotiated peace to gain political power for Muslim Mindanao (Scott, 2012). Since 1972, Muslim community has fought for their independence from the central government (Hincks, 2017) and as minorities in a predominantly Christian nation, the Muslims feel the need to defend their identities and their lands (Rasul,