Makdum Day kicks off ARMM anniversary festivities

COTABATO CITY -- The week-long celebration of the 27thfounding anniversary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao kicked off Monday with the commemoration of the Sheik Karimul Makdum Day in ARMM’s five component provinces.The holiday is observed yearly as a regional non-working day in honor of Makdum, an Arab missionary who set foot in Bohe Indangan in what is now Simunul island town in Tawi-Tawi in the 14thcentury to spread Islam.The holiday also traditionally marks the start of the celebration of the 27thfounding anniversary of ARMM, created in 1989 via a plebiscite. We have lined up various activities for this year’s ARMM anniversary feast, said Ayesha Mangudadatu-Dilangalen, the region's tourism secretary.Dilangalen, Gov. Rashidin Matba, Congresswoman Ruby Sahali and Simunul Mayor Nazif Ahmad Abdurahman jointly led Monday’s commemoration in Tawi-Tawi of the arrival in Bohe Indangan of Makdum from the Middle East 636 years ago to propagate Islam.Organizers of this year’s ARMM anniversary festivities said they are expecting a different mood in the 32-hectare regional government compound in Cotabato City, venue of the week-long celebration, owing to the presidency now of the Mindanaon Rodrigo Roa Duterte, who has been vocal of his recognition of the Moro issue as one with religious and political dimensions.Duterte, who is of mixed Moro, Visayan and Lumad ancestry, was born in Leyte, but was raised in Davao City, less than 300 kilometers northeast of Cotabato City, the regional capital of ARMM.ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman had earlier declared November 7 a non-working holiday in the provinces of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur, both in Maguindanao, and in Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi to give his constituents ample time to observe the yearly Sheik Karimul Makdum Day.More than 80 percent of residents in these ARMM provinces are Muslims with different ethnic identities.Makdum built a mosque at Bohe Indangan, now the oldest Islamic worship site in the Philippines and, subsequently, established Muslim communities governed by leaders based on Qura’nic teachings on equality of men regardless of races, universal love and religious tolerance.From Bohe Indangan, the religion he espoused eventually spread through nearby islands that now comprise the towns in Tawi-Tawi and Sulu, the ARMM’s southernmost provinces.Soon after, a scion of the royalty in Johore in what is now Malaysia, Shariff Mohammad Kabunsuan, of Arab-Malay descent, arrived in Central Mindanao and propagated Islam in the mainland regions.Moro history narrates that the blue-blooded Kabunsuan, also a preacher, was only to escape from political persecution by Dutch colonizers in Johore in late 14thcentury, but decided to preach and settle in his newfound homeland, where pagan inhabitants treated him will and eventually embraced Islam.From Kabunsuan’s lineage sprung the present-day Maguindanaon, Iranun and Maranaw royalties, whose prominent scions include Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu and members of his family.