| Abstract: |
Since 1972 the Philippine government has faced Muslim rebellion in Mindanao and Sulu. Law has been a focal symbol for both the government and rebel organizations such as the Moro National Liberation Front. Rebels demand rule by Islamic law
the government has tried to legitimate its authority by enacting a Muslim Personal Law Code. This report analyzes the interactions of law, disputing, and ethnicity in the lives of the Maranao of the Lanao region of Mindanao. Beginning from a definition of law as authoritative discourse about social relations, the report examines Maranao social and cultural orders, with particular attention to power, authority, and traditional concepts by which these are apprehended and legitimated. Maranao political processes are factional, with recruitment primarily by kinship. The fluid social arrangements are rationalized by genealogical reckoning according to a fixed bangsa ('descent line') model of Maranao society (called taritib). Maranao understand social differentiation as a function of differential access to divine power (barakat) which is expressed in the individual as social honor (maratabat). Maranao dispute processing involves negotiation about the social universe and the identities of persons in that universe. It constitutes a ritual whereby the ideal order is expressed and its relevance to social life is affirmed. This process endows the extant social order with moral legitimacy and its leaders with authority. Government courts fail to realize any normative order meaningful to Maranao, and so fail to legitimate state authority. Government adjudication contributes to Maranao perception of the state as an intrusive instrument of ethnically alien Christian Filipinos. The Muslim rebellion derives from the inability of the state to legitimate its authority. In response to this legitimation crisis, the government undertook codification of Muslim personal laws. Three proposed codes are examined. Each assumes a different relation between political power and cultural symbols. These assumptions are tested against the analysis of law and legitimation in Maranao society. The report concludes that the enacted version (Presidential Decree No. 1083) fundamentally misapprehends the way legal discourse contributes to political legitimacy. As a result, prospects for an end to rebellion are dim.
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