Muslims in the Philippines belong to the minority group, although they consist the second largest religious community in the country, next to the Roman Catholic. At present, Muslims in the Philippines are divided into at least thirteen (13) ethnolinguistic groups, but the major groups are Maranaw, Maguindanao, Tausug, Yakan, Sama, Iranun, and Sangil. More than half of them live on the large southern island of Mindanao. All of these groups practice the same Islamic faith but each of them has their own unique cultures.
For information, Maranaw is the largest of the Philippine Muslim cultural-linguistic groups who live around Lake Lanao on the southern island of Mindanao.1 Filipino Muslims are very rich of culture. Their cultural practices have been preserved amidst influences of colonization by Spaniards, Americans, and Japanese. For the sake of the Turkish readers, this essay, highlights a glimpse of the maranaw cultural issues on courtships only.
Like Filipino Christians, Maranaws are very conservative in observing courtship and marriage practices. Traditionally, it takes several months or even years before the Maranaw woman accepts her suitor as a fiancée. As practice, male Maranaw Muslim is usually courting and marrying a Muslim Maranaw woman who comes from the same status of his family, either through an arrange marriage or through courting process. Maranaw courtship is known as kapanganakan. It is equivalent to serenading in traditional Christian courtship. The suitor inkapanganakan comes in a group to the lady’s home and the former also gathers other ladies to form a group and receive the visiting suitors. This is one of the interesting features of kapanganakan as it develops mutual feelings among the two groups.
Meanwhile, kapanganakan is portrayed in different styles such as kandaonga, pananaroon, love letter, kapaniwaka, and kapangilay-lay. Kandaonga is usually practiced by those Mara[1]naw gentlemen who belong to a prominent family as it customarily narrates and traces one’s family lineage. Eventually, it also exposes the purpose of the group that is to formally court the ladies. The dialogue that takes place in kandaonga is very monotonous and after-like ego. This courtship style challenges the suitor to pursue the developed relationship (Maranaw Courtships, 2011).
Pananaroon highlights the kapanganakan. It is a maranaw courting style in which the suitor pronounces proverbial statements; has deep meaning but it very persuading. This courting style allows suitor to poetically express his intentions while the lady or his family members also responded poetically until they understand each other. Marriage settlement will follow once the Maranaw gentleman perceived a chance of being welcomed by the lady and her family.
Whichever of the courting styles, the Maranaw lad would offer kapaniwaka (giving of a gift to a lady in a form of friendship) and eventually kapangilay-lay (man’s family visits the family of the lady) as soon as the suitor feels a chance of being welcomed by the Maranaw lady and her family. Both families will then discuss the possible formal proposal.
The mentioned traditional Maranaw (Filipino Muslim) courtship is almost vanishing. The advent of the technology has greatly changed the courtship practices of the Filipino Maranaw Muslims. Today, mobile courting or texting is very apparent. More of the Millennial Filipino Maranaw believes that their soul mate should be selected based on attraction and feeling developed through texting and online dating. In fact, texting has been considered a way of life among young individuals and its use had also created a custom of courtship in the Filipino Maranaw Muslim in the Philippines. Even in the classroom setting, actual experience would testify that many students are using mobile phones to take advantage of text messaging courtship style. It allows them to develop intimacy with their partners as they can have more freedom of chit chatting and seeing each other without the eagle’s eyes of their parents. As observed, there are more senior high school students who got married in early age (15 to 17 years). This scenario is a manifestation that young Muslim Filipinos are dispelling their Islamic-related traditional culture. In fact, a study conducted in the Philippines (Ampaso and Hermosilla, 2014) on Filipino Maranaw Muslim Culture found that young Filipino Muslims have varying differences in practicing their cultural identity due to the influence of the culture of new modernization or westernization of the society. It entails that while beliefs remain intact, young Filipino Muslims are acculturated with the western culture as they underwent a process of cultural change by adapting the prevailing culture of the society. This is a clear indication that indeed a western lifestyle has also been living with by young Filipi[1]no Maranaw Muslims. This issue has been a continuing challenge among ulama and other Muslim educators (in the Academe and Madrasah) to resolve.
Meanwhile, the writer felt awesome about her observation in Turkey specifically at Kayseri. Turkey people have highly learned about western education but they manage to preserve their native language. Unlike Philippine where it uses English as its medium of instructions in school of all levels, Turkey maintains its Turkish language as medium of instructions. The availability of Muslim prayer rooms in the various establishments such as malls and schools and mushrooming masjid in every place catches the interest among foreign scholars to really stay and complete the offered scholarship not to mention also the hospitability and courteousness of the Turkish. If given the chance to choose again, the writer would still choose to be in Erciyes University.
1 Maranao People, 2020
