Salamat Mauludun Nabiy 1446H
Salamat 634th Sulu Year of Governance 2024CE
MAULUDUN NABI or commemorating the Islamic prophet’s birth is not to be politicized let alone weaponized, while a bureaucratic institution celebrating its more than sixth centennial of political milestone with material grandeur and spectacles can hardly be construed as religious or spiritual. But how else can we explain the perfect coincidences in these meeting of seas of opposites of differently oriented signs descending upon us In Sulu in the turmoil of these beleaguering times, if not portentous?
When the Supreme Court decision to exclude the province of Sulu from the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) broke, our first reaction while receiving the shocking news in the Bangsa Sug heartland of Jolo was perhaps the same feelings that ran through almost 100 percent of Suluans and the local government in the province of Sulu and the 19 municipalities who have heard or read of the news.
Apprehension and anxiety swept us. It is that chilling fear of the probable return of violence and anger in a people easily triggered and offended. Likely prone to react in a knee jerk tantrums, Tausug people could have negatively taken this offensive turn of event and responded violence for violence.
Jolo and the rest of Sulu are finally experiencing the peace and enjoying the economic boom especially in tourism that it has not tasted in many decades. And this sad news came down like a dreaded bomb wrecking that rosy feel.
I am not a religious person but I shamelessly admit I love Prophet Muhammad Peace and Blessings be upon him. I have been looking forward to spending Mawlud in Sulu this year. So in that state of turbulence and disturbed silence, the only solace is to beg in our heart of hearts to please, please Beloved Messenger of Allah. This is your birthday, Please intercede for Sulu. Please intervene with this situation.
Finally, on the eve of the Friday of Mawlud, on a stormy sea, I had to sail to Zamboanga City for I had to find my center and seek for quietude to calm my shaken self that perhaps distance could cure. As for her, the rest of the days of the week flowed with Sulu being bubble-wrapped in mercy in a seemingly blanketed embrace of peaceful calmness in the warmth of celebratory mood. The result has been a state of patient and calm acceptance for both of us so far, if this is what it is all about, that can only be fittingly attributed to the miracle of Prophetic intercession.
Sulu is indeed blessed to be receiving the SC decision with Grace, in this portentous crossing, on the occasion of Mawlud but also at a time of its recharging of temporal Powers in the commemoration of its 634th Anniversary of Public Governance and Bureaucratic Administration. What prophetic miracle could have been more manifest than this!
Sulu’s separation from the stormy affair with the region of autonomy could have caused confusion and violent refusal by the masses who might be hard at comprehending why. Note that the political and legal intricacies of referendum and Sulu’s voting for NO has long been mooted and forgotten by the dragging six years it took Supreme Court to pen a decision. In fact the prevailing political ambience has become filled now with the thrill and excitement of, looking forward to the 2025 BARMM Elections, much expectant of a victorious win after the inauguration of Sulu’s regional political party, stringing into one alliance a diverse and broad spectrum ranging from traditional politicians, progressive reformists, and revolutionaries in the Bangsamoro, as alternative politics offered by the BARMM Grand Coalition (BGC) led by the tandem of Governor Abdusakur M. Tan and Basilan Congressman Mujiv S Hataman.
But the masses’ potential anger is diffused by the atmosphere of nostalgic euphoria of the weeklong celebrations of the Bangsa Sug. And, the commemoration of the Prophet’s birth, gently ushering in in the ambivalence of both welcome and unwelcome, wrought in controversies and debates between Islamic schools of thought. Hence, Mawlud became instrumental in rendering it in more stark contrast the differences between the autonomous region’s and Sulu’s religious communities’ not meeting in terms of valuing the significance of the birth of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Ironically, not in the partisanship of bureaucratic politics, but in the religious discourses in fact placed a good justification for the disentanglement with the region that ordinary masses could relate and easily understand. More than political, the cultural sentiment became an important ideological turning point for Sulu’s severance with the region. It bared naked the religious political ideology of the region that ran contrary to Sulu’s culture-grounded religiosity.
Had the SC decision come a week earlier or a week later of September 14-18, our worst of fears could have, God forbid, ‘materialized.’ But Sulu was blessed with these two favorable winds intermingling and fanning its sail just in the right timing. It fuels its journey navigating its Sug Bahgu ( New current).
The moons of these two occasions of Mauludun Nabi 1446 and the 634th Year of Sulu Governance of 2024 falling in a perfect conjunction thereby serendipitously meeting in a barzakh where only Qadrallah could have perfectly designed and willed is a cosmological wonder. Alhamdulillah.
Salamat Mawlidun Nabiy.
Salamat 634th Sulu year of governance.
DISCLAIMER. I beg to disclaim, so shamed in myself and bowing in sincere humility, that I am not attributing any of the above to an answered prayer. We pray and wish for Divine mercy and intercession of the Beloved of God not expecting to be granted, but just so to be allowed to enter the state of Mercy itself is our solace. Our prayers are already granted even before we conjure it in our heart and head. And we are reduced in shame and humility when Allah reminds us in its moment of fulfilment. May Allah forgive us in our forgetfulness.
16September2024/Daira Sambuwangan.
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Mucha-shim L. Quiling is Sama from Sulu. She chooses the word ALAL BIMBANG to contain her memories and longing of Sulu of the past and at the same time conjure up its potent powers to configure the present. ALAL BIMBANG is Sinama word describing a state of being liminal. It is a state of sailing and of sailors caught in between the crossings of two seas of being and becoming.
ALAL BIMBANG is a feeling switching between joy and sadness. As when you depart from a place, you feel sadness for leaving behind something or being unable to take it with you. Then when the island of destination is on sight, you feel the joy of arriving. But when you look back, the feeling switches to and fro the nostalgia of leaving and the euphoria of arriving)