What is the Rajah Solaiman Movement? How did it emerge, develop and strengthen? Through the use of social movement theory to frame our analytical narrative, the authors examine how the demands and pressures of globalisation have helped to foment ‘Balik Islam’. This Third World Quarterly article will reflect the possible extremes of Balik Islam by outlining the rise and fall of the Rajah Solaiman Movement, a Balik-Islam group. The article concludes that today’s globalised world has constructed a set of circumstances, opportunities and challenges that creates significant new security problems for the governmental representatives of democratic states.
The Balik-Islam Movement (BIM) compromises a vague gathering of Filipino former-Christians who believe that Filipinos need to ‘revert’ back to being Muslims as before Western colonisation. The Rajah Solaiman Movement (RSM) in the Philippines has emerged as part of a growing segment of today’s radical and violent Islam. The RSM was founded in March 1971 by Ahmed Santos, originally a Roman Catholic who converted to Islam while working in the Middle East. The existence of RSM was first uncovered in 2002 after police executed a series of operations in the province of Pangasinan where arms, training and bomb-making materials and documents directly linking the group to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
The RSM grew and strengthened as a result of key tools which helped it develop into a strong well organised and popular insurgent group with pools for recruitment, resources, and support. These key tools were:
- The BIM – by emerging from an organised religious group, the RSM called out to many to act in the name of God.
- Overseas Foreign Workers programme – it provided BIM and RSM with a large pool of potential recruits as well as contacts with Middle Eastern organisations for funds.
- International linkages and support for RSM – with funds coming from the Middle East, came also international support for the RSM.
Social change is often brought about in a context where people are discontent by the political situation and regime. However, dissatisfaction on its own does not suffice to provide a platform for social reform, there requires a transformation of consciousness that permits people to believe that they can do something about it. The articles outlines the three steps which have led to the development of a transformation of consciousness:
- The Moro conflict – four decades conflict provided the ideological basis for the birth and growth of Islamic converts and RSM.
- Ideological formation – this drew on a well established tradition in the development of its ideology, taping the knowledge gained in higher education.
- Framing the movement – constructing a narrative of rebellion imagined upon a historic figure thereby reducing reduce their message to generalised ideological snippets that are easily repeated and resonate with a group’s target audience
The article concludes that even if RSM has been effectively degraded or destroyed as a terrorist organisation following the imprisonment of Ahmed Santos in 2005, the group and its activities must be considered in terms of both global and local implications. Since 2007, the group has re-emerged after having reorganised and recruited. The three elements which initially permitted the emergence and more recently the re-emergence of the RSM, namely insurgent consciousness, resources and political opportunities, all remain largely untouched.
