Riding in Taxi with a Mosque-phobic Driver from Manila: Otherings and Conflicts in the Philippines

Abstract

Abstract “I don’t even like seeing mosques. I don’t like the sight of it… . That mosque, in particular, is cursed … that mosque curses the Catholics,” warned the taxi driver from Manila. The state-led cultivation of “Filipino Catholic” nationalism, as Chapter 4 highlights, is a unifying instrument that binds the majority of the country’s highly diverse population. Employing the ethnoreligious othering framework, the chapter examines the conflicts involving Catholic and Muslim groups in the Philippines by interrogating the emotive, symbolic, and perceptual mechanisms underpinning these incidents. It starts with a discussion of how competing ethnoreligious nationalisms breed hostile emotions that prepare members to physically and cognitively satisfy their security concerns. It then explores how the zero-sum securitization of the out-group induce a security dilemma spiral. The chapter concludes by assessing how the sacralization of “Filipino Catholic” identity, homeland, and nation-state makes the prevailing order seem natural despite the othered Muslims’ continued marginalization.