Do you want Sabah!?

[kermit_criminal]

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New sultan of Sulu vows to
wrest Sabah from Malaysia

[img width=148 height=229]http://pgoh.free.fr/sultan_sulu.jpg[/img]
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THE newly crowned sultan of Sulu in the southern Philippines said on Sunday he will fight to get back the state of Sabah from Malaysian control, claiming territorial rights over the North Borneo territory.

“I will fight for my family’s rights in the World Court,� Rodinood Julaspi Kiram 2nd told hundreds of followers outside a mosque in Quezon City, where he was crowned the 29th sultan of the Sultanate of Sulu and North Borneo.

“Malaysia is illegally occupying Sabah. Sabah is ours, we will take it back.�

Kiram said he was appalled to watch television images of Filipino women and children being maltreated by Malaysian police in several Sabah communities. Tens of thousands of Filipinos in Sabah have been sent back home since 2002.

“The Malaysians have no authority to expel Filipinos from Sabah because the territory belongs to us,� he said, adding he would enlist the help of the Philippine government to bring his case to the International Court of Justice.

Kiram, 56, is only now ascending to the sultanate’s throne, five years after his father’s death, because of confusion about succession rules. The last Sultan of Sulu left about 70 families as heirs.

Kiram said Malaysia helped Muslim rebels fight Manila in the 1970s, providing the separatists with sanctuaries, training bases, weapons and moral support. He said he knew about the Malaysia’s role in the rebellion because he was a former guerrilla leader himself.

Kiram said Malaysia has recently changed strategy and agreed to broker peace negotiations between the Philippine government and the Muslim rebels only to protect its claims on Sabah.

On Monday, President Arroyo will host a private dinner with Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s former prime minister, due to address a business conference this week.

President Arroyo’s spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, said Mrs. Arroyo will thank Mahathir for his key role in brokering talks between the government and Muslim rebels, due to resume this month in Kuala Lumpur.

The dispute over Sabah is among long-standing irritants in ties between the two Southeast Asian nations, but was placed on the backburners as trade and investment links grew in the early 1990s.

The Sultanate of Sulu obtained Sabah from the Sultanate of Brunei as a gift for helping put down a rebellion on the Borneo Island. The British leased Sabah and transferred control over the territory to Malaysia after the end of Second World War.

Even after Sabah became part of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur still pays an annual rent of 5,000 ringgit ($1,315) to the heirs of the Sultan of Sulu.

In the 1960s, the Philippines tried and failed to claim ownership of Sabah, including a bungled covert operation that helped trigger a Muslim rebellion in the 1970s.

--Reuters

[kermit_criminal]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112795/

How Islam Got to the Philippines
And what the Sultan of Sulu has to do with it.
By Brendan I. Koerner
Posted Friday, Jan. 28, 2005, at 2:47 PM PT


The Philippine military has stepped up its campaign against the nation's Muslim separatist movement, bombing a suspected hideout on the southern island of Mindanao. The primary targets of the raid were members of Abu Sayyaf, which is seeking to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state on Mindanao. How did Islam originally get to the predominately Catholic Philippines?

The faith was first brought over by Arab traders in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, at least 200 years before Spanish explorers first introduced Christianity to the 7,107-island archipelago. These Muslim merchants came from present-day Malaysia and Indonesia to the southernmost points in the Philippines, namely the Sulu islands and Mindanao. At the time, the inhabitants there were animists who lived in small, autonomous communities. The Arab newcomers quickly converted the indigenous population to Islam, building the Philippines' first mosque in the town of Simunul in the mid-14th century.

The Muslim settlers didn't just bring their religion and architecture, however—they also brought their political system, establishing a series of sultanates in the southern Philippines. The most celebrated of these rulers was the Sultan of Sulu, whose capital was Jolo. The first official Sultan of Sulu was an Arab from Sumatra named Abu Bakr, who crowned himself around 1450. (He gained power in part by marrying the daughter of a Malaysian trader named Rajah Baguinda, who held sway over Sulu although he never gave himself the title of sultan.) Like many other Arab rulers, he established his dynasty's legitimacy by claiming to be a direct descendent of Muhammad.


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A similarly influential sultanate was established on the island of Mindanao about 50 years later, and Muslim influence rapidly ascended northward up the archipelago, reaching as far as the current capital of Manila on the island of Luzon. In fact, when the Spanish first arrived in the mid-1500s, they were dismayed to encounter such a strong Muslim presence; they had, after all, only recently expelled the Moors from Spain, after nearly 800 years of conflict. The Spanish nicknamed the Philippines' Muslim inhabitants the Moros, a corruption of the word Moors.

The Spanish quickly converted much of the Philippines to Christianity, using the sword quite liberally. But the colonialists had a difficult time extending both their rule and their religion to the country's south; the Moros fiercely resisted many Spanish attempts to establish dominance over Mindanao and Sulu. The Muslims, in turn, terrorized the Spanish by conducting frequent slave-taking raids on Luzon and in other Christianized parts of the Philippines.

It was not until the mid-1800s that advancing military technology, such as the steam-powered gunboat, began to tip the scales in favor of Spain. In 1878, the Sultan of Sulu finally signed a peace treaty with Spain, and his domain officially became an autonomous protectorate of the European power. However, localized resistance still flared up on occasion.

The United States took control of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War in 1898. The Moros viewed the new colonialists as no less objectionable than the Spanish, and they fiercely resisted attempts to westernize Mindanao in particular. The U.S. military even had to invent a new, more powerful handgun, the Colt M1911, in order to stop the Moro insurgents; they tended to keep on coming at the American soldiers, daggers in hand, despite having been shot.

The latest wave of Muslim separatism in the nation's south began in the 1970s. Since the country became independent, the Filipino government has encouraged non-Muslims to move to Mindanao and other impoverished locations in the south. The Moros view this policy as designed to de-Islamize the region and believe that the Christians treat them like second-class citizens. Years of bloody struggle have resulted.

Bonus Explainer: There is still a Sultan of Sulu, although he's mostly a ceremonial figure. Rodinood Julaspi Kiram was crowned the 29th sultan last year and has vowed to reclaim North Borneo for the sultanate. The territory, known as Sabah, was given to the Sultan of Sulu by the Sultan of Brunei in 1658, as a "thank you" for military aid. The Sultan of Sulu, in turn, leased the territory to a pair of European businessmen in 1878, in exchange for guns and an annual rent of around $1,300. The British North Borneo Co. ended up controlling Sabah, and it eventually became a British colony that was transferred to Malaysia in 1963. The Sultan of Sulu claims that Sabah still belongs to him; Malaysia refuses to budge, though it continues to pay the rent every year to the sultan's family.

[jibriel]

...hmm.. interesting..

[jibriel]

have u heard of the UNPUBLICIZED paramount sultan of sulu and north borneo? la lang.. ngutana lng..

[arnoldsa]

The problem is that the people in Sabah would rather prefer to be in a rich country like Malaysia rather than revert back to the Philippines... For sure, had Sabah been with the Philippines, it would have been far more worse than Mindanao...

[kobmat]

The problem is that the people in Sabah would rather prefer to be in a rich country like Malaysia rather than revert back to the Philippines... For sure, had Sabah been with the Philippines, it would have been far more worse than Mindanao...

Yeah.. Exactly..

[digitalsuperman]

unsa na kahay balita sa sultan of sulu. murag na hilum naman.

[<SMILE>]

What the sultan should do,
is he do have the rights, he should take his share,
not taking back Sabah itself, for it's quite impossible,
If he did it a long time ago, I'm sure he is one of the richest sultan
now in the Philippines.

[vanillaicecream88]

Yes, I want Sabah... But first tarungon sa nato atong internal problems... Di man gani ma-solve nang NPA and other rebelde diri sa Philippines... Baga pa kaayo nawong mga NPA kay may pina-checkpoint pa...
Lain sad kaayo mang-invite ta sa mga Sabahans then what kind of life sad ang maihatag sa Philippines nila...

[Scott Bernard]

It is an elusive obsession...

Before acquiring an additional land or house, improve your existing property first.