A Moro-Christian wedding

Four days before Christmas (Dec. 22) I flew to Cotabato City to stand as sponsor in a Muslim wedding. It was an interesting experience. Until then I hadn’t witnessed such a wedding, much less participated in the simple rites.

And until I got to the wedding venue, a modest garden-restaurant, I didn’t know what to expect. It was only then that I was handed the invitation card. I found my name atop the list of 14 sponsors, a mix of men and women with Muslim and Christian names a number of whom I know.

On Nov. 28, I had received a text-invitation from the bride. She mentioned the date but not where the wedding would take place. She didn’t even name the groom! When she texted again on Dec. 14, she provided these details: wedding rites at Raff’s Garden at 4 p.m., sponsors shall be in barong, and the groom’s name is Ismael (who I assumed was a Muslim).

Essentially it was a Muslim-Christian wedding, though the religious rites were purely Islamic.

Bai Ali Indayla, the bride, is a Maguindanao Muslim as her parents are. Although his name is Islamic and he can speak Tausog, Ismael Mallen, the groom, belongs to a Christian family in Zamboanga Sibugay. For the wedding to happen and for the sake of his beloved (in Asia, Muslim women cannot marry outside their faith), Ismael converted to Islam.

The bride proudly refers to her husband as a “Balik-Islam.” The latter’s father, a municipal councilor, told me that his family respects Ismael’s decision.

I found the wedding a give-and-take affair. While Ismael turned Muslim to enable the wedding to take place, during the rites Bai Ali’s father officially transferred to the groom his responsibility over his daughter. The rite also signified, I was informed later, that in effect the bride became part of her husband’s Christian family.

Moreover, the newlyweds, both progressive youth activists and human rights defenders, prefer to call their marriage a Moro-Christian union. This is in accord with the Bangsamoro (Moro people) identity, adopted by both the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Bai Ali, student council president in her college days, is the secretary general of Kawagib, the Moro human rights organization. Ismael is a youth organizer who has gravitated to human rights advocacy.

When asked to give a message, I said this much: The wedding fosters not only the unity of two families and communities of different faiths. It also can go a long way towards advancing the broad objectives of the Moro-Christian alliance to which the couple are committed. These objectives are definitively linked with the long struggle of the Filipino people for fundamental social, economic, and political change. 

Appreciating my message, the couple, their parents and friends happily thanked me.

Now, on the Muslim wedding rites:

In the early part it wasn’t the bride and groom who joined hands, but the bride’s father and the groom. (A Muslim educator I talked with earlier jokingly called this “a wedding of men.”) Standing face to face, the two men unshod their right feet and positioned them toe to toe, as they pressed together their right thumbs, covered with a white cloth.

They stood still in that position while the solemnizing imam, Uztadz Thing Radzak, recited a long prayer-exhortation.

The imam invoked the five pillars of Islam, five basic acts that believers consider their personal obligations and which constitute the foundations of Muslim life. These are:

1. The shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith that there is only one god and it is Allah, and Muhammad is God’s messenger;

2. The salat, which consists of five daily prayers: fajr (dawn), dhuhr (noon), asr (afternoon), maghrib (evening), and isha (night);

3. The zakat, alms-giving obligatory for those capable to do so, or doing good deeds for those with no money to spare: a personal responsibility for Muslims to ease the economic hardships of others;

4. The sawm, obligatory fasting during the month of Ramadan; and

5. The hajj, pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in one’s lifetime.

The second part of the rites, the vow over the Koran and the wedding-ring ceremony, was akin to that of a Christian wedding. This was followed by the kissing of the bride — amidst handclapping, shouting and whistling among the youthful guests — and the photo-ops with the newlyweds.

 Before the wedding march began, a woman and a man performed the dulang (food container) dance to the musical beat and metallic sounds of the kulintang and gongs. The dance preceded the wedding feast. (There was also supposed to be a courtship dance, but the dancers didn’t arrive.)

Towards the end of the wedding ceremonies, an elderly woman brought to the stage a cooked chicken and boiled rice in a dulang. She asked the groom, using his fingers, to tear off choice portions of the chicken he wished to offer to his bride and put these in a bowl with boiled rice. She next asked the groom’s father to do the same.

As the couple’s young friends took over the celebration, I left the affair amused and, yes, educated.

Happy new year to all!

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