By Mansoor Limba
Today, we unsheathe another sword.
Today, we release into the world a book that was never meant to be merely read—but to be felt, grieved, and acted upon.
Today, "The Politics of Peace and the Mindanao Problem: Tracing the Roots of a Historical Injustice" (https://bit.ly/PoliticsofPeace) by Professor Christopher Ryan Maboloc officially sees the light of day. And in doing so, it demands that we, too, open our eyes wider to a history that has long been buried under broken promises, muted cries, and bloodstained land deeds.
It is no accident that this book is released today, April 28, 2025—a day of painful remembrance. Fifty-one years ago, on this very date, a battered voice from Mindanao thundered across the seas. Amid the smoldering ruins of war, MNLF Chairman Nur Misuari proclaimed the Independence of the Bangsamoro people. It was not just a political statement—it was a soul’s howl against erasure.
Reading "The Politics of Peace and the Mindanao Problem" (https://amzn.to/3EpBJ3S) is like walking into Ground Zero—not just the literal rubble of Marawi, but the deeper Ground Zero etched into the very psyche of Mindanao's peoples.
I remember when I first read the manuscript. Page after page, I found myself pausing—not because the prose was difficult, but because the truths were. How does one sit comfortably with the knowledge that Mindanao’s vibrant sultanates, older than the Philippine republic itself, were crushed under foreign boots and later abandoned by their own supposed “brothers”? How does one accept that “development” often meant the dispossession of ancestral lands, the erasure of indigenous cultures, and the silencing of Lumad and Muslim voices?
Prof. Maboloc reminds us, with a scholar's rigor and a son of Mindanao’s broken heart, that peace has often been offered to the Bangsamoro people like a poisoned gift—conditional, paternalistic, hollow. He reminds us that the poverty of Muslim Mindanao is not a natural disaster. It is a political choice. It is structural violence clothed in the polite language of “progress” and “national unity.” And he reminds us that peace without justice is not peace. It is submission.
Moreover, Prof. Maboloc does not merely narrate facts. He invites us into the marrow of the matter: The Bangsamoro Question was never merely about religion, rebellion, or lawlessness. It is about the unacknowledged wound—the ancestral humiliation of communities that fought colonizers for centuries, only to be later betrayed by their own supposed countrymen.
It is about sultanates that flourished before the Spanish ships ever anchored on these islands—and whose descendants were systematically erased from the national imagination. It is about promises broken over coffee tables in Manila, while rivers of blood flowed in Mindanao’s villages. It is about poverty not as accident but as design.
And yet, amid the tragedy, there is clarity. The book does not wallow in despair. It demands a radical honesty that peace—true, lasting peace—is not built atop the ruins of injustice. It must grow from a new soil of justice, dignity, and self-determination.
Drawing from thinkers like Iris Marion Young, Mahatma Gandhi, and Thomas Pogge, Prof. Maboloc offers not a band-aid solution, but a bold moral reimagining: That peace is not the silence after the guns fall silent. It is the daily, grinding work of dismantling structures of exclusion, domination, and erasure.
To read this book is to be uncomfortable—and rightly so. It forces us to ask: What histories have I ignored? Whose dreams have I dismissed as unrealistic? What myths have I unconsciously swallowed about Mindanao?
It is, ultimately, a call. Not to charity. Not to shallow reconciliation. But to solidarity. Because the wound of the Lumad and Bangsamoro is a wound of the nation. Their history is our history. Their future—or the failure of it—will be ours to reckon with.
Today, we release this book into the world not just to tell a story, but to spark conversations, to birth new solidarities, and to remind a forgetful nation that history never forgets.
If you have ever wondered why Mindanao bleeds, why peace seems so elusive, or why justice always feels “almost there,” then this book is for you. I will tell you plainly: this is not a book written merely to fill shelves. It is not the kind you skim over on a lazy afternoon, nodding occasionally before forgetting it the next day.
This book is a wound speaking. It is history bleeding through the pages. It is philosophy sharpened into a sword.
Get your copy today:
Philippines: https://bit.ly/PoliticsofPeace
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3EpBJ3S
[Mansoor L. Limba, PhD in International Relations and Shari‘ah Counselor-at-Law (SCL), is a publisher-writer, university professor, blogger, chess trainer, and translator (from Persian into English and Filipino) with tens of written and translation works to his credit on such subjects as international politics, history, political philosophy, intra-faith and interfaith relations, cultural heritage, Islamic finance, jurisprudence (fiqh), theology (‘ilm al-kalam), Qur’anic sciences and exegesis (tafsir), hadith, ethics, and mysticism. He can be reached at mlimba@diplomats.com, and his books can be purchased at www.elzistyle.com and www.amazon.com/author/mansoorlimba.]