MARGINALIA: The Resurrection of Takfīrīs in the Philippines

MAKATI CITY (MindaNews / 09 April) – It began, as many things today do, not in the quiet of a madrasah or the measured tone of a scholarly circle, but in the speed of breaking news.

No sooner had the first salvo of Iranian missiles reportedly struck targets in Tel Aviv and American military bases in the Persian Gulf kingdoms—following what many analysts described as a direct escalation after the February 28 US–Israel aggression against the Islamic Republic—than a familiar chorus reemerged in our own local soundscape. Not the language of restraint. Not the grammar of justice. But the old, rehearsed script of exclusion.

From pulpits and posts, from microphones and Messenger threads, came the warning: “Do not sympathize with Iran. They are not Muslims. They are worse than the kāfir.”

And just like that, centuries collapsed into seconds.

The claims were not new. They never are.

“They believe the Qur’an should have been revealed to ʿAlī instead of Prophet Muḥammad (ṣ).” “They have a different Qur’an.” “They were founded by a Jewish conspirator named ʿAbdullāh ibn Sabāʾ.”

For anyone with even a passing familiarity with Islamic intellectual history, these are not arguments; they are echoes. Long refuted by both Sunni and Shi‘ah scholars across centuries, yet persistently resurrected whenever politics demands a convenient theological enemy.

Mainstream Shi‘ah doctrine, for instance, affirms the same Qur’an, word for word, as preserved and transmitted by the Muslim community. Major Sunni institutions such as Al-Azhar have historically recognized Ja‘fari jurisprudence as a legitimate school within Islam. Even the oft-repeated figure of Ibn Sabāʾ is treated by many historians as either exaggerated or constructed within polemical literature.

And facts, in times of rage, are frequently the first victims.

What we are witnessing is not just disagreement. It is something more dangerous, more combustible.

It is takfir. The act of declaring a fellow Muslim a kāfir (infidel) or murtad (apostate).

And takfīr is never just a word.

It is a Pandora’s box.

It unlocks a door that would otherwise stay padlocked: exclusion, dehumanization, and at its most extreme, violence as such in the name of purity.

We have experienced this before.

In 2017, the city of Marawi was besieged not just by armed men but by an idea.

The groups that professed loyalty to ISIS did not start with guns. They began with declarations. With sermons. With the quiet, persistent claim that some Muslims were no longer Muslims.

From there, the descent was swift.

Mosques were not spared. Civilians were not spared. Even fellow Muslims who refused to submit to their narrow definitions were branded apostates; thus, legitimate targets in a warped moral universe. Remember that haunting image from the Marawi Siege—lifeless bodies left near a bridge, each marked with a crude tag: “munapik” (from the Arabic munāfiq, meaning “hypocrite”)? 

Takfīr, once normalized, does not remain in al-kalām (speech). It migrates to al-damm (blood).

It is precisely to prevent this descent that contemporary Muslim scholarship has spoken with unusual clarity.

In 2004–2005, over 500 leading Muslim scholars from across the world—Sunni, Shi‘ah, Ibadi, and others—endorsed what came to be known as the Amman Message. It articulated three foundational principles that remain strikingly relevant today:

First, it defined as Muslim anyone who follows one of eight recognized schools of Islamic law and theology, including the Ja‘fari school observed by Shi‘ah Muslims.

Second, it confirmed that no Muslim can declare another Muslim to be an unbeliever (takfīr) if he/she professes the shahādah and does not manifestly reject what is necessarily known of the religion.

Third, and most important for our context, it asserted that the authority to issue fatwā is not for just anyone. It belongs to those who are properly trained and accredited within the academic tradition.

In other words, takfīr is not a pastime of the pulpit nor a pastime of the Facebook post. It is an issue so serious that the tradition itself has placed almost impossible walls before it.

And yet, in our time, those walls are being casually demolished—one sermon, one status update at a time.

It is here that our national legal framework comes into play; not to replace theology but to provide a needed bulwark against its perversion.

The Philippine Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 (RA 11479, Sec. 4) defines terrorism as certain violent or harmful acts committed with the purpose of intimidating the public, creating an atmosphere of fear, or influencing the government or an international organization through intimidation. More pointedly, it penalizes incitement through speeches, proclamations, writings, or other representations that may lead others to commit such acts.

When rhetoric that purports to be about religion crosses the line into legitimizing harm, it can no longer simply be considered a matter of opinion.

At the same time, the Bangsamoro legal order itself is built upon the recognition of diversity within unity. The Republic Act No. 11054, likewise known as the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), explicitly mandates the Bangsamoro Government to “guarantee religious freedom and the free exercise thereof pursuant to the Constitution, national laws, and principles of international law. The Bangsamoro Government shall protect all persons from harassment or any undue pressure, coercion, and violence on account of religion. Any establishment and institution shall be free to implement policies and undertake activities pursuant to their respective religious beliefs and values.” (Art. IX, Sec. 5)

This means that there is no expectation of monolithic Islam under the law of the land in the Bangsamoro. It protects a plurality of expressions, traditions and schools of thought, which a legal affirmation that diversity within the ummah is not to fear but embrace.

There is, between these two laws, a fine but vital line:

Freedom of belief is protected. Incitement to harm is not.

What is perhaps more alarming today is not only that some Muslims are being declared outside the fold, but that the circle of exclusion is widening.

Those who refuse to participate in takfir, those who simply say, “Iran is Muslim,” are themselves now being labeled suspect.

In other words, neutrality becomes betrayal. Nuance becomes deviation.

And when that happens, the logic of takfīr begins to feed on itself.

History teaches us that takfīr rarely announces its full intentions at the beginning. It starts with words that seem, to some, like mere theological correction.

But words, repeated often enough, become categories. Categories become boundaries. Boundaries, when hardened, become battlelines.

And in a region like Mindanao, where memory is long, wounds layered and peace a work in progress, the ideologies are more than abstract threats. They are accelerants.

What is more troubling is when narratives such as these can be manipulated by third parties, be it state or non-state actors, as means to pit communities against one another, incite sectarian tensions, and rationalize an intervention under the pretext of ensuring stability.

At the end of the day, it is not about Iran.

It is about us.

About whether we will allow centuries-old polemics to be weaponized in our midst. About whether we will confuse theological disagreement with existential threat. About whether we have learned anything at all from Marawi.

For takfīr, once resurrected, does not remain contained within sermons.

It walks.

And if left unchecked, it does not ask whom it will consume next.

[MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Mansoor L. Limba, PhD in International Relations and Shari‘ah Counselor-at-Law (SCL), is a publisher-writer, university professor, vlogger, 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 www.youtube.com/@WayfaringWithMansoor, and his books can be purchased at www.elzistyle.com and www.amazon.com/author/mansoorlimba.]