Maguindanao festival marks Bangsamoro Organic Law ratification

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines — This province launched last Thursday the Inaul Festival showcasing an iconic Moro fabric and as thanksgiving for the ratification of the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL).

“There is a big reason for us to celebrate the ratification of the BOL. We are dedicating the 2019 provincial Inaul Festival to all the people,  the government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) for having worked together tediously to have that law,” Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu said.

Mangudadatu, on his last term as governor, said the provincial government has been trying to maximize the involvement of Maguindanao’s tri-people or Muslim, Christian and Lumad groups  in the inaul industry, now an alternative means of livelihood for local weavers, among them dependents of MILF members.

“With a durable peace setting in, we can expand this trade. More families will earn from it, have extra income for the schooling of children and for other basic needs,” Mangudadatu added.  

The weeklong festival highlights the effort of the provincial government to revive the centuries-old production of the Maguindanaon inaul using traditional looms that are prototypes of those used by weavers in the past.

Capped with cultural shows and traditional competitions, the annual festival is part of a strategy to connect inaul weavers with domestic and international buyers.

For contemporary historians, the inaul symbolizes the resilience of closely-knit ethnic Maguindanaon communities in the raya or upper delta and the ilod or the downstream zone of Maguindanao.

The historians added that Maguindanao’s indigenous non-Muslim Teduray people have been wearing clothes made of inaul even before Shariff Mohammad Kabunsuan, an Arab-Malay cleric from Johore, now part of Malaysia, set foot in what is now Cotabato city in the 14th century to spread Islam.