COTABATO CITY (MindaNews / August 26) – A blue RELEASED stamp sits on a memorandum of the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos dated August 17.
The message is straightforward. On August 26, corresponding to 12 Rabi‘ al-Awwal 1448H, the NCMF will observe Mawlid-un-Nabi, the birthday of Prophet Muhammad (ṣ), as a Muslim legal holiday. Its officials and employees are excused from reporting for work.
Nothing dramatic there.
Except perhaps if you are reading the memorandum from Cotabato City, because here, in the autonomous homeland created precisely so that the Bangsamoro could govern according to our history, faith, and way of life, Mawlid occupies a more awkward place.
Last year, in a Facebook post, I called this problem “Lost Holidays, Lost Inclusivity.” My argument then was simple: Mawlid-un-Nabi is already recognized by Philippine law, yet in BARMM it has been treated as a working holiday.
A year later, the irony has become harder to ignore.
Presidential Decree No. 1083, the Code of Muslim Personal Laws of the Philippines, does not speak vaguely about Mawlid. Article 169 expressly names Maulid-un-Nabi, on the twelfth day of Rabi‘ al-Awwal, among the country’s legal Muslim holidays. Article 170 identifies the Muslim provinces and cities where those holidays are officially observed. Article 172 further excuses Muslim government officials and employees elsewhere in the country so they may observe them.
Then came Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 39, the Bangsamoro Holidays Act of 2023.
The law did something curious.
It classified Eid’l Fitr and Eid’l Adha as regular non-working holidays. The Day of Arafah and the first Day of Tashriq became special non-working holidays. But the other holidays recognized under PD 1083, including Mawlid, fell under the category of special working holidays.
Read that again.
A holiday recognized by national law for Muslim communities became, under the law of the Muslim autonomous region, a working holiday.
There may be legal arguments about how PD 1083 and the Bangsamoro Holidays Act should be read together. Lawyers can debate hierarchy, legislative authority, later enactments, labor consequences, and the precise meaning of “legal Muslim holiday.”
But before we disappear into legal technicalities, there is a simpler question.
What kind of autonomy gives a people less room to practice their own diversity than the national law gave them before?
I know the theological objection.
Among Muslims, Mawlid has never been free from debate. Some scholars and communities regard its celebration as bid‘ah, an innovation without basis in the practice of the Prophet (ṣ) and his earliest companions. Other Muslim traditions, established over centuries, commemorate his birth through salawat, recitation of the sirah, feeding people, lectures, poetry, remembrance, and gatherings centered on the life and character of the Messenger of Allah.
That disagreement is real, and let it remain real.
A government does not need to settle it, because a holiday is not a fatwa.
When the Philippine government declares Christmas a holiday, it does not require Muslims to believe in Christian theology. When Chinese New Year is observed, nobody is compelled to adopt Chinese religious or cultural beliefs. When December 8 is observed as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Muslim employees are not suddenly being asked to affirm a Catholic doctrine.
The calendar makes room.
That is all.
A public holiday says: this occasion matters deeply enough to a significant part of our people that society will make space for them to observe it.
Recognition is not conversion.
Accommodation is not endorsement.
And allowing another Muslim to commemorate the Prophet’s birth does not require me to commemorate or remember it in precisely the same way.
This distinction matters because the Bangsamoro is not a theological monolith.
We are Maguindanaon, Maranao, Tausug, Sama, Yakan, Iranun and more. We carry different histories, adat, religious lineages, teachers, ṭarīqahs, madrasah traditions, and ways of expressing devotion. Even inside the same family, one may attend a Mawlid gathering while another prefers not to.
That is the ummah we actually have.
Governance begins there, and not with the imaginary community in which everyone already agrees with us.
And there is another legal memory worth recovering.
In 2002, the Supreme Court decided San Miguel Corporation v. Court of Appeals, a case arising from Iligan City. The dispute involved Muslim holiday pay under PD 1083. San Miguel argued, among other things, against extending the benefit to non-Muslim employees.
The Court rejected the religious distinction.
Quoting the ruling sustained by the Court, wages and benefits granted by law are determined “not on the basis of the worker’s faith or religion.”
That sentence deserves to travel from the Supreme Court reports to the Bangsamoro Government Center because it captures the point.
A holiday regime is not supposed to determine which theology is correct. It determines how people sharing the same political space will live with one another.
Calendars, after all, are not innocent things. They tell us which memories deserve public time. We put heroes on calendars. Revolutions on calendars. Battles, independence, saints, religious feasts, national tragedies and victories. A calendar is one of the quiet places where a state tells its citizens: we remember this with you.
For the Bangsamoro, that question carries unusual weight.
Our political history is a long struggle to have memories erased from the national story restored to have names pronounced correctly, massacres remembered, agreements honored, heroes recognized, and institutions made responsive to who we are.
We struggled for recognition.
It would be a strange ending if, after gaining autonomy, we became less willing to recognize one another.
In 2023 I remembered the words of one of the drafters of the Muslim Code:
“Su tinaban tanu d’n antu na pinataban tanu pan ‘bpaluman.”
That which we had already won, the Muslim holidays, we allowed to be lost again.
The words sound even heavier this Rabi‘ al-Awwal because this is no longer simply about whether someone in an office forgot to issue a memorandum. BARMM now has its own Holidays Act. We have exercised autonomy. We have made choices. And choices can be revisited.
Laws can be amended. Theological diversity can be acknowledged without asking anyone to abandon conviction.
Those who believe Mawlid should not be celebrated remain free not to celebrate it. Nothing about a non-working holiday forces anyone to recite a mawlid, attend a gathering, prepare food, hang a banner, or say that the practice is religiously recommended.
But those whose families and communities have commemorated the Prophet (ṣ) for generations should not have to choose between their livelihood and their religious-cultural tradition, least of all in the Bangsamoro.
The Qur’an describes Muhammad (ṣ) as a mercy sent to the worlds.
Perhaps there is something fitting in remembering that mercy by making room for one another.
Tomorrow, some Muslims will gather and send blessings upon him. Some will listen to stories from his sirah. Some will feed neighbors. Some will spend the day quietly. Others will not mark his birthday at all, convinced that love of the Prophet is better expressed by following his Sunnah every ordinary day.
They will disagree. And the Bangsamoro Government does not have to decide which of them loves the Prophet more.
Its task is harder and more important: to govern them all.
Autonomy should give the Bangsamoro more room to breathe, not less.
We already won this holiday once. We should not need to win it again from ourselves.
A holiday is not a fatwa. It is room we make for one another.
[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.]
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