Juramentado

Juramentado, in Philippine history, refers to a male Moro swordsman who attacked and killed targeted occupying and invading Christian police and soldiers, expecting to be killed himself, the martyrdom undertaken as an unorthodox form of personal offensive jihad. Unlike an amok, who commits acts of random violence against Muslims and non-Muslims alike, a juramentado was a dedicated, premeditated, and sometimes highly skilled killer who prepared himself through a ritual of binding, shaving, and prayer in order to accomplish brazen public religious murder armed only with edged weapons.

For generations warlike Moro tribes had successfully prevented Spain from fully controlling the areas around Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, developing a well-earned reputation as notorious seafaring raiders, adept naval tacticians, and ferocious warriors who frequently demonstrated extraordinary personal bravery in combat. While Moro forces could never match opponents' firepower or armor, such bands used intelligence, audacity and mobility to raid strongly defended targets and quickly defeat more vulnerable ones. One extreme asymmetric warfare tactic was the Moro juramentado.

Etymology and usage

Juramentado is an archaic term derived from the Spanish word juramentar, meaning one who takes an oath. Some sources link amoks (from the Malayan term for "out of control") and juramentados as similar culture-specific syndromes while others draw distinctions of religious preparation and state of mind. A Moro might be said to have "gone juramentado" or be "running juramentado."

U.S. Army officers who had served in Moroland incorporated the idiom into their own vocabulary, but often simply equated it with the Moro people as a whole. In his memoirs, Army Air Service advocate Benjamin D. Foulois said of volatile rival Army Air Service officer Billy Mitchell, "He had become fanatic much in the way that the Moros were in the Philippines. He had become a juramentado and was ready to run amok."

History

For more details on this topic, see Sultanate of Sulu, Spanish–Moro conflict, Moro Rebellion, and Philippine resistance against Japan#Moro resistance on Mindanao and Sulu.

The term juramentado was coined by José Malcampo, in command during the Spanish occupation of Jolo Island in 1876, but Moros had been making such personal attacks for many years. By the time of the Spanish–American War juramentados were being discussed in the American media, some official sources finding few documented cases. By 1903, local United States Army commander Leonard Wood sent a report to Governor of the Philippines William Howard Taft indicating juramentados were "an oft repeated offense." Almost forty years later, on the eve of the Japanese invasion of the Philippine Islands beginning the Second World War, Time Magazine was reporting juramentado attacks in Jolo occurring "once every other day".

The Moro juramentados performed suicide attacks against Japanese troops. The Japanese were among several enemies the Moros juramentados launched suicide attacks against, the others being the Spanish, Americans and Filipinos, while the Moros did not ever attack the Chinese since the Chinese were not considered enemies of the Moro people. The Japanese responded to these suicide attacks by massacring all the relatives of the attacker.

Path to paradise

Candidates, known as mag-sabil, "who endure the pangs of death," were selected from Muslim youth inspired to martyrdom by the teaching of Imams. Parents were consulted before the young men were permitted by the sultan to undergo training and preparation for Parang-sabil (the path to Paradise). After an oath taken, hand on the Qur'an, the chosen took a ritual bath, all body hair was shaved, and the eyebrows trimmed to resemble "a moon two days old." A strong band was wrapped firmly around the waist, and cords wrapped tightly around the genitals, ankles, knees, upper thighs, wrists, elbows, and shoulders, restricting blood flow and preventing the mag-sabil from losing too much blood from injury before accomplishing his gruesome task. Clad in white robe and turban, the chosen youth would polish and sharpen his weapons before action.

At the moment of attack, the mag-sabil would approach a large group of Christians, shout "La ilaha il-la'l-lahu" ("There is no god but Allah"), draw kris or barong and then rush into the group swinging his sword, killing and maiming as many victims as possible in the time he had left. The true believer, however, faced a theologic conundrum. If the observant Juramentado believed that his murders pleased Allah, he could not admit that the inevitable consequences of his attacks constituted suicide, per se, as their Qur'an forbids it. To reconcile the inconsistency, they fashioned themselves as martyrs of their own making, coaxing their way into Paradise with the spilled blood of numerous enemies of the faith on their hands. In effect, however, the tactic more closely resembles murder/suicide. The Juramentado—acting neither in self-defense nor through selfless altruism—commits to murder, and his own self-destruction, solely for the promise of his perception of personal gain. After death, the mag-sabil's body would be washed and again wrapped in white for burial. In the unlikely event the mag-sabil survived his attack, it was believed his body would ascend to Paradise after 40 years had passed.

Response to the threat

“ With the possible exception of Japan's kamikaze pilots in the closing days of World War II, warfare has rarely known a more frightening phenomenon than the juramentados. ” — Peter Gowing (1965),

The Moros' use of local intelligence to mark target situations, coupled with a keen understanding of the tactical element of surprise made combating juramentado warriors difficult for Spanish troops during its long attempt to occupy the Sulu Archipelago. In an era of warfare where body armor had become anachronistic, an unexpected melee attack with razor-sharp blades was a devastating tactic against veteran soldiers. Even when colonizers had time to draw weapons and fire on the charging attacker, the small caliber weapons commonly in use possessed no stopping power, bullets passing though limbs and torso, the juramentados' ritual binding working as a set of tourniquets to prevent the swordsman from bleeding out from wounds before accomplishing his purpose.

The phenomenon has been documented as recently as 2011, but the introduction of more potent, higher-caliber cartridges of consequence in the hands of intended victims markedly reduced the allure, and subsequently the incidence, of this peculiar method of self-annihilation. An urban legend claims that the United States occupation buried Juramentados with pig remains as a psychologic deterrent to continued suicide attacks. This purported action by Americans is apparently thought, by those who hold that Juramentado is a legitimate path to heaven, to be abhorent to the "guardians of heaven." Dr. Frank E. Vandiver, professor of history at Texas A&M University and author of Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing said about the burial of Juramentados with pig remains that he never found any indication that it was true in extensive research on his Moro experiences. He has also been unable to find any evidence corroborating the claim that Muslims believe that "eating or touching a pig, its meat, its blood, etc., is to be instantly barred from paradise and doomed to hell." It is true that Islamic dietary restrictions, like those of Judaism, forbid the eating or handling of pork because pigs are considered unclean. But according to Raeed Tayeh of the American Muslim Association in North America, the notion that a Muslim would be denied entrance to heaven for touching a pig is "ridiculous." A statement from the Anti-Defamation League characterizes the claim as an "offensive caricature of Muslim beliefs."