Islam is practiced by roughly 5% of Filipinos from a variety of ethnolinguistic groups, over half of whom live on the large southern island of Mindanao.

Islam arrived in the Philippines in the late 14^th century with Arab and Malay merchants following Southeast Asian trade networks, propagating Sunni Islam with a variety of Sufi traditions. Muslims were dubbed “Moros” by the Spanish, a reference to the Muslim “Moors” encountered in Spain and North Africa whom the Spanish regarded with disdain....

The Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was a legal and political organization founded by Muslim clerics from the Abgal subclan of the powerful Hawiye clan that operated from 2000 to 2006 in Mogadishu. These Islamic courts adjudicated personal status and criminal law matters according to Islamic law (shari’a). Because they were backed by clan-based ICU militias, they were extremely effective in maintaining order. Abgal clerics did not start the courts in a desire because they promoted Islamism, but rather because they...

Jabhat al-Nusra is a Sunni Islamist jihadist militia with affiliations to al-Qaeda currently active in the armed opposition to the Syrian government. The United Nations and the United States have designated Jabhat al-Nusra as a terrorist organization. Its leader is Abu Mohammed al-Jawani.

The Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) is an Islamist political party founded in Lahore in 1941 by Abul A’la Maududi, a prominent Islamist thinker who viewed Islam as providing a political ideology beyond strictly a religious path. The JI was influenced by models such as Maududi’s vision of the early Islamic Prophetic community, 1930s socialist political parties, and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Maududi himself would go on to influence the Brotherhood and other Islamist leaders.

The...