How are Muslim Filipinas even more marginalized in the Philippines?

Photo credit: UCA

“They call for women’s empowerment, but do they mean all women?”

That was the quiet, but pointed question of Aisha (not her real name), a 27-year-old Muslim community organizer from Mindanao. We were sitting at the back of a small training hall in Quezon City, where she had just finished facilitating a women’s leadership workshop. Her tone was calm, even gentle but her words hit like a challenge.

Because for many Muslim Filipinas, especially those from Mindanao, the idea of “empowerment” too often feels like a space they weren’t meant to enter. NMuslim Pinays live at the crossroads of multiple oppressions. As women in a patriarchal society, they face the same burdens of misogyny, unpaid care work, and gender-based violence. But as Muslims in a predominantly Christian, often Islamophobic nation, their identities are treated as suspicious, foreign, or somehow incompatible with “modern” womanhood.

Aisha shared how even walking into a room as a hijabi sparks assumptions. “They think we’re submissive, uneducated, or waiting to be saved. But I’ve organized disaster response teams, helped displaced women start their businesses, and spoken at the UN. Still, I’ve been ignored in meetings or spoken over by people who claim to be ‘inclusive.’”

This is the daily contradiction Muslim women face: spoken about, rarely spoken with.

Whose Empowerment Is It Anyway?

Mainstream women’s empowerment campaigns in the Philippines often wear the face of the urban, educated, Christian Filipina. The slogans are universal but the experiences they highlight, the aesthetics they promote, and the rights they defend are not.

“When women say, ‘wear whatever you want,’ they forget that for me, this”, Aisha lightly touched her hijab“, is my choice. My liberation isn’t in removing it. It's in being respected while wearing it.”

Westernized feminism and even local versions of it, often view Muslim women through a lens of pity. Headlines still carry tired language: “Veiled and voiceless,” “Breaking free from tradition,” “The hidden lives of Muslim women.” But many Muslim Pinays don’t see their faith as a cage. In fact, it’s a source of strength.

“I didn’t become a women’s rights activist despite being Muslim,” Aisha said. “I became one because I am.”

War Zones, Checkpoints, and Job Interviews

The discrimination isn’t just cultural. It’s institutional.

In many conflict-affected areas in Mindanao, Muslim women bear the brunt of militarization. They are displaced by airstrikes, widowed by war, and left to care for children in evacuation centers. In Marawi, women-led recovery efforts were often underfunded or sidelined. “We were rebuilding our lives while being treated as security threats,” Aisha recalled.

But even outside conflict zones, prejudice follows. At job interviews, surnames like “Ampatuan” or “Hadji” trigger raised eyebrows. A hijab can lead to rejection before a single question is asked. In malls, security guards do double takes. In the media, Muslim characters are either terrorists or victims - never fully human.

Faith and Feminism Can Coexist

Let’s get one thing straight: Muslim women don’t need to choose between activism and faith. The idea that Islam and women’s rights are inherently at odds is a lazy colonial narrative.

Islamic history is filled with women scholars, warriors, and community leaders. Khadija was a businesswoman. Aisha bint Abu Bakr was a theologian. Even today, Muslim women lead peace negotiations, run schools, and lead protests from Gaza to Cotabato.

But their activism doesn’t always look like what NGOs and ad campaigns are selling. It’s grounded in justice, dignity, and community—not individualism and Instagram quotes.

“Stop trying to liberate us by erasing us,” Aisha said. “What we want is solidarity, not saviorism.”

What Real Inclusion Looks Like

If the Philippine women’s movement is serious about justice, it needs to look inward.

Inclusion isn’t inviting a token Muslim woman to a panel, it’s ensuring her community’s issues are part of the agenda: peace talks, ancestral land rights, anti-discrimination policies, language access.

It’s not just putting a woman in a hijab on a poster. It’s funding her livelihood program in Lanao.

It means decolonizing women’s rights, accepting that the fight for women's rights must include the fight against Islamophobia, militarization, and state neglect.

Real solidarity means asking: Who’s not in the room? Who’s not in the campaign? And why?

Empowerment Must Be For All Women

Muslim Pinays are not asking to be included in someone else’s version of activism. They are building their own, rooted in their lived realities, cultures, and faith.

They are farmers, mothers, teachers, peacebuilders, and fighters. They are tired of being spoken over. They are done waiting to be welcomed.

As Aisha said, “We don’t want a seat at a table where we’re just expected to nod. We want to build new tables, where our stories lead, our issues matter, and our identities aren’t up for debate.”

Because empowerment that excludes the most marginalized isn’t empowerment. It’s elitism in a women’s rights T-shirt.

Let’s be clear:

You can’t call it a women’s movement if Muslim women are still on the outside, knocking.

You can’t claim progress if their liberation isn’t part of the blueprint.

You can’t say lahat ng babae, and mean it, if you’re only showing up for some.

Muslim Pinays are not the exception to the struggle. They are essential to it.

And the future of the women’s rights movement in the Philippines will be richer, stronger, and more powerful, if it starts truly including all of us.

Not fully. Not freely. And definitely not on their own terms.