Persecution of Muslims
The Philippines is predominantly a Christian society with a complicated history of relations between Islam and Christianity. Despite historic evidence of Islamization spreading throughout the islands in the 13th–16th centuries, the archipelago came under Spanish rule in the 16th century. The Spanish proselytized many natives, and labelled those who remained Muslims as "Moro", a derogatory term recalling the Moors, an Islamic people of North Africa who occupied parts of Spain for several centuries. Today, this term "Moro" is used to refer to the indigenous Muslim tribes and ethnic groups of the country. When the Spanish came to the Philippine islands, most of the natives in Luzon and Visayas were pagans with Muslim minorities, and while Spanish proselytized many natives, many Muslims in Luzon and Visayas were not exempted by the Spaniards from the Spanish Inquisition, wherein Muslims to become Catholics or die for their faith. Those who remained Muslims are only the natives of Mindanao and Sulu which the Spaniards did not invade or had control of only briefly and partially.
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Manila
Rizal was executed and the La Liga Filipina dissolved. The 1896 Philippine revolution was triggered when the Spanish discovered the anti-colonial secret organisation Katipunan, and ended Spanish rule. The United States took the Philippines from Spain in the 1898 Spanish–American War; this developed into fighting between the Philippine revolutionaries and the U.S. in the 1899–1902 Philippine–American War, followed by victory for the U.S. and disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church as the state church of the Philippines. In the period after the war, Philippine churches were restored in the Art-Deco architectural motif. There was a looming threat of apostasy and schism with the rise of anti-clerical Philippine Freemasonry and the establishment of the Philippine Independent Church due to Filipino anger against Spanish ecclesiastical corruption. In response, the Vatican supported Philippine independence and applied a policy of reinforcing orthodoxy which resulted in the majority of the Filipinos remaining faithful to the Roman Catholic Church.