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.
Military history of Spain
After Christopher Colombus's successful navigation to the New World under Spanish patronage, Spanish forces rapidly began to occupy much of the new territories, rapidly taking the Bahamas and defeating the local Arawak speaking indigenous groups. The efforts of Ferdinand Magellan, reaching the island of Limasawa in 1521, led to the subsequent establishment of the colony of the Philippines under Miguel López de Legazpi which was to become an essential Spanish military base in the Pacific. The challenge of the Barbary Pirates encouraged defensive and punitive expeditions across the Mediterranean, resulting in the conquest of various outposts in North Africa, including Melilla in 1497, Mazalquivir in 1505, Oran in 1509, Algiers in 1510, Tripoli in 1511 and the smaller Plazas de Soberania.