Ryan Anson

Ryan Anson is a freelance photojournalist based in Oakland, CA. Although originally from the US, Anson grew up in Kenya where he first picked up a camera and began taking pictures of people and animals. Since 1998, Anson has worked in 20 African, Asian, and Central American countries. A recipient of several journalism grants and fellowships, including the International Reporting Project (2005) and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting (2007,2008), Anson has published stories in a variety of magazines and newspapers such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek, TIME – Asia, Smithsonian Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is a frequent contributing photographer for the wire services Bloomberg News and Agence France-Presse and has collaborated with the Aurora Photos and Redux Pictures on a number of stories. Anson is currently developing a multimedia project featuring his many years of work photographing the Asia Pacific’s diverse Muslim minority community.

TribalTruth is excited to feature Ryan Anson’s project entitled On the Edge of the Crescent: Muslim Minorities in the Asia-Pacific.

On the Edge of the Crescent: Muslim Minorities in the Asia- Pacific

One month after 9-11, Anson moved to Mindanao – a war – ravaged island in the southern Philippines. He had recived a small seed grant from a Filipino cultural foundation and began to document various militant groups who have been waging Islamic insurgencies for more than three decades. His pictures explore the impact of armed conflict and humanitarian emergencies on local indigenous and Muslim people. They also feature the Islamic traditions of this part of the Philippines, a mainly Catholic country made up of 7000 islands and incredibly diverse regional cultures. In 2005, Anson expanded this project with the support from the International Reporting Project and Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and started to photograph the religious and social experiences of other Muslim minority communities in the Asia-Pacific, including the Uighurs from China’s Xinjiang Province and Thailand’s Malay people in the southern border region. By illustrating how Muslim minorities in the Asia-Pacific live, fight, worship, and work in societies filled with hardship and persecution, this project intends to shed light on an overlooked yet viable part of the Islamic world.

$Evacuees navigate their way through a cloud of anti-malarial chemicals in Pikit’s largest evacuation center at the Buisan Warehouse, southern Philippines. More than 40,000 people, most of them Muslim, fled to Pikit town to escape heavy fighting and artillery barrages between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front during February 2003. Over the last 30 years, the MILF has led an armed rebellion to establish an independent Islamic state on the southern island of Mindanao. Muslims make up eight percent of the Philippines\' national population. Many of them live in poverty and have little access to fertile agricultural lands and political power.$

$Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) soldiers hike up a steep mountain trail near their jungle base of Camp Jabal Nur in Lanao del Sur, southern Philippines in April 2002. Over the last 30 years, the MILF has demanded greater political and economic rights for the Philippines\' Muslim minority community and periodically fights for an independent Islamic state on the southern island of Mindanao.$

$Displacement and hunger do not prevent a woman from performing her afternoon prayers in Pikit\'s largest evacuation camp at Buisan Warehouse, southern Philippines. Because most of the people displaced by recent fighting between Islamic insurgents and government forces in 2003 were Muslim, a local non-government organization provided a tarp which evacuees used to fashion a make-shift mosque.$

$Mohammad Zacaria-Pangcoga grimaces in pain as a nurse attends to his shrapnel wounds at Cotabato City\'s Regional Hospital in the southern Philippines in March 2002. The young man was injured in a grenade blast during a community fiesta in Cotabato City, the seat of government in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. A string of bombings in several of Mindanao\'s larger cities has killed scores of people since the beginning of 2002.$

$While waiting for their friend Johanna Gawan to fit into her wedding gown, a group of Kalagan pandalas (bridesmaids) add the finishing touches to their dresses near Davao City, southern Philippines in February 2004. Living near Mindanao\'s largest city of Davao, the Kalagan people are one of the smaller Islamicized ethnic groups in the Philippines.$

$During the \"Bakwit Power: People\'s Exodus to Peace\" rally on June 24, 2003, refugees block one lane along Mindanao\'s National Highway to protest continued fighting near their homes between government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front forces in the southern Philippines. In December 2003, the Department of Social Welfare and Development estimated that there were still 25,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) throughout Mindanao.$

$Scores of senior pupils look for seats as school president Baba Hadji Hussein begins his nightly sermon at Ponoh Dala in Yaring, Pattani, southern Thailand in April 2005. More than 900 students live at Ponoh Dala for up to eight years where they spend six days each week studying the Qu\'ran and learning about Islamic jurisprudence. Ponoh Dala was established 100 years ago as a private, family-owned institution. To this day, it is still recognized as one of the leading Islamic educational centers in Southeast Asia. This ponoh (pondok in Malay) is one of 400 traditional Islamic schools in Thailand and contrasts greatly with the less popular government schools, many of which periodically shut down due to an increase of arson attacks against state-owned buildings. These austere institutions focus exclusively on teaching Islamic law and Qu\'ranic studies in the Malay language, a process that helps to solidify both Malay and Muslim identity among students. However, military and government officials believe that foreign-trained ustaz (religious teachers) have infiltrated the historic ponoh school system in order to spread radical jihadist ideology that draws on local grievances and aspirations for independence. Before violence erupted earlier last year, scores of Indonesian, Cambodian, and Singaporean students studied here.$

$As a marine secures the entrace of a restaurant, Cpt. Saros Bampat of the Royal Thai Army (RTA) greets Muslims leaving a mosque after Friday\'s congregational prayer in Panare, Pattani. A team of soldiers routinely patrols the area to gather intelligence on separatist activity from local Muslims and assess the community\'s level of cooperation in solving the wave of militant violence against government troops, bureaucrats, Buddhist monks, and Muslim officials seen collaborating with the military.$

$A community of Qu\'ranic students complete their prayers before beginning afternoon classes at the Islam Foundation of Somburanasasna Dala in Yaring, southern Thailand in April 2005. Osama bin Laden t-shirts are frequently worn by the younger pupils. More than 900 students live here for up to eight years where they spend six days each week studying the Qu\'ran and learning about Islamic jurisprudence. More than 3000 people have been killed in Thailand\'s southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat, and Yala since January 2004. Government and military officials attribute the violence to Islamic separatists who have sporadically fought to reestablish the independent Pattani sultanate in the country\'s restive border region. Some Thai and Western analysts have said the insurgents try to recruit new members from the area’s historic Islamic schools such as Dala. The three southern border provinces, where ethnic Malay Muslims make up five percent of the population, are among the poorest and least-served in the country.$

$Abdulrahman Abdulsamad, former chairman of the Islamic Council of Narathiwat, believes that the current unrest in southern Thailand stems from radical Islamic teachings as well as disputes between regional politicians and security forces. The outspoken Islamic cleric, who is among 33 council leaders in the country and one of the most prominent in the south, says that the Malay Muslims have deeply internalized generations of state neglect and discrimination. \"Muslims feel angry and afraid because the government treats them unfairly.\"$

$Young hafez (Qu\'ranic students) rock their bodies back and forth while memorizing Arabic verses from the Holy Qu\'ran at the Islam Foundation of Somburanasasna Dala in Yaring, southern Thailand. A group of 100 hafez study in a separate building where they devote at least seven hours every day to reading the revered spiritual text.$

$A young Uighur man is carried to his bride\'s house by close friends during a wedding celebration on the outskirts of Kashgar, China in August 2008.$