Neo-Orientalist Representations of Muslims in the 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World Senior High School Textbooks

This study examines the discursive construction of Muslim and Moro identities in Senior High School literature textbooks in the Philippines, specifically the 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World series. Drawing on Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach and Behdad and Williams’ theory of neo-Orientalism, the research interrogates how editorial framing and paratextual materials in the anthology-type pedagogic texts operate as sites of epistemic violence. A critical discourse analysis of six widely used textbooks reveals that while some Muslim-authored texts are framed with universality and neutrality, others are subject to reductive and essentialist framing strategies. The analysis identifies recurrent use of nomination, predication, intensification, mitigation, and perspectivisation, discursive tools that render Muslim identity as synonymous with violence, repression, or cultural backwardness. With Moro narratives consistently omitted, spatially isolated, or tokenised, what emerges from the analysis is the structural pattern of containment that mirrors global neo-Orientalist logics under the guise of multicultural and liberal education. Editorial choices such as guide questions, backgrounding, and visual cues frequently prime students to interpret Muslim identities through ideologically loaded lenses. The study concludes that these textbooks function as ideological apparatuses that reinforce dominant narratives, marginalise subaltern voices, and perpetuate colonial hierarchies in the unique context of the Muslim-majority region of Bangsamoro. It calls for urgent curricular reform and the inclusion of Muslim perspectives in content development to foster genuine epistemic justice in Philippine classrooms. Keywords: Neo-Orientalism; Critical discourse analysis; Epistemic violence; Islamophobia; Textbook analysis