I read Muslims killing Muslims online today. ISIS is killing seven times more Muslims than non-Muslims said a CNN article. Obviously, this is no longer a question of religion, not a question of conversion, not a question of ideology, but a desperate reaction to something equally violent.
Back in 2007, I gave a talk attended by commissioners of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights on the nature of violence that I learned volunteering in 2002 at the New York Anti-Violence Project. I wasn't trained there, but I read a lot of material. The singular message was: There is no profile of a violent person. That person could be a Muslim, a Christian, your professor, the homeless woman, the child, the husband, the wife, the sister, the grandmother. There is simply not one kind of person who can commit violence. My talk, as a representative of an NGO committed to report human rights abuses, made the point that two people can have exactly the same experience, but one may be violent, the other not. But looking back now, my talk was incomplete. Back then, I noted one or two directors of the CHR who liked to justify the violence of the armed communist rebels against structural violence.
But let us go back a few centuries. The Philippines was a sophisticated culture with evidence of Hinduism and Buddhism. Archeological finds with Sanskrit words on them date as far back as 100 C.E. Buddhist texts date as far back as the 9th century. We were quite an open economy of 7,000 islands. The Muslims came in the 14th Century. We have no record of resistance of our ancestors against the Muslims. And most of the over 100 indigenous peoples here preserved their pagan cultures, perhaps because it was a time of the Ottoman Empire known for religious tolerance. When the Spanish came to force Catholicism on all in 1521, the economic centers were the first to convert. Many sub-cultures continued to exist in the margins. Our language today bears evidence of its Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim etymology.
I grew up in Mindanao, a part of the Philippines known to be heavily influenced by Muslims, if not populated by them. I grew up in Davao City with my paternal grandmother. What is notable is that early on, kids were taught to dread Muslims. Grownups would admonish them by saying, "Ok, if you don't do that, the Muslims will come and get you." Yet the only few Muslims I knew personally seemed kind people - two were my classmates - one was Muhammad who turned out to be an heir to a seat of power, and Shaj Pendatun, now a political leader of a place named for his surname; and the third one was the fish vendor, a gentle sunburnt man with leathery skin who used an old-fashioned scale to sell fish to my grandmother every week.
Later on, studying in the University of the Philippines, I befriended some Muslim leaders supportive of the Moro National Liberation Front. Of course, there were quite a few discussions on the Quran and Islam, but nothing short of rooting us back to our common vision of a real economic and political democracy for the Philippines.
Right now, I'm a Unitarian Universalist minister serving a very small chapel in the shanties of Western Bicutan in Taguig City. When I was installed, it was such a privilege for Muslim friends to come and bless me, along with my Buddhist friends. I invited Hindus, but they were unable to make it. I believe in diversity as a key to peace, and I wanted that to be clear during my installation. My ordination, on the other hand, featured a hands-on-my-head pray-over by many ministers rooted in animism and pagan practices. These connections didn't have overnight. I have worked with different faiths most of my life.
I believe if there's a truth that I share with all of them, it is that we are human beings and that we believe there is a way to live together not just in peace but in harmony. In fact, most of the people I know from those faiths speak to my beliefs more than the Catholic faith I grew up in. As Sting, yes the musician also known as Gordon Sumner said, "People go crazy in congregations, they only get better one by one."
Jesus went after "lost" individuals - the unorganized, the marginalized, the poor, the voiceless, the invisible. Muhammad went after civilizations to put order that was for him classless and just. But as history would consistently show, it is the organizing process that puts evil in many a benevolent mission. When people are given thankless duties, like his generals, especially huge responsibilities to instill order in chaos, they can become frustrated, desperate, and may start seeking power either to make administration easier, or to take advantage of their position of trust, and the very good they try to establish becomes merely a tool, confusing their ends and means.
Muhammad's message today is that civilizations need caring for, they need centralization of values if they are to understand each other and live in peace. His was not a religion that could suffer attacks against his tribe without a military defense - a way that today's military tacticians would view as practical - which does not discount preemptive strikes. This is a religion with practical applications in today's post-modernity.
Muslims are not blind to the war going on against them. They will defend and retaliate as any nation would. Why would they be demonized doing so?
Last March 2014, my country has ended a long war with Muslims by signing an agreement that gives them their overdue governance on territories where they are the majority. This means that any harvest, mine, or resources coming from their region benefits their region first. An ignorant American who works for the US Embassy scoffed at me, over one dinnertime conversation, at why Filipinos would "give them effective secession". Clearly, he feels that his opinion was borne of either brilliant insight or mainstream enough to be spewed over the salad. Does he know how our culture and way of life honors the contributions of Muslims this way? Probably not. I wonder why the American government sent this UC Berkeley graduate here with his sense of entitlement. Muslim-dominant parts of the country have remained below poverty levels for too long. Our discrimination have fed the war too long. Their literacy rate of 65% is far below the country's average of 95.5%.
We have bridged the divide through decades of peacebuilding dialogues. The solution didn't arrive from thin air as a reaction to fear. This was an olive branch, extending our fellowship to our fellow Filipinos in the south. And we are only too lucky they have honored our peace efforts. The agreement itself was born of years of talks between the government and rebel Muslim leaders and their legal counterparts and has set the bar for peace talks in the world. But that's not exciting in a world given to Warcraft, Clash of Clans, and other gamefication of human lives for the sake of gold coins, treasure, or power points in public perception.
My talk was incomplete in 2007 because it did not differentiate between suffering the flaws of individuals, seeking justice against criminals, and the intolerable onslaught of violence by a nation, whether that nation be called Western, European, American, or Christian. The difference is you may suffer flaws, perhaps pardon criminals, but to not defend your nation against another is itself a sin in many languages.
It is common knowledge to the Filipinos now that the US sent more troops here than they did in Afghanistan in the guise of teaching Filipino military better tactics. But no one believes that now. Filipinos know that the US military is learning from Filipino war experts who have been doing land combat for decades against the Muslim rebels and the Communist rebels here. But that is only if you are optimistic. The worse case is the US military is learning our tactics so that they can sow more confusion and grow an ISIS type of movement soon for all the mining potential in Mindanao. The Philippines is in the top of the world's lists in mining resources for palladium, for one, essential to the alloy of white gold, and also for nickel, copper, and chromite, with a huge demand for industrial purposes. Go figure.
There is a redemptive aspect in knowing one's historical national identity. Fact is, we will always be as Muslims as we are Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and pagans. We need to embrace the fullness of our history, not through a fractured lens will we bring healing from suffering and brokenness, but through a lens like Galileo's, willing to break the boundaries of belief in order to look beyond what we've been told.
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