Commentary: The Incongruity of Interfaith Dialogue in Resolving the Mindanao Conflict

By Maulana "Bobby" Alonto

After it has jettisoned the previously initialed MILF-GRP Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) ostensibly in deference to the Supreme Court decision on its ‘unconstitutionality’ coupled with the national uproar generated by political and economic vested-interest groups opposed to a just political settlement of the Mindanao conflict, the Government of the Republic of the Philippines GRP) is now resorting to an anti-insurgency-driven policy.

One important component of this anti-insurgency-driven policy is cleverly mantled in the cloak of ‘Interfaith Dialogue’ to provide it an aura of ‘sanctity’. This would camouflage the real agenda that really animates the policy that the Arroyo regime is currently implementing to ‘resolve’ the Mindanao conflict.

For those who are not updated on recent developments vis-à-vis the Mindanao situation, the GRP has now shifted to a four-pronged program to deal with the Bangsamoro Problem: DDR (demobilization, disarmament and reintegration), ‘direct dialogue with communities’, interfaith dialogue, and militarization. DDR is particularly addressed to the MILF and given as a condition by the GRP for the resumption of the peace talks which the latter has unilaterally scuttled after abandoning the MOA-AD and disbanding its peace panel.

The GRP, nonetheless, openly admits to only three – DDR, ‘direct dialogue with communities’ (whatever this means) and interfaith dialogue. It is silent or evasive on militarization because this does not sit well with the international community which opposes military solutions to sovereignty-based conflicts such as the one that exists in the Bangsamoro Homeland. However, even if the GRP will not admit to the military component of its anti-insurgency-driven policy in Mindanao, the devastation that is resulting from the military operations (called police actions by the regime) being conducted by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) against the MILF and the Bangsamoro people clearly speaks for itself; what the regime denies in words cannot be denied by deeds. The 500,000 plus refugees (and still counting) in the current fighting, the appalling damage to property, the loss of civilian lives including those of helpless women and children, and the surge of AFP presence in Moro territories are a testament to the Filipino government’s putting primacy on military solution as a means to end the Bangsamoro Problem.

For the purpose of this article, however, we will focus on interfaith dialogue.
The Arroyo regime’s interfaith dialogue program in Mindanao has one significant implication. The regime is making it appear that the conflict in Mindanao is a religious conflict: a conflict between Muslims and Christians. Hence, following this premise, interfaith dialogue is resorted to in order for Muslims and Christians to understand each other’s faith and then live happily ever after. This is according to the thinking of the regime which it hopes the international community will buy.

The Moros, who are predominantly Muslim, have nothing against interfaith dialogue. As a matter of fact, all Muslims welcome dialogues with people of other faiths because this is a commandment by Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala in the Qur’an. The essence of tableegh (literally spreading good words) and da’awah (propagation) is dialogue, for without dialogue it is not possible for Muslims to engage in tableegh and da’awah with people of other faiths. History will attest to the fact that Muslims spread the Message of Islam in many parts of the world through tableegh and da’awah – meaning through dialogue – and it is only when suppression, repression, oppression, aggression and tyranny became dominant that Muslims resorted to jihaad al qaatil or the jihaad with the sword (armed struggle).

To comprehend this better - and we have explained this in our previous discourses on the same subject - it is important to note that Islam is not a mere religion as how the West views and understands religion. Islam is a deen, an all-embracing system of life based on tawhid (Islamic concept of monotheism). For want of an appropriate term in English, Islam is an ideology. And it is from this high plane of understanding and perspective that lslam should be viewed.

As an ideology, Islam harbors no enmity for other religions or people of other faiths. This is why Muslims, as demonstrated in the past, have always been tolerant of other faiths and their adherents. When the Holy Prophet Muhammad (saw) established the Islamic State in Madina 1500 years ago, the Jews and the Christians were among its constituency. The Constitution of Madina included them and regarded them as protected citizens (dhimmis) enjoying the same political, economic, social and religious rights as the majority Muslims. They even enjoyed certain privileges not enjoyed by Muslims like exemption from being conscripted into the Islamic army. Justice for all its citizens was (and is) the hallmark of the Islamic State regardless of religious beliefs that during the rule of Hazrat Ali ibn Abu Talib (ra), the Fourth Khalifa-e-Rashidun, an ordinary Jewish citizen of the Islamic State won a case in the Islamic court of law against Khalifa Ali (ra) himself, the head of the Islamic State, and was promptly given what was due him by the Islamic government.

Would this be possible today under the justice system of the Philippine nation-state? If powerful congressmen and senators fail to even bring President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her husband and their cronies in government to court in order to account for the reported shenanigans they have committed while in power, how much more for a poor and powerless Moro Muslim peasant whose family has been massacred and whose home has been destroyed by the war policy of this regime? Indeed, the Philippine Supreme Court could not even give justice to the Bangsamoro people; so how can it be an institution of justice to which the oppressed - Moro or Filipino - can turn? Let the facts speak for themselves.

Going back to the subject of this article, there was no forced conversion under Islamic rule because the Qur’an forbids compulsion in belief (Qur’an: Surah Baqarah, Ayat 256). It was only when the Jews conspired with the enemies of Islam who were in a state of war with the Muslims that they (the recalcitrant Jews) were expelled from Madina because they had become a clear and present danger then to the security of the Islamic State.

This just treatment of Islam for people of different creeds and races was observed down through the centuries especially when Muslims were on the upper hand. After the liberation of Al Quds (Jerusalem) from the European imperialist crusaders in October 1187 by the Islamic armies under Salahudin Yusuf ibn Ayyub (Saladin), the latter restored to the Christians their churches and the Jews their synagogues after having repaired or rebuilt them as they were destroyed during the war. Such magnanimity was hitherto unheard of in Christian Europe where religious non-conformists were burned at the stake as heretics. Lest it be forgotten, too, the Muslim Moro civilization of Andalus in Spain (711-1492) was renowned throughout the known world during the Dark Ages not only for of its scientific, scholarly, literary and artistic achievements and incomparable modern cities not found elsewhere in Europe at that period but also because Muslim Spain became a haven for people of different races, faiths and political views – Christians, Jews and even agnostics – who were fleeing persecution and oppression by the intolerant Church and the European feudal states at that time.

The point is that Islam as an ideology has no quarrel with other religions. Admittedly, differences do exist between Islam and other religious beliefs. In the Qur’an, Islam is critical of both Christianity and Judaism because of their deviations from the original monotheistic message of the earlier Prophets of Allah, notably Musa (Moses) and Isa (Jesus), peace be upon them. This criticism, however, is not to arouse religious enmity but to remind Christians, Jews and Muslims alike of the pristine concept of tawhid, the monotheistic belief-system which was taught and propagated by all the Prophets of Allah, peace be upon them, and which is the well-spring of justice – justice that should govern man-Allah and man-man relationships in accordance with the prescription of Allah. Comparatively, the Qur’an has harsher judgment and verdict for the munafiqeen - the hypocrites – who are fasiqun (wrong-doers, i.e. oppressors and tyrants) who claim to be Muslims in words but disbelievers in their hearts.

This being the case, the variance between Islam and other religions has never been a cause for armed conflict or for declaring war by Muslims. So called communal wars between Muslims and Hindus did occur in India before and after partition but these were fueled by deep-seated prejudices arising out of the peculiarly oppressive social make-up of undivided India at that time which existed in the form of the caste system. For example, many of the Muslims were former ‘untouchables’, or Harijans, the lowest rung in India’s social ladder, who embraced Islam to liberate themselves from a lifetime of oppression by the higher castes which did not consider the ‘untouchables’ human nor even part of the caste system. The ‘untouchables’ were non-entities and thus ‘outcasts’. But even after becoming Muslims, the Hindus still consider them ‘outcasts’ and worse, by converting to Islam, were deemed ‘traitors’ to Mother India.

Another factor is the resentment the Hindus long held for the Moguls, the Muslims who ruled for more than 300 years and united India in 1526-1858. Though the Moguls never forced their Hindu subjects to convert to Islam and tolerated in fact the polytheism of Hinduism though polytheism (shirk) is anathema to Islam, the Hindus harbored animosity toward the Moguls - and all Muslims for that matter - because they held the belief that the egalitarian message of Islam was a threat to the caste system perpetuated by Hinduism and thus the established traditional social order in India. British colonialism later on exploited this deep-seated resentment among the Hindus in order to divide and rule India. By pitting the Muslims and the Hindus against each other during the British raj (rule), the British were able to maintain their colonial rule over the Indian sub-continent. This antagonism did not end even after the Indian Sub-Continent was partitioned into India and Pakistan in 1947. Inside India itself, the Muslims who chose to remain there as minority are being subjected to persecution and oppression by the chauvinistic Hindu ruling classes which have since been in control of the Indian government after independence. It is not Islam, therefore, that caused the religious strife that today still hounds India’s national religious communities.

What is true, however, is that Islam is in conflict with other man-made ideologies that perpetuate oppression and other manifestations of injustice. Thus, Islam has always been at war with all forms of colonialism and imperialism. It has been at war ever since it arose in the Arabian Peninsula against the mighty hegemonic empires of the world and their modern-day client dictatorships regardless of whether they are monarchies or military juntas. It does not make any distinction between Muslims, Christians, Jews or Hindus who defend and serve the interests of colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism or who practice tyranny. In occupied Palestine, for instance, the Muslim Palestinians are not at war with Judaism. They are at war with Zionism, a political movement that propagates the racist idea that Palestine, which Zionists call ‘Israel’, should exclusively belong to the Jews. From the point of view of Islam, all those who practice oppression are enemies because they brazenly violate the Justice of Allah. This should explain, too, why revolutionary ideological Islamic movements in many Muslim nation-states today stand in opposition to puppet governments run by Muslim elites who genuflect to the hegemonic world powers.

Having stressed that point, let me now say that by employing interfaith dialogue to end the armed conflict in Mindanao, what the Arroyo regime is actually doing is to divest the Bangsamoro Problem of its political character and present it as a religious conflict between two ‘domestic religious communities’ of the Philippine nation-state. This is far from the truth for it ignores the historical antecedents that gave rise to the present conflict in Mindanao.

The Bangsamoro Problem is a political problem. It is a conflict that involves two distinct nations: the Filipino nation and the Bangsamoro nation.

As the successors-in-interest to foreign colonialism, the Filipinos believe that the Bangsamoro homeland is part and parcel of the Philippine nation-state. This belief is akin to what the French held onto vis-à-vis Algeria when the latter was a colony of France. The French, particularly those French colonists (colons) who settled in Algeria, fanatically clung to the illusion that Algeria (North Africa) was part of France (Europe) and therefore a legitimate territory of the latter. The same mindset today prevails in the Philippines, particularly among the Filipino elite, the so-called Filipino nationalists, and Filipino settlers or their present-day descendants who chose to ignore or are ignorant of the history of the conflict in Mindanao.

On the other hand, the Bangsamoro people, who had been an independent nation under the Moro sultanates even before the creation of the Philippine nation-state in 1935 and 1946, have been invariably asserting their historic rights over their homeland and their identity as a separate people and nation. They question their unjust incorporation into the Philippine nation-state in 1946 without their democratic consent. They question the diminution of their ancestral lands and the loss of their natural resources to encroaching Filipino settlers.

They question the loss of their right to govern what is left of their ancestral homeland and live a way of life in accordance with their Islamic ideology, faith and culture. They question the gerrymandering of their traditional territories at the expense of the indigenous inhabitants. They question the right of the Filipinos to impose upon them the Filipino identity derived and manufactured from the name of the Spanish king responsible for waging more than 300 years of debilitating colonialist wars against them. They question the right of the Filipinos to impose inept, corrupt and tyrannical local rulers on them. They question the laws which are made in Manila and then imposed upon them which contravene the values of justice and morality inculcated on them by their Islamic ideology and faith. They question the modern-day wars which have been unleashed on them from time to time at the horrendous cost of tens of thousands of Moro lives lost, massive displacement and devastation of communities, and loss of livelihood and property which have aggravated their poverty and marginalization under Filipino rule.

To sum it up, the Moros question the morality and thus the legitimacy of their oppressive colonial status in the Philippine nation-state. And it is this question left unanswered and unresolved that has driven the armed resistance struggle of the Bangsamoro people since the Philippine nation-state saw the light of day.

From what has been said so far, the real picture should now come into focus for everyone to understand. To simply state it, the Mindanao conflict boils down to the collision between two principles: the Philippine nation-state’s principle of national sovereignty and territorial integrity on one hand, and the principle of Bangsamoro right of self-determination on the other.

It is these two principles on a collision course that animate the conflict and which are at the core of the Bangsamoro Problem, and not the religious differences between the Muslims and the Christians. It is a political problem that necessitates a political solution.

Interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Christians, thus, may be good and useful and should certainly be continued between Muslims and Christian to fortify their understanding of each other’s faith. But to make it among the major policy thrusts of the GRP to solve what is clearly a political problem is a diversion and deviation from resolving the real political issue confronting us, which is the Bangsamoro Problem.

In this context, the primordial concern today should not be a dialogue between ‘domestic religious communities’ but a dialogue between two colliding nations: the Philippines and the Bangsamoro. This dialogue, as a matter of necessity, must come up with a just political settlement of the Bangsamoro Problem.

Unfortunately, however, the MOA-AD, which is a product of an eleven-year dialogue between the two nations and a compromise solution to the colliding principles adhered to by the parties to the conflict, has been thrown to the wastebasket by the GRP. The MOA-AD would have been a good start to end the conflict in Mindanao once and for all.