Blast from the past
By Noralyn Mustafa
Inquirer News Service

"I DON'T KNOW WHY THEY KILL. THEY JUST kill. They kill innocent people, they kill women, they kill children..."

This was President George W. Bush speaking at a Pentagon briefing last Thursday, sounding as clueless as most of us on the motivations of "terrorists."

The briefing immediately followed the "Global Summit" on "CNN Connect," which was hosted by Christian Amanpour, who discussed equally compelling global concerns, among them Islamic extremism, the term which perhaps has been agreed upon as the more politically correct.

Among the panelists and resource persons in the summit were such disparate personalities as former President Bill Clinton, U2's Bono, the astronaut former Sen. John Glenn, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, Jordan's Queen Rania and Ted Turner, all of whom are apparently committed to the cause of helping the marginalized among the human race get a better chance at survival on this planet.

What were the causes of Islamic extremism? How could Islam, by its very name the religion of peace, be the ideological foundation of a culture of hate-specifically, against other faiths; and generally, against the principles of Western democracy?

Very difficult questions to answer, but there were clues. There is, for one, the absence of a formal and definite religious hierarchy among the Muslim ummah (congregation), which would approximate that of the Roman Catholic Church. This is one factor that somehow allows some Muslim individuals or groups to interpret the Holy Koran and the sayings of the Prophet according to their own understanding, their own worldview and even their own aims.

Queen Rania, as knowledgeable and as articulate as the King, was more specific: ignorance, isolation, poverty, the lack of chances to improve their lives, making them vulnerable to any persuasive and ostensibly authoritative movement or collective action that, at the least, holds some hope for a better life; and, at the most, the tantalizing prospect of overcoming and even dominating perceived oppressors.

And the Queen could not be more emphatic in advocating education as one effective countermeasure against extremism. But it should be the kind of education, she stressed, that would minimize anger and hatred, both of which are seen as the very roots of what is now considered by the civilized world as the most devastating menace inflicted on humanity in our time. More importantly, education should be made accessible especially to women because they carry the larger part of the responsibility of inculcating in their children the right values.

In opposition to an ideology of killing, these eminent personalities transcribed a strategy for the preservation of life, from eradicating corruption, to devising programs for renewable energy, to microfinancing, and to ecology and environment conservation.

And so it was with equal mixtures of shock and awe that we watched and listened as Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, proclaimed by the ominously numbered 13th Congress of the Republic of the Philippines as ruler of this country where people, after five years of her administration, escape starvation's slow painful death by jumping from giant billboards; and where mothers who are denied free contraceptives save their children from the same fate by leaving them as fetuses in church doors or garbage heaps-made her appearance as presiding officer of the United Nations Security Council to deliver an impassioned reaffirmation of her total commitment and unconditional support to President George W. Bush's war on terror, justifying this as "practical," the word to mean-as she broadly hinted-asking for assistance in the acquisition of instruments of mass murder to combat terrorists.

For this, she will place in hock the Constitution and our sovereignty; and sell, piece by piece, the national patrimony, to include the jewels of Imelda Marcos. Thus, we will have nothing left to sell but our blood, sweat and tears; we will have no other choice but to labor, away from family and home, as the world's servants, entertainers, whores and bed-pan cleaners (but hailed as "modern heroes" for providing her government the dollars with which to pay for her gargantuan loans) only to come home either with electronic gadgets or lying rigid in a box.

For this, Bush bussed her on the cheek. But even as she was still basking in her 15 minutes of fame, a report showing that her country tops the list of Southeast Asian countries hosting the most number of terrorist groups was released.
I still have to comprehend how the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front got on that list, at least in the context of the 1992 peace agreement and the fact that, as of now, the government is still discussing the issue of ancestral domain in the ongoing peace talks with the MILF; but I wrote this piece with the gentle drone of a spy plane keeping me company through the night and leaving just before the crack of dawn.

But the renewed "all-out war on Mindanao," the central message of her plea enjoining the world's support for the Bush-led war on the world, will have to wait until he sends those weapons of mass destruction.

In the meantime, an anti-terror law, certified as urgent by the national security adviser, will have to be passed by the noble 158 in Congress, and the National Democratic Front has announced that it will launch offensives against the military in Mindanao.

This is not just how it all began 33 years ago. This is worse. Because all that we were asking for was for her to tell us where she was hiding Garcillano.

Comments to rubaiyat19@yahoo.com