JOLO, Sulu (MindaNews / 19 October) — The death of Grand Mufti of Region IX and Palawan came as a big catastrophe akin to an earthquake that a mild one indeed followed 38 minutes after his last breath that day at 4:38 PM.
I was fighting off a three-ft deep flood intruding into my living room at my other end of submerged part of the Latin City that day. I just arrived in Zamboanga city in transit to return to my base in Jolo when the heart-wrenching news on the death of Ustadz Abdulbaki Abubakar appeared on my newsfeed on social media on October 8.
I figured how the Hadji Ahmad Sakaluran compound is just seven kilometers away, its grounds have been familiar as the back of my palm but at that moment i could only conjure it in my imagination. Not that it matters at all to the truth of the world, but just for documentation and showing of receipt, I was not there when the last piece of slab sealed his ‘liyang’ and the last grain of sand settled in peace.
While I have absolutely no claim of right or entitlement to comment on the matter of his successor, just like the rest of citizens, a civilian ordinary like me can do is to patiently wait. But I can humbly help in clearing the debris and the thick dusts that followed in the disaster’s wake just as how we desperately tried during that October of 2013 in Rio Hondo, Mariki, Santa Barbara, Lustre in Zamboanga City but epically failed. The initiatives to tell our story was grabbed by those who were ready with their storytellers and to this day we have believed their narratives of what transpired as the infamous “ Zamboanga Siege” because there is no other version of the tale. Those days mortally wounded my intellectual capacity that I could not allow this disaster to do again.
To aid in reconstruction of our ordinary citizens’ memories of how our religious institutions breached the “separation of church and state” and became mainstreamed that it is now rendered as a pitiful clone of a bureaucracy mirroring that of secular politics in matters of selection and ascendance of hierarchy in leadership. Following the trail of history of Muslim Mindanao peace process will perhaps shed some light.
In retracing contemporary history of the peace processes of GRP- MNLF (Government of the Republic of the Philippines-Moro National Liberation Front) then GPH- MILF (Government of the Philippines-Moro Islamic Liberation Front), the insidious roles of civil society organizations (CSOs) such as the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy, Peace and Conflict research groups and international development actors (Asia Foundation, USAID, etc.) should be meticulously examined, borne in mind and be reminded that post-signing of Agreement was not the end of war, neither was it Peace-at-Last.
The year 1996 onwards was just the beginning of the next Phase of Containment (tinsel-wrapped in euphemism of “normalization” and “demobilization”) and its globalization. This process was just as crucial and as fatal to us as all-out-war or armed conflict. Standing on its spot now, we must follow where the fault lines are, back to the so-called “peace- workers,” the CSO, intellectual institutions and producers of New Knowledge, in a managed and choreographed ‘culture of peace.’
I have institutional memory of at least 40 years of this, worked with the Darul Ifta of RIX-Palawan during the Zamboanga Siege and invited to document almost every meeting of Ulama in subsequent OPAPP-led counterinsurgency campaigns dubbed as “Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism.”
Walking behind them, in some moments, beside them, hovering incognito, I was shadow witness of how politics of transition of ARMM (Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao) to BARMM (Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao) had been trying to marginalize them (and if I may stretch it some more, ditto as to how the systems of authority of the region – that we might now name as Sulu Archipelago – of its traditional leaders and royalty has been further attempted to be erased, silenced and mooted).
Marginalization of tradition was how I looked at it at first, in the framework of contention of different knowledge systems, the indigenous (traditional) and the modern (“progressive”). But on taking a second look at history, this time on longue duree or long shot it is now becoming apparent that in this battle, bullets and guns used are manufactured out of ‘knowledge system’ it could easily harness and churn into its campaign arsenal without care to discriminate if your Islam according to their measuring cup is traditional, fundamentalist, or so-called progressive. How would we know then what label we are branded? It would be on what specifically calibrated tactic and strategy targeted for each type is used on us.
In one campaign on Reproductive Health and Family Planning social acceptance program, for instance, the international NGO by email sent out to us (as the conduit community NGO partner assigned to identify religious personalities), a memorandum directive on how the MRLs or Muslim religious leaders (Ulama or Alim were not yet mainstreamed terms then) are to be “handled” laboriously constructing sentences to be said by us verbatim during orientation, and specifying to the last detail of what words to use for “family planning” to make sure we got them to sign. Two top religious from Jolo with their respective assistants would remember how a three-day signing meeting was programmed with two days free-time in Davao City to keep them “relaxed” before and after the day of signing which consisted only of a two-hour half-day event. I have witnessed the same approaches and treatment done to MNLF commanders to win their “hearts and mind” when i was Culture of Peace coordinator for the UN-funded ‘integration’ programme for Mindanao. But obviously, thick descriptions and details are frivolous, it will only derail us from the issue. Let us get to the point: The war for spaces of knowledge is as much a battle for knowledge-power, and has been weaponized to use against citizens like me as military fascist tool of containment.
.The project of “Moderating Islam” has been a poison gas we have been breathing since 1996 (but could be earlier). We used to have for 600 years held up our natural immunity of protection and conservation from the contagion poisoning minds and hearts. If it was by divine hands or our ancient sages, we would never know, but built there as trenches protecting our communities – from reefs to ridges, from coasts to seas – and DNA instinctively embodied as ‘knowledge of thyself’ defended by our traditional leaders and elders. But our quarantine lines were ripped and breached, aided in no small measure by our very own intellectuals and academics doing peace and conflict researches, framing the stories for and selecting the ‘facts’ to support the Invasion’s narratives that indeed Muslims in Mindanao need to be “moderated.” Ironically, the idea of a moderated Islam became the very weapon of our division as we now start looking at each other with self-righteous haught and fascist-militaristic suspicion.
No it is not the problem in bureaucracy among our religious, nor of simply the bureaucrat-capitalists of secular politics who poison the well and instead dig out for new oil wells. It might be partly a mass media that we Muslims do not have. But the fault lines are deeper and so discretely hidden that we must identify and take courage enough to speak about.
That much I could share for now…May Allah forgive me and my wicked self and its shortcomings. may Allah preserve and save me from the whispering demons and their whispers. Ameen.
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Mucha-shim L. Quiling is Sama from Sulu. ALAL BIMBANG contains her memories and longing of Sulu of the past and at the same time conjure up its potent powers to configure the present. ALAL BIMBANG is Sinama word describing a state of being liminal. It is a state of sailing and of sailors caught in between the crossings of two seas of being and becoming.
ALAL BIMBANG is a feeling switching between joy and sadness. As when you depart from a place, you feel sadness for leaving behind something or being unable to take it with you. Then when the island of destination is on sight, you feel the joy of arriving. But when you look back, the feeling switches to and from the nostalgia of leaving and the euphoria of arriving)
