MANILA TIMES Friday, November 11, 2005
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/200 ... 1opi4.html
By Dan Mariano
‘Reverts,’ not Muslim converts
THEY prefer to be called not Muslim converts, but “Muslim reverts.” They are the “Balik Islam,” mostly ex-Catholics who regard their decision to embrace Islam as a homecoming. A good number were contract workers in the Middle East. Others did not have to leave the country to be drawn to Islam, where they found the spiritual solace that their old religion did not give them.
The notion of their status as Muslim reverts is premised on the theory that the archipelago, now known as the Philippines, would have developed into an Islamic state had not Spanish colonialists introduced— and imposed —Christianity in the 16th century. They point out that when the Spaniards first came, Maynilad already had a Muslim ruler, Rajah Soliman.
Historians note, however, that Maynilad’s ruling elite, when Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and his men sailed into Manila Bay, was probably just as alien to these islands as the conquistadors who vanquished them. Soliman—or Sulayman—was a nobleman from Borneo who ruled by virtue of earlier conquest of the settlement at the mouth of the Pasig River that was inhabited by animists. Indications were that even the Bornean nobility at the time had not yet been thoroughly “Islamized,” as evidenced by the Hindu titles, e.g., rajah, that they continued to sport.
This, of course, is the stuff that historical debates are made of. Suffice it to say that for the Muslim reverts, Islam was the faith of their forebears. They have merely rediscovered this ancient legacy. Unfortunately, their reversion to Islam has exposed them to what one of their leaders calls “two-pronged difficulties.”
Their former coreligionists regard the “Balik Islam” as sacrilegious defectors. Worse, the government sees them as potential, if not actual, troublemakers. In a recent interview with the Singapore Straits Times, for instance, National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales described the Muslim reverts as the biggest security concern of the Philippine government.
“Balik Islam” has been implicated in the Valentine’s Day bus bombing in Makati as well as the SuperFerry bombing also in February, which left 116 people dead. In May police caught an alleged member of the jihadist Rajah Soliman Movement with a bomb near the Commission on Elections building.
The authorities are anxious that the “Balik Islam,” born and raised in Luzon and the Visayas, blends easily in big city crowds—unlike the Moro insurgents from the far south who stand out because of their regional accents and unfamiliarity with urban terrain.
Gonzales believes that after government security forces reduced the ranks of the insurgent Abu Sayyaf Group in the wake of the 2001 Dos Palmas kidnappings, ASG leaders like Khaddafy Janjalani began recruiting Balik Islam. Their mission: bring their campaign of terror to the nation’s capital.
According to an article written by Joe Cochrane in the May 17 issue of Newsweek International, Janjalani “has boasted that 70 Muslim converts have been trained in explosives, including Redendo Kain Dellosa, the mastermind of the passenger-ferry bombing.” Dellosa was arrested in late March with two other Balik Islam three alleged ASG operatives and over 40 kilos of explosives.
As if pressure from their Christian kin and the government were not enough, the reverts are also ostracized by those they refer to as “tribal Muslims.”
In a recent radio interview a leader of the Maradeka Bangsamoro People’s Alliance said his group does not fully trust the Balik Islam. While the government sees the reverts as jihadist moles, the Moro leader said some Balik Islam are government agents sent to spy on their fellow Muslims. What apparently has turned off the Moro leader and others like him is the recent converts’ zealotry—nagdudunong-dunungan was how he put it—that, he said, has given other Muslims a bad name.
Of course, not all Moros share this dim view of the Balik Islam. In a recent newspaper interview, Abhou Syed Lingga, who chairs the Institute of Bangsa Moro Studies and the Bangsa Moro People’s Consultative Assembly, questioned the idea of Balik Islam radicalism.
“They are more concerned about theological issues and about defending their new faith,” Lingga reportedly said. “I still have to meet a convert who will go into political issues,” which, he said, are the concern of the Moros of the far south “because of their struggle to regain their homeland in Mindanao.”
The term Balik Islam, according to Lingga, merely refers to Filipinos of other religions who have converted to Islam. “They are welcome to join us,” he said. “There is no discrimination.”
Nonetheless, the reverts’ dilemma is unmistakable. Reacting to Gonzales’s allegations in the Straits Times, a Balik Islam leader, Mikhail Abdul Aziz Abrera, condemned the authorities’ labeling them as a security threat.
Abrera, executive director of Billah Islam Community Organizing and Rural Development Inc., said in a statement posted on his group’s website: “Balik Islam believes that good Muslims are also good citizens abiding [by] the rule of law of the land.”
The Balik Islam, Abrera said, hold “strongly to Islamic principles [despite] our two-pronged difficulties.” One source of their difficulties is “our Christian families who rejected our conversion.” The other comes “from some tribal Muslims who give the impression that we are overreacting in our new faith or too religious.”
Abrera went on to say that his Balik Islam community, which claims 200,000 members , denounces terrorism. “We oppose, and will remain [opposed to], all extremism and those who use violence [to] betray the most basic value of the sacredness of human life.”
The problem is that other Filipinos expect more than just denunciations of terrorism from the Balik Islam. They need to see the Muslim converts—OK, reverts—actively taking part in the campaign to neutralize the violent jihadists in their midst.
Question: Are the Balik Islam willing to do so?