Dangerous idea

Herbie  Gomez

“Imagine there’s no heaven / It’s easy if you try / No hell below us /Above us only sky / Imagine all the people

Living for today /

“Imagine there’s no countries / It isn’t hard to do / Nothing to kill or die for / And no religion, too / Imagine all the people / Living life in peace.” – John Lennon

IT’S truly disturbing to hear any group of Filipinos pledging allegiance to the Islamic State or Isis knowing full well what the latter stands for.

Last week, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (Biff) entered the picture, at a time when the military was–and is still–struggling to fight off the Maute Group in Marawi City, attacking an Army outpost in North Cotabato and triggering a fresh round of skirmishes in the landlocked province in central Mindanao. On national TV, I saw “Isis” written in bold letters on a wall there.

Biff spokesperson Abu Misri Mama told local radio that the group launched the attack against militiamen “because they are our enemies.” Mama also said that Biff, a Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) spin-off, has pledged its allegiance to Isis, repeating what he told the Agence France Presse in a 2014 interview: “We have an alliance with the Islamic State and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”

In 2014, the jihadist group declared the establishment of a worldwide caliphate with al-Baghdadi, the nom de guerre of Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri, as caliph. That declaration was strongly criticized by governments in the Middle East and even by other jihadist groups.

Be that as it may, it baffles me how anyone with a brain in the 21st century would fall for that. And yet Biff, the Maute Group and even the Abu Sayyaf have embraced the dangerous medieval idea of world domination being propagated by Isis.

Christendom, despite retaining its “onward Christian soldier” slogan today, managed to shake off the sword-and-the-cross mentality many years ago. It has in fact given a new meaning–a “spiritual” one–to that slogan. But it wasn’t the case especially during the Middle Ages, the period of ignorance and unenlightenment, when unbelief was synonymous with heresy or even witchcraft punishable by death via burning at the stake. And there was a time when Christianity was militarized, went on offensive as it embraced martial violence. For instance, in 1096, at the start of the Crusades, the Pope summoned hordes of Christian soldiers from western Europe in order to defend Jerusalem’s holy sites. The city flowed with blood three years later while the triumphant Crusaders worshipped their deity after the slaughter. Christianity had too much blood on its hands, too, and in the mind of today’s jihadist, the violence we are seeing in the 21st century is merely a continuation of that old war and struggle for global supremacy that has raged for over a millennium. The difference now is that Christianity took an entirely different path while Isis and similar groups chose to live in the past.

Consider Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani’s Sept. 22, 2014 speech, entitled “Indeed, your Lord is ever watchful,” that is now regarded as the first edict of the jihadist group for its followers to murder “infidels”: “If you can kill a disbelieving American or European–especially the spiteful and filthy French–or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him.” If that isn’t backwards, I don’t know what is.

That is what Isis, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Abu Mohammed al-Adnani stand for–and that is exactly the dangerous idea that the Maute Group, Biff and Abu Sayyaf have chosen to embrace. They did pledge their allegiance to Isis, didn’t they?

I stated it before, and I will state it again: this dangerous idea is a byproduct of religion. It is a perverted theology. Having said that, let me emphasize that the best way to kill a bad idea is with a good idea. The Isis ideology is based on a very corrupt form of theology. Therefore, good theology may be used to stop this dangerous idea from spreading.

The government has to embark on a no-nonsense information and awareness campaign, and Muslim families, schools and our ulama can play a vital role in this gargantuan task so that our young would be properly guided. They have to acknowledge that the problem on terrorism is mainly on the shoulders of the followers of the deity in whose name terrorism is being committed. And they have to show the whole world–not by mere words but by their actions and by how they would respond to the challenge–that theirs is truly a religion of peace.

Given the ugly history of the world’s biggest religions and the Isis mindset, I do not know how the proposed shift to federalism can even be considered a solution when the problem is clearly really not merely political in nature.

The solution won’t come overnight. It’s going to be a long-term solution that should have started in the mid-’90s when the Abu Sayyaf extremism first reared its ugly head in the Zamboanga Sibugay town of Ipil. At that time, the Maute brothers were merely toddlers if not, non-existent.

Guns and bombs can kill people, but not ideas. Unless the government and this nation see the problem that way, I am afraid the dangerous idea will continue to spread.

Apparently, John Lennon got it right. Pastilan.