Christian-Muslim Dialogue in Mindanao Amidst Uncertainties
by Fr. Roberto C. Layson, OMI
(Note from MindaNews: The author is parish priest of Pikit, North Cotabato. This paper was presented to the
Interreligious Dialogue Conference in Bali, Indonesia on May 5. Evening of May 5, in Pikit, a grenade exploded on
the roof of the parish gym, where 116 evacuees have been staying since February 8. Eight evacuees were
injured, two of them children).
When my former mentor in anthropology at the University, Professor Rufa Guiam,
called me to come with her to Bali to share my experience in Interfaith Dialogue in
Mindanao, I did not have a second thought. For indeed, many of us in Asia do not
only share the same race but we also share a common problem that obviously puts
religion on trial. I did not come though as an expert in interreligious dialogue. I am
not a theologian who is here to expound the religious and theological basis of our
gathering.
The content of my sharing is based on what is often asked by people. Is ChristianMuslim Dialogue possible in a situation of widespread violence and ethnic strife as in
the case of Mindanao? The answer to this question seems to me what a lot of people
would like to know when we talk about Interfaith Dialogue.
It is almost six years now since I started working full-time as coordinator of the
Interreligious Dialogue ministry of my congregation in the Philippines. I was the
parish priest of Mt. Carmel Cathedral in Jolo, a predominantly Muslim community in
the southwestern part of Mindanao, when Bishop Benjamin de Jesus was murdered
in front of the Cathedral on February 4, 1997 after spending 19 years of his life
there.
Four months after the tragic incident, I decided to leave Jolo. My departure from the
island was for very personal reason. I felt I was not effective anymore in my work as
a missionary and as a pastor of the Cathedral. I consciously listened to my lips
everytime I spoke before my congregation and I knew they contradicted what was
hidden in my heart.
And so, I left Jolo with so much bitterness and resentment. I guess I took Bishop
Ben’s death personally. We lived in the same house. My room was next to him. He
was just like a father to us all in the vicariate. He had known no enemies and he was
a man of peace. His only dream was for Muslims and Christians in the island to live
together in peace and harmony.
I was transferred by my superior to Pikit in Cotabato, an old town with a strong Basic
Ecclesial Communities (BEC). It was supposed to be a break from the violent world
that characterized Jolo. I was to take care of the Christian communities.
But 12 days after I arrived in Cotabato, in June 1997, a war broke out when
government troops assaulted the third largest camp of the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front, Camp Rajahmuda in Pikit. That war caused the exodus of 30,000 civilians from
their villages. They sought refuge at the town center. They were mostly Muslim
women, children and the elderly. It was not long before I found myself once again in
the midst of the ‘murderers’ of Bishop Ben.
Yet, the sight of suffering women, frightened children and hapless old people in the
evacuation centers proved too much even for a hardened heart. It was then that I
began to understand what Bishop Ben had truly lived and died for in his life - that of
helping the poorest of the poor, whoever they are and whatever circumstances they
are in. I thought about Bishop Ben and I realized that helping the poor is not a
matter of choice. For any human being, it is a duty and a social responsibility.
I believe that the incident in 1997 was my baptism of fire. Three years later, the war
would be repeated in such a catastrophic proportion when the Estrada administration
declared an all-out-war against the MILF in March 2000. That war brought havoc and
untold suffering to our people in Central Mindanao. - Muslims, Christians and
Indigenous people alike. About 500 barangays or villages were affected. Six
thousand houses were destroyed. Close to one million civilians were forced to leave
their homes. In my town alone with a total population of 69,000, at least 41,000
civilians were displaced.
I was only nine years old when the 1970 war erupted in Mindanao. I was too young
then to understand what the war was all about. But I remember my best friend. His
name was Quezon. He was a Muslim living in our neighborhood. We used to go to
school together. We used to play together in our backyard. We used to steal young
coconuts together from somebody else’s coconut trees.
Then, the paramilitary troops called the Ilaga or ‘rats’ came to our neighborhood and
started terrorizing our village. One night, under the cover of darkness, the whole
clan of Bapa Orok silently fled our village including my best friend Quezon and his
family. I did not know the reason why they left. All I knew was that I woke up one
morning and discovered that my best friend was gone.
Since then, my best friend and I never saw each other again. If God will give us a
chance to see each other again, I will ask him why he left that night without saying a
word of goodbye to his friend. But, perhaps, this is really the nature of war.
Neighbors get disintegrated. Families are separated from one another. Friends do not
get the chance to say each other goodbye.
In my six years in this predominantly Muslim town, I have already experienced four
major armed conflicts. And I know very well that it is difficult to talk about peace and
dialogue when what you have is constant war and sporadic peace. For every armed
conflict usually creates fresh conflicts and religious division among our people. It
creates a ‘we-they’ mentality. Feelings begin to take sides. Old scars are opened. It
resurrects old wounds that have been otherwise healed and forgotten through the
years.
Until when?
In Mindanao, when you ask a Muslim boy what he wants to become when he grows
up, he tells you that he wants to become a rebel to fight the military. When you ask
a Christian boy what he wants to become when he grows up, he tells you that he
wants to become a soldier to fight the rebels.
After the all-out-war, we trained 35 Muslim and Christian volunteers on stress
debriefing and trauma healing. After the training, we sent them in teams to three
villages that were severely hit by the armed conflict. For two months, our volunteers
conducted psychosocial activities to traumatized Muslim and Christian children.
During the culminating activity, we prepared delicious food. We distributed new pairs
of slippers. The children played. They laughed like they had found a new life.
Suddenly, they were children again. The volunteers cried to see the faces of the
children so full of joy. Then, we left the children to their mothers and we went to
another village for the same activity.
We had barely left by one hour when government troops conducted hot pursuit
operation against suspected kidnappers believed to be hiding in the same village.
Heavy firefight took place. The civilians hurriedly fled. I could not believe I would see
again the same faces of kids in the evacuation centers. In just a wink of an eye, the
joy turned into sorrow again.
I met our volunteers later at the evacuation centers and they were all looking at me
with blank eyes as if searching for an explanation to the tragedy. “Why is this
happening to us, Father?” One of them asked me. “This is too much already.” I
tapped her shoulder and said nothing. I knew she wanted an answer from me but I
had none. That was one of the situations when I had wished I have never existed at
all.
One late afternoon, I visited one evacuation site where UNDP had just distributed
ration. Suddenly, a young Muslim boy approached me. “When do you think will this
be over, Father?” the boy asked me. “That’s right, when will this be over?” I replied,
trying to evade his question. As we talked, more people gathered around us. The old
men reminisced the days when Muslims and Christians lived like brothers and sisters.
Their stories were all too real, stories that are not anymore heard by the young
generation in Mindanao.
An old woman emerged from the makeshift tent. She spoke to the young boy in local
dialect. After a while, the boy turned to me and asked, “Father, do you eat
sardines?” “Yes, of course,” I answered. The woman went back inside the tent. We
continued the conversation. Then, I heard a voice coming from the tent. “Father, the
food is ready. Let’s go and eat,” the young boy told me.
It was dark inside the tent. Only a kerosene lamp was lighted. I sat on the ground
and looked at the food before us. There was a mound of rice and a plate of sardines.
As I started putting the food into my mouth with my bare hand, I could hardly
swallow. It gave me a guilty feeling and a feeling of shame. I felt guilty because the
food I was putting into my mouth could have been another meal of the children for
the next day. And I felt terribly ashamed because here I am inside the makeshift
tent with my bloated Christian ego, feeling great for being the popular Fr. Bert, the
priest who gives rice, until the people inside the tent taught me what was real
greatness.
I gave from the abundance of supplies that came to us from generous individuals
and institutions. But the people inside the tent offered to me even the last remaining
food available in their possession. They have shown to me that even in their
miserable condition they have not lost their dignity and human compassion.
Twenty four thousand civilians were displaced by that war during the month of
November in 2001. It was the beginning of the Holy Month of Ramadhan. And it was
my third experience of a major armed conflict in Pikit.
Peace is like a dream that continues to elude us in Mindanao. Our communities are
so divided. Deep-seated biases and prejudices often dictate the way Christians and
Muslims would relate with one another. Mutual suspicion has brought about deep
mistrust between and among faith communities in Mindanao. And worst, a majority
of our people have lost confidence in the Peace Process and in Peace itself. People
would rather support a protracted war than a protracted peace. For many peace
advocates, working for peace is like swimming against the tide of popular sentiment.
I have often been told that dialogue especially in Mindanao has no future and that I
tend to romanticize my involvement. Well, I discovered that in this difficult work in
Dialogue, it’s sometimes romanticism that is the only thing left to a person. It’s
romanticism that keeps him or her to persevere and to move on.
One must not stop dreaming. One must continue to dream, not to create more
frustrations for oneself, but so that one can move a little farther from the shore of
apathy and sea of mediocrity even as she or he is trying to make sense of all that is
happening.
Dialogue and Peade-building
Real dialogue and peace-building in Mindanao, I found out, are often a very slow and
tedious process. It is like building blocks. No one builds by placing the blocks at the
top. It has to start from the bottom up. This is what we are trying to do in my town
and in Mindanao - to bring dialogue and the peace process at the grassroots level.
We have realized that the Peace Talks could not guarantee instant peace in our
communities for as long as there is an unseen war going on in the hearts of our
people in Mindanao - Muslims, Christians and Indigenous people alike.
Sadly, in some instances, religious leaders on both sides have not been of much help
in promoting Interreligious Dialogue. Some of them have even become builders of
fortified boundaries and engineers building thick walls of division instead of being
builders of bridges of reconciliation and unity. One priest was telling me one day how
he told a Muslim, “When you die, I will only have 50% feeling for you. But when my
parishioner dies, I will have 100% feeling for him.” One of my Muslim friends told me
how he confronted a visiting Ustadz after the Friday worship. During the ‘hutba’ the
Ustadz spoke ill of Christians in front of the congregation. My friend did not like it.
Regrettably, religion has been dragged in most of the current conflicts in the world
today. We find it happening in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir, Northern
Ireland, Albania, Sri Lanka, East Timor, Mindanao and here in Indonesia. Some
people find it ironical and even suggest to abolish religion once and for all. The world
is better off without religion they say. They observe that religion has miserably failed
to bring peace in the world. Instead, it has become the source of conflict and the
cause of unspeakable suffering of millions of innocent people.
But is it? As I reflected, it’s not that religion has failed. It’s just that it has never
been tried.
During the all-out-war, the parish organized the Disaster Response Team composed
of about 40 dedicated young Muslim and Christian volunteers. Whether under the
scorching heat of the sun or under the pouring rain and amidst bullet fire, together
these young volunteers visited evacuation centers and delivered food to the starving
evacuees, demolishing the myth that the war in Mindanao was religious in nature.
Most of them and their families have been victims themselves of previous wars.
Many of them knew nothing about the theology or spirituality of Dialogue nor even
heard about it. But they worked together as if they have been working together
before.
They would eat on the same table. They would cry together when they hear
somebody had died. They would pray together. They would reflect together. And
they found out that they have the same dream and that they were not enemies after
all.
Normina, a typical young Muslim lady who wears a “tundung” or a headdress and a
long sleeved blouse to cover her arms, even stayed with us for six months. She was
only 18 years old then. Her parents entrusted her to us. She stayed in a room
accompanied by another lady, a Christian volunteer. Her room also became her
prayer room. She only returned home to her family at the beginning of the holy
month of Ramadhan. Until now, she still visits us. Sometimes, I would find her at the
sala watching television alone by herself.
From November to December of that year, we mobilized around 800 Muslim and
Christian mothers in the 42 villages. We implemented supplemental feeding to
10,000 Muslim and Christian children aged 0-6 years old.
I believe that working together is not impossible if we believe that we belong to the
same human family who has the responsibility to care for each other. The challenge
for us is to change how we look at each other and to accept that we are not just our
brother or sister’s keeper. We are more than that. We are more than just our brother
or sister’s keeper. We are, in fact, brothers and sisters.
I remember a story about a guru and his students. A guru asked his students one
day, “How can one determine the hour of dawn, when the night ends and when the
day begins?” One of the students suggested, “When from a distance you can
distinguish between a dog and a carabao.” “No,” was the answer of the guru. “It is
when one can distinguish a banana plant from an acacia tree?” said a second
student. “No,” the guru replied. “Please tell us the answer, then,” the students said.
“It is,” said the guru, “when you can look into the face of human beings and you
have enough light inside of you to be able to recognize them as your brothers and
sisters. If this is not yet happening, then, it is still night, and darkness is still with
us.”
At the moment, my house or convento in Pikit is no longer just a convento of the
Christians. It has also become the convento of the Muslims. Our Muslim friends visit
us and we let them feel that it is also their home. They would prepare their own
coffee at the dining hall. We would eat on the same table. Sometimes, they would
lead the prayer before meals. Sometimes, we would.
Praying has never been a problem to us, nor a place to pray for our Muslim friends
while they are in the convento. They know exactly where to go. And usually, that is
inside my room. I have a prayer mat which I especially bought for them. Once I
asked them, “Look, my room is a Catholic room. There are a lot of images and
symbols. Are you not distracted when you pray?” And they said. “No, Father. We
know that you are a priest.” I guess it is the respect that we have for each other that
keeps the bond of friendship strong even with the violence and so much hatred
around us.
The seeds of peace
Last Ramadhan, together with some Christians in the parish, we went around visiting
our Muslim friends. We joined them in their ‘buka’ or breaking of the fast. We were
their guests. In one of the houses, we were treated with an indigenous musical
presentation of ‘kulintang’. Then, during our patronal fiesta, we also invited our
Muslim friends including the Muslim mayor. This time, they were our guests. We
prepared ‘halal food’ for our visitors. Muslims and Christians ate together in the same
church compound.
One Sunday afternoon when I was putting on my vestment and was about to start
the mass, the lady in charge of the group that was sponsoring the mass whispered to
me, “Father, some of these stuff are offerings from the Muslim vendors.” Admittedly,
I was confused.
The Market Vendors Association sponsors one of the Sunday masses once a month.
The lady would collect donations or offerings such as vegetables, fruits or canned
goods from the Christian vendors to be offered during the celebration of the mass. In
the beginning, everytime she would go around, the Muslim vendors would also give
some gifts but she refused them explaining that the offerings would be used during
the mass. However, the second time around, the Muslim vendors insisted on giving
their offerings saying that they also wanted to be included in the prayers during the
mass. Besides, they said, the parish helped them during the war when they were
displaced.
I did not expect this to happen. Nor did I expect something in return for doing
humanitarian assistance to the evacuees. But if violence begets violence, then,
kindness also begets kindness. I call this reciprocity that is born out of the basic
human goodness that is in each and everyone of us and not out of obligation.
The parish, together with some Muslim peace advocates, has been engaged in
establishing “Space for Peace” communities. This is a comprehensive rehabilitation
project designed not only to rebuild the physical destruction caused by the war but
also the strained relationship of people. I have never seen the community so alive
during the formal launching last year. People hung banners made out of plastic
laminated sacks, decorated the roads with flaglets and bandalas and put up
buntings.
The night before, Muslim and Christian mothers prepared the food for the visitors.
The men gathered hundreds of young coconuts for drinks. The governor of the
province, the commanding officer of the military, the chief of police, the
representative of the MILF central committee, MNLF, the mayor, government line
agencies, and various local and international NGOs sat on the same table as they
listened to the reading of the “declaration of peace” by one of the elders in the
community.
We were gaining some headway and making some progress in our peace-building
and dialogue work when another major armed confrontation took place last February
between government troops and MILF forces.
Up until midnight on February 8, 2003, together with some government Muslim
officials, we were still evacuating civilians from the interior of Liguasan marsh, a
known enclave of the MILF. As we drove through the night, I could not help but shed
tears when I saw people sleeping by the roadside. Some on their sleds. Some under
the trees. Many on the grass. They did not make it to the town center due to sheer
exhaustion.
We passed by a group of about 20 people sleeping on the grass. They were mostly
children, women and elderly. We woke them up. The children began to cry. They
climbed the dump trucks and we rushed them to the town center where they joined
thousands of evacuees in the evacuation centers who had earlier that day fled their
homes.
Forty two thousand civilians were displaced by this new war, the fourth in the span
of six years. One hundred thirty seven Muslim and Christian families have sought
refuge at the church and now staying at the parish gym and dormitory. When the
moon is bright, Muslim and Christian children would play together around the parish
compound.
Our Disaster Response Team composed of young Muslims and Christians, has been
mobilized. They know that they are out there not only because they want to help the
evacuees out of humanitarian reason. They know in fact that they are out there
because of their belief that there is only one God and that this God cares for all His
people regardless of their religious belief.
In one village, the people decided not to abandon their community. In the evening,
they would stay together at the center of the village like they are one family, finding
comfort and security in the presence of one another. “No matter what happens,
Father, we will not evacuate,” said the leader who is a Muslim and who takes care of
about 79 Muslim, Christian and Indigenous families in his village.
We, in Mindanao, do not have any illusion that peace would be an easy task. We are
conscious how difficult it is. But we also believe that working for peace is not entirely
impossible. “We shall not give up, Father,” said one of my Muslim friends. “Let us
continue to plant the seed of peace no matter how small it is. Allah will not fail us.”
He was a former combatant and decided to devote the last remaining years of his life
in promoting peace and dialogue in Mindanao.
It is this faith in the loving and merciful God that keeps us going. We have no
enemies. We harbor no hatred against a soldier or a rebel. For in war, the real
enemy is neither a rebel nor a soldier. In war, the real enemy is war itself.
I believe that we can only have peace in the world when there is peace among
religions. But we can only have peace among religions where there is authentic
dialogue among peoples. And there can only be authentic dialogue among peoples
when there is respect for one another. Dialogue seems to me to indicate two groups
facing each other, but I like to think of us all side by side facing the world and its
problems.
I have discovered something beautiful from my experience in Pikit. In this world
where accomplishment is measured by tangible and actual results and where
efficiency is determined by detailed planning, the ministry of dialogue undoubtedly
could be exasperating and frustrating.
Yet, it is precisely this kind of culture in the corporate world that one must resist. I
am discovering that the life of dialogue has its own rhythm. Good things happen at a
moment when the person least expects or plans for them. One responds as things
unfold. One does not necessarily force events to happen or impose on other people
what one wants, no matter how noble and good it may be from one’s own
perspective.
Yes, one plants the seed of goodness not even knowing if and when it is going to
grow. But I have faith that whatever goodness one has planted will blossom only in
goodness and that this goodness alone will remain in the end.