Posted on 11/18/2003 8:27:47 PM PST by Stultis
Posted on Monday, November 17, 2003 |
When Christians embrace Islam |
By Johnna Villaviray, Senior Reporter (First of Three Parts) When the television reporter Richard Rivera stepped onto the Sulu pier, one thing was on his mind: send stories to Manila about efforts to recover the Abu Sayyafs 19 Sipadan hostages. By the end of the six-week assignment, Rivera brought home not just war stories but a new faith as well. Now answering to the name Abdurahman Ismail, Rivera has resigned from the network and is now helping to organize rallies to raise civic awareness. He says he doesnt miss his fast life as a reporter and its perksbooze, payola and girls. Before I became a Muslim, the focus was on money, how to get ahead in life. But now, I ask myself, Whats all that for? Isnt salvation whats important? Rivera said. Rivera is one of the thousands of former Christians who reverted to Islam since the 1990s. The Office of Muslim Affairs estimates that at least 20,000 Balik Islam, or reverts as they like to be called, live in traditionally Catholic Luzon. They call themselves reverts rather than converts on the premise that everyone was born a Muslim. Records show that Balik Islam comprises nearly 200,000 of the more than 6.599 million local Muslim community. It is now the seventh-biggest group of the 13 local Muslim tribes. Islam is now the fastest-growing religion in the country. Muslims believe that the September 11 attacks on the United States, while raising suspicion against them, also piqued public curiosity about Islam. After 9-11, we suddenly had a shortage of reading materials. The attack cast Muslims in a bad light, but it also encouraged people to learn more about Islam, which is good, said Shariff Soilaman Gonzales. Gonzales acts as officer in charge of the International Worldwide Mission (iwwm) after the groups imamMahmoud Al-Ghafari, an Egyptianwas deported on suspicion of aiding local terrorists. Gonzales, interviewed in the iwwms rundown office in the heart of Quiapos Muslim quarter, said the age-old misconceptions about Islam and Muslims are now helping to attract the faithful. The crude explanation is that people are naturally curious about what is perceived bad or illegal. To the Muslims, its all part of a divine plan. Everything that happens or will happen in this world is the plan of Allah, Gonzales explained. The first Filipino reverts were the workers deployed in Middle Eastern countries, especially in Saudi Arabia, where sharia law is enforced. When they came back, they so impressed many with their zeal and piety that their family, relatives, friends and neighbors followed suit. Ahmed Santos took the shahada, the Islamic testimony of faith, while working in Riyadh in 1991. From a landed military and squarely Catholic family in Anda, Pangasinan, Santos is now president of the Balik Islam Unity Congress. My grandfather is a soldier and he taught me that Muslims would stab me in the back at the first opportunity. Now, I know that hes wrong, Santos said while sitting in a lotus position on the burgundy carpet of the air-conditioned mosque he built. The mosque occupies the second floor of the four-story building Santos constructed in suburban Cubao. The building is a block from the Nativity Parish Church where he was first married. Islam is heavy with divine predestination. Santos believes that his dreams of a crying Jesus Christ when he was younger indicated that he should revert to Islam. He reverted in 1990 while working in Saudi Arabia. While he led a comfortable and moneyed life before, Santos now faces constant surveillance by suspected intelligence officers and a daily struggle with finances. No regrets. Because this is the will of Allah. And the brothers are there. People see that, and that helps them revert, he said. Theres been no serious study on the state of mind of people who revert to Islam, but law-enforcement authorities lump them with Muslim radicals. If that line of thinking were followed, Balik Islam would share the psychological profile of the terrorists arrested since September 11. A paper prepared by Singapore authorities after the roundup last year of 31 suspected Jemaah Islamiah operatives describes the men as having average to superior intelligence but suffering from low self-esteem. The paper said membership in a secretive organization boosts the suspects personal image. These men fully understood that they were not dabbling in childish play, the document said. These men were not ignorant, destitute or disfranchised outcasts. The psychological profile made on the alleged Jemaah Islamiah operatives suggests that they are predisposed to indoctrination and actually crave for the control exercised by charismatic religious leaders. Zamzamin Amaptuan, chief of Office of Muslim Affairs, agreed that the reverts are prone to indoctrination to the deviant interpretation of Islam that those arrested for terrorism follow. Theyre more aggressive, but its very natural and human to be so engrossed in a faith that you recently accepted. In some way, this aggressiveness can be converted to something else, he said. Ampatuan continued, It can be taken advantage of by some people [because it makes them] more prone to conditioning and exploitation, since they dont fully understand. Santos, however, doesnt mind being lumped with so-called terror organizations. If being a fundamentalist or an extremist means following everything in the Koran, like praying five times a day or responding to the call for jihad [holy war], then Id prefer to be called an extremist or a fundamentalist rather than a nominal Muslim, he said. Nooh Caparino, the head of the Islamic Call and Guidance-Philippines dawah (propagation) program, observed that reverts to Islam are searching for spiritual fulfillment. Sometimes people transfer from one affiliation to another, usually from Christianity to another, and then when they encounter Islam, they stick there. Thats because its the complete religion, he said. Rivera was one of those butterflies. Born a Catholic, he was baptized in the Iglesia ni Cristos central church in the mid-1990s before reverting a few years later. Everybody has it in him to convert. The only blocking factor would be pride, Santos said. People who are too proud to give up materialism and too proud to take the persecution will not revert and they will not find peace and salvation. (Continued tomorrow) |
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Your efforts to save this forum as a social cause are in the same class as Michael Shivaro's lawyer's attempt to impose his idea of death with dignity. Just because you don't get your way with me and others you want mommy system administrator to kiss it and make it well, then force your view upon the world. You are going to need to grow up and live with differences of opinion my liberal friend.
Indeed. I agree. Other FReepers suspect that some of these individuals may be "agent provocateurs". I've never been one to buy into conspiracy theories...But reading some of the comments above I could almost believe that these were penned by leftists performing poorly played charactertures of "conservative" debate.
Most true conservatives that I know use emotions as a sort of moral compass. Their emotions generally direct them to the direction of "truth". However, once the direction of "truth" is discerned then logic takes "center stage" in any politcal or philosophical debate.
Many individuals in these threads seem to have completely taken leave of their reason and given full rein to their emotions in a manner that I usually associate with leftists...
You are not alone is this belief. I have thought this often. Some of the posts about carpet bombing Iraq and killing entire villages of Iraqis in reprisal for a GI killed are just so outrageous that I think they are trolls. But then you check the sign up date of some of these posters and they have been here for a year at least or more. Occasionally you catch a troll. But with so many Freepers acting as if they would have gleefully served in a mobile killing unit of the SS then I have to wonder.
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..... Militant Islam, or Islamism, political Islam, fundamentalist Islam is another such (totalitarian) movement, and it also has its origins in the 1920s. It is likely seen as an Islamic version of these totalitarian movements. It was not strong enough to take over a government until fifty years later in Iran in 1979.
At the heart of it lies the law of Islam, Sheriat. The idea that if you live by the law of the Sheriat in its exactness and if you apply it to all aspects of life you will then become rich and strong. My guess is that 10-15 % of Muslim populations around the world support militant Islam. The recent Turkish example would seem to confirm that. Though small in number they are very active, very devoted. The bad news is that 10-15% of a billion people is 100-150 million people. The good news is that it is still a relatively small minority. It is a global force, in addition to it, it has taken over several governments like mentioned. It is a central opposition force in such countries like Nigeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan. Perhaps most dismaying has been how only in the last five years or so it has become a very significant force in such huge and distant countries from the Middle East as Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. Between them they have more than 1/3 of Muslim world population and have become radicalized in recent years.
It is, of course, also present in the West. For West is attractive for the Islamists. They live around people affluent, law abiding, have respect for religion, who do not really understand militant Islam. So what one has seen throughout the West is the militant Islamic institutions that dominate. Who does the media turn to? Who does the White House invite? It is the representatives of militant Islam. The same takes place in Canada, Western Europe and to a certain extent in Latin America. They dominate the discussion of Islam. They also engage in fund rising and to some extent in controlling terrorist movements in the Middle East. I believe the internal threat of militant Islam is as great to us as Americans as the external threat. Hostile relations with the West have been there from the beginning. They only became important in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. At that point militant Islam in effect declared war on us. They see themselves as surrounded by the West, as defending themselves from the West, and they have been attacking us, in particular Americans. I count before Sept. 11, 800 fatalities in the course of militant Islamic attacks on Americans.
There is an ignorance of the ideological dimension that terrorism is the problem, not militant Islam. Militant Islam is deep, big, powerful, attractive. Officially we do not deal with that. We deal with Islamists. Yet beyond the violence lies ideas, to make people respond. Unless we deal with these ideas we cannot win. Also the policies have only somewhat changed. For example, while there are new regulations for immigration and that law enforcement can go into mosques, at the same time there is great hesitance for enforcing them. If one looks at something like airline security it is not a serious undertaking. Because it does not look for terrorists, does not look for militant Islamist. It looks for things, for guns, knives. This is not serious. I think if you ask the President what the goal of the war is, he will tell you and I will quote you ' we will continue until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.' I do not think that is a war goal. The war goal must be to defeat militant Islam.....
From Voice of Atatürk
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Islamism is the arch enemy of the human race today. It would behoove us to take Islamism at least as seriously as this author does and as the Turks do, who have been fighting these Islamist lunatics for eighty years now.
Exactly. Judging from the archaeological record, a genuine "revert" would worship something like this:
Actually, I think there's another reason. Christianity (thanks to Vatican II) seems to have become doctrine-free and has virtually no traditional public worship left. Islam is, of course, a fairly modern syncretist religion. But the destruction of Catholic tradition has left a massive void, particularly in traditionally Catholic peoples, and people will turn to anything rather than live with this hollowness at the center of their lives. Furthermore, Islamic missionary activity is extremely well funded, and is actively exploiting the weakness of modern Catholic Christianity.
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