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 Sayyaf’s 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 doesn’t miss his fast life as a reporter and its perks—booze, payola and girls.
“Before I became a Muslim, the focus was on money, how to get ahead in life. But now, I ask myself, ‘What’s all that for? Isn’t salvation what’s 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 group’s imam—Mahmoud Al-Ghafari, an Egyptian—was deported on suspicion of aiding local terrorists.
Gonzales, interviewed in the iwwm’s rundown office in the heart of Quiapo’s 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, it’s 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 shari’a 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 he’s 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.
There’s 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.
“They’re more aggressive, but it’s 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 don’t fully understand.”
Santos, however, doesn’t 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 I’d 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’ da’wah (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. That’s because it’s the complete religion,” he said.
Rivera was one of those butterflies. Born a Catholic, he was baptized in the Iglesia ni Cristo’s 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)