Shun extremism, PH Muslims urged

COTABATO CITY - ThePhilippines’ Muslim leaders have separately called on their constituents to shun extremism and draw inspiration from the story of Abraham, whose life and struggle were commemorated Monday by the world’s close to two billion Islam followers on the occasion of Eidl Adha.Eidl Adha, one of the two Muslim non-working holidays observed in the Philippines, is the Feast of Sacrifice, when Islam followers fete Abraham’s success to God’s most difficult test to his faith, by asking him in a dream to sacrifice his first born. (The other non-working Muslim holiday in the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country, is Eidl Fitr, which marks the end of the month-long daily Ramadan fasting). In Lanao Sur, Governor Bai Soraya Alonto Adiong underscored education for the youth and parents as the key sustainable tool in efforts at sparing the generations of young people from the menace of illegal drugs.Alonto-Adiong said the provincial government heads a local inter-agency education campaign in support to the nation-wide war on illegal drugs, being pushed by the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).Maguindanao Governor Esmael Mangudadatu said most Muslims abhor violence, and urged worshippers in the provinces of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) to offer supplication during the Eidl Adha congregational prayers today, for the victims of the deadly September 2 Davao City bombing.Assemblyman Ziaur-Rahman Alonto Adiong of the ARMM’s Regional Legislative Assembly (ARMM-RLA) said Muslims should deeply reflect on the most beautiful story of sacrifice that the world could ever recount till the end of time.”The ARMM lawmaker appealed to his fellow Muslims to continue extending goodwill and friendship to Christians, who also believe in the Abrahamic tradition.”Abul Khayr Alonto, the newly appointed head of the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA), said Abraham or Nabi Ibrahim alayhisalaam has been looked up to by the Muslims as the leader of humankind, because he was addressed in the Qur’an as the Imam,” which means leader.”Following meetings with authorities, including Brig. Gen. Arnel Dela Vega, who heads the military’s Task Force Sulu, ARMM Vice-Governor Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman Jr. led the initial distribution of relief goods to families displaced by ongoing anti-terror operations in Patikul Sulu. Lucman is also the regional secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development in the ARMM.On September 5, convergent line agencies of the ARMM deployed an assessment team for the region’s Humanitarian Emergency Action and Response Team (HEART) to obtain, first-hand, the condition of Sulu residents many of them Muslims affected by renewed clashes in the heightened campaign against the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), according to Ramil Masukat, ad-hoc head of the ARMM-Heart.Muslim leaders have also condemned the ASG for beheading its helpless captives, purportedly carried in the name of Islamic cause.Maguindanao Assemblyman Khadafeh Mangudadatu wrote the resolution of the ARMM-RLA, condemning the Davao blast and its perpetrators.Bangsamoro Grand Mufti Abu Huraira Udasan said by performing hajj rituals, Muslims retell to their families and the world the great sacrifice and struggle of Nabi Ibrahim (alaihisalaam), as Abraham is addressed in the Qur’an.Udasan, who had studied comparative Abrahamic religions in Jerusalem, said Muslims and non-Muslims should bear the lessons of Abraham’s story of faith tested in the greatest sacrifice told in a heavenly edict to take the life of his own child—and to realize that God, after all, holds the human life so dear.Scholars and students of comparative religions have taken significant notes on the supposed harmony of the Christian and Muslim Scriptures in the hajj rituals. Respect for women For instance, a ritual called Sa’e ,” a seven-round jog-run to-and-fro the ancient Hills of Safa and Marwa (Kadesh and Bered in the Bible), is actually a reenactment by Muslims (men, women, young and old) of the struggle of the biblical Hagar, the first woman to receive Divine Inspiration, when she delivered Ishmael. (Genesis 16: 11-14)Governor Alonto-Adiong said Sa’e exemplified how Muslims held women in high regard, because hajj cannot be completed without doing that act of paying tribute to Hagar, the woman saved from persecution by a heavenly dialogue.”Aside from slaughtering sacrificial lambs, millions of Muslims performing the hajj pilgrimage reenact rituals or deeds attributed to Abraham or Nabi Ibrahim (alaihisalaam), as his story of great leadership and love of family is told in the Bible (Genesis 22:12-19), and also in the Qur’an (2:124 15:53, and 37and 101-107).But followers of Abrahamic religions also speak of differences in retelling the patriarch’s storyand The Muslims believe that Ishmael was the first born, whom God sought to Ibrahim for a sacrifice, in accordance with the Hebrew tradition. The Christians believe it was Isaac, who was up for sacrifice by Abraham, and it was with Isaac that God made His Covenant. Relevant sites This writerhas twice joined the pool of international coverage of the tour of hajjand First, in 1999 by this correspondent, and the second in 2004 by Allan A. Nawal, assistant Mindanao bureau chief—both on invitation of the Saudi Arabia Ambassador, through the Embassy’s Cultural Attaché.The tour of hajj coverage included hallowed grounds in Makkah, Mina, and the tent city of Arafah. The tour’s second leg at Madina included Masjidil Nabawi (the Second Holy Mosque after Makkah’s Masjidil Haram), Masjidil Qiblatain, and the Battle Ground of Uhud, where Muhammad decreed his government’s rules on war, and policy towards the Christians.Essentially, the Prophet Muhammad (saw) fought two major wars as head of stateand 1) in Uhud to quell a rebellion organized by some Christians and Jews, and 2) in Bad’r near Makkah, where his army of 300 men was waylaid by a large force of pagan Arabs, numbering 10 times over and led by his own uncle Abu Jah’l, taking the side of Abu Sufian, who controlled vast economic domain and a reigning political empire of the old Syria and Hijaz (the ancient name of Saudi Arabia).But things have apparently been perverted by modern-day extremism.According to Phil Gilmour, an international law expert, Muhammad ordered his army not to take control of the spoils of war” in Uhud, because it was a case of an internal conflict with an inferior force, not representing a state. In the second war, Muhammad defined and took over administration of the spoils of war” from the losing Umayyad Dynasty, since it was a nation-to-nation conflict.Muhammad made truce with Christians and Jews in Madina and granted amnesty to prisoners of war among combatants, who were given two optionsand 1) to immerse in the community as civilians and swear allegiance to the government or 2) to leave all the territorial jurisdiction of the government, by paying their way through freedom.Surviving documents bore no reference of the word unbeliever” to either the Christians or the Jews. This apparently took cues from the Qur’an in which the word unbeliever” (in plural form) is found among verses revealed in Makkah (i.e. called Makkiah), where there were no Christians and Jews, and not in those revealed in Madina (called Madania) which was dwelled by Christians and Jews.One such document is a qanun or code, defining the rights of Christians under a Muslim government. The qanun , believed written in 620, is better known as The Letter of Muhammad to the Christian Monks of the Monastery of St. Catherine.”This made scholars believe that Muhammad’s dealing with the Christians and the Jews was rather moderate than harsh cordial than being antagonistic, since the multi-ethnic Madina community elected him to the governing council, which he eventually headed on nomination and confidence votes of its majority non-Muslim members. Spare civilians, synagogues In Uhud, Muhammad decreed a military rule to spare in the conflict the civilians, the young and old, the women, the leaders of other religions, the synagogues, household properties, the crops and even the trees.Indeed, Masjidil Qiblatain, the first mosque Muhammad built in Madina was oriented toward the direction of Jerusalem. It was also there where Muhammad received God’s Edict for Muslims to instead face Mecca in prayers.According to Pakistani scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali, an early English translator of the Qur’an, the knights of Jah’l were wearing armored vests and metal headgears. Amid the acts of blade confrontation, God sent a revelation that would spell the defeat of that formidable force, thusand Then, smite by the neck and smite by the finger,” referring to God’s Inspiration upon the Angels,” as these parts of the human body were the only ones unshielded by metal.” Neither Sufian nor Jah’l was a Christian or a Jew, but their tribe was once described as unbelieving” in a narration attributed to a close companion of the prophet.Over the years, the hajj pilgrimage has been marred by sufferings, anywhere from epidemics to tragedy besetting the pilgrims. In 1946, dozens of Filipino pilgrims died on board steamship MV Cristobal, in ports-of-call (terminating in Jeddah), and in Mecca. In recent batches, hundreds of pilgrims were also killed either in a tunnel cave-in, or were pinned to the ground by a tower crane collapse. Anyone who dies in the journey is considered a martyr. Nash B. Maulana