Misuari-led ARMM fails to harness unique educational system

COTABATO CITY — Had education officials of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao only harnessed the ARMM government’s unique Madaris educational system, the region could have long been a bastion of peace, without nagging security problems to worry about.

Under the Organic Act for Muslim Mindanao, the regional government is supposed to promote religious and cultural solidarity among the region’s grassroots communities through the preservation of religious and traditional means of peace-building.

In 1992, the Egyptian government deployed 40 volunteer Islamic theologians to the ARMM, through the efforts of then ARMM Gov. Zacaria Candao, as part of the initiative to advance peace education in the region’s component-provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.

The ARMM’s second elected governor, Lininding Pangandaman, created in 1994 the Bureau of Madaris Education to enhance the region’s Islamic peace education thrusts.

But what Candao and Panga-ndaman had pioneered failed to fully take off under the administration of ARMM Gov. Nur Misuari.

Not much has been reported by the ARMM’s Bureau of Public Information about the Madaris education thrusts of the Misuari administration.

The whereabouts of most of the 40 Egyptian missionaries could not even be traced. Some of them, according to sources from the ARMM government, have returned to their country for lack of support from the regional government to sustain their peace education activities in the region.

For the Social Fund for the Special Zone of Peace and Development, (SZOPAD-SF), which has carried out small foreign-funded infrastructure projects for poor Muslim areas in the region, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Since 1998, in a bid to jump-start the region’s Madaris education, which is partly integrated into the regional curriculum, the SZOPAD-SF has built 167 Madrasah classrooms, half of them in remote areas of the ARMM.

Edward Lim, executive director of SZOPAD-SF, said they have poured about P43 million worth of grants from the World Bank and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), in the continuing construction of Madrasah schools in areas covered by the Sept. 2, 1996 peace pact between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front.

"It is our fervent hope that these classrooms would serve as a vehicle for the propagation of peace and sustainable development not just in the ARMM but throughout Mindanao," Lim said.

Hadji Abdul Ahmad, a Maguindanaoan ustadz who got training abroad, said the Madaris educational system is the best way of promoting peace in the troubled areas of the ARMM.

"If only we can maximize our teaching of peace education using the Holy Qur’an as our sole teaching reference, we can help minimize family feuds among our people, resolve decades-old conflicts involving our leaders, and perhaps eliminate banditry and lawlessness," Ahmad said.

Kusin Macarimbang, also a preacher, said they are convinced that the present ARMM administration is not giving enough attention to the strengthening of the Madaris educational system.

Senior Superintendent Omar Ali, information chief of the ARMM police, said traditional ways of resolving conflicts and crimes have so far been the most reliable approaches in maintaining peace and order in the region.

"We have records to prove this. Religious leaders and Muslim missionaries have been very efficient in helping reconcile warring groups, in working out the surrender of criminals and even in defusing tension in areas where there are hostilities between the military and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front," Ali said.

Since last year alone, he said the provincial police have reported the resolution of 146 crimes and 28 feuds among Muslim families through the help of influential people involved in the Madaris educational system.