Why did GMA try to scuttle our military ‘victory’ in Mindanao?

This goes under the category of sanamagan. Would you believe? President Macapagal-Arroyo, who keeps on talking about a "strong Republic", reportedly tried to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Pikit, North Cotabato, and Paglungan, Maguindanao, by "ordering" our Army battalions and Marine units to stop their offensive against attacking rebels of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Fortunately "communications" must have been bad, because our military kept on fighting, killing at least 52 – yes, fifty-two – MILF insurgents and Pentagon kidnap-gang members, in their 12-hour bombardment. Will our soldiers and marines now be scolded by Her Majesty GMA, their commander-in-chief, for not hearing her "commands" in time to save those 52 poor, "innocent" rebel brigands and kidnapper-desperados? Give us a break, Madam President: We’re all trying to help you succeed in the last 16 months of your Presidency, but you keep on listening to the wrong people (was one of them the usual guy, Jess Dureza, or another one Norbert Gonzales?) – the charter members of the Surrender Gang.

To these fellows, the only way to forge "peace" in Mindanao is for the GRP (their cute term for "Government of the Republic of the Philippines") to give in to those peace-loving jihadis of the MILF and other Moro insurgent movements.

The lame reason trotted out by Malacañang? What I heard yesterday afternoon made me want to throw up. It was "in deference to the end of the Hajj", the holy Muslim pilgrimage to Makkah – which, I believe, falls on Friday.

The Hajj officially began last Sunday, and last Monday saw more than two million Muslim pilgrims – 1.4 million of them from 70 foreign countries – at the plain of Arafat, performing the wuquf, "the standing", and gathering at the Mount of Mercy, where Muhammad their Prophet had delivered his "unforgettable farewell sermon".

But what most of them said to interviewing CNN and BBC reporters included no words of "mercy" for the American and Jewish infidels who’re threatening their fellow-Muslim Saddam. They declared they were praying that Allah make the Iraqis "victorious" over the vicious Americans and Zionists. What fitting pious sentiments, indeed, for the celebration of Eid-al-Adha, the "Feast of the Sacrifice".

But what does the holy Hajj have to do with those rebels and kidnappers in Mindanao, who attack and savage peaceful communities and defy our laws and our government? Madam President: There you go again!

Appeasement is not peace. It’s surrender. Why should our soldiers and our police constables then fight on? Why do they fight and die – for nothing? When they loss, they’re beheaded. When they’re winning, they’re told to stop by their President and commander-in-chief.

All in the tattered name of the "peace process"!

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Last September in Saudi Arabia, I saw the $5-billion King Abdul Aziz International Airport near Jeddah, which covers an area of about 100 square kilometers – an area larger than the combined international airports of JFK (New York), O’Hare (Chicago), and Charles de Gaulle (Roissy) in Paris.

The most striking feature of this oil-revenue-built super-airport was the new Hajj terminal, composed of two immense tented halls – designed to approximate the great tented city of "Arafat" where the pilgrims gather at the high-point of the Hajj ceremonies.

Our Saudi hosts told us that a fully-loaded jumbo jet could land every five minutes there, enabling Hajj officials to process some 5,000 pilgrims per hour, or the close to one million expected to come by air this season.

Others come by road or by sea. (In the 19th century, the Hajj journey took months, with pilgrims travelling by camel caravan from three main points of origin: Cairo, Baghdad, and Istanbul via Damascus, Syria.)

The more than two million who gathered this year were the normal number of pilgrims, with the usual percentage of those from overseas perhaps only slightly altered. Traditionally, 50 percent come from the Arab world, 35 percent from Asia, 10 percent from sub-Saharan Africa and 5 percent from Europe and the Americas (such as from the US, Canada, and South America).

Christians are forbidden to enter Makkah (Mecca), and those Europeans or "Caucasian" Americans who ever visited there were either Muslims, converts to Islam, or had "disguised" themselves as Muslims. As a Christian, I would never have been allowed into Makkah. Indeed, even though infidels are allowed to go into the outlying areas of Medina, the other Holy City, guys like myself are not permitted into the inner city.

Neither are our more than 875,000 OFWs working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia permitted to bring in rosaries, crucifixes, Bibles, religious "proselytizing" material of any kind (to do so constitutes a crime, and compliance with this and other strictures is enforced by the zealous muttawahs or religious police).

Indeed, it was only a couple of days ago that I discovered the beautiful CNN newscaster and quondam anchor-woman, Hala Gorani, who is blonde, hazel-eyed, and very European in manner and speech, was a Muslim. This is because she was the one reporting for CNN from Makkah, on a first-person basis.

This is not to say that a great many Arabs are not blonde. You’ll find them blonde, as well as blue, grey or green-eyed in many places, or red-haired. They could look anything from Frankish (to invoke the old term) to Italian. Others would be dead-ringers for Indians and Pakistanis. So much for stereotypes.

* * *

It's well-known that for 14 centuries, countless millions of men and women from all over have made this pilgrimage to Makkah, revered as the birthplace of Islam. The Hajj is one of the five so-called rukns or "pillars" of Islam, the central religious duties of the believer.

The Hajj is even supposed to be pre-Islamic, since Muslims themselves trace the origins of the "divinely prescribed pilgrimage" to the Prophet Abraham or Ibrahim, as he is known in Arabic. (Abraham, if you’ll recall, is the Father of both the Arab and Jewish nations. The Jews were descended from Abraham’s wife, Sara. The Arabs were descended from Abraham’s other woman – Hagar or Hajar the maid. Hence, contrary to widespread misconception, both are Semites.)

During the years I’ve intermittently reported on and travelled through the Middle East, the similarity between Arabs and Jews (forgive me for the heretical thought!) has always struck me.

In any event, according to the Prophet Muhammad’s account in the Qur’an, it was Abraham who, together with his son by Hagar, Ismael (usually spelled "Ismail") who built the Ka’bah, "the House of God", the focal point towards which Muslims turn to pray five times every day.

It was Abraham, known as Khalil Allah ("friend of God"), who is said to have established the rituals of the Hajj, which recall events or practices in his life and that of Hagar and their son Ismail.

The Prophet Muhammad, after he received the "divine call", purified the Hajj from the pagan practices which had polluted it to the original "purity" of its observance. Thus, to make a Hajj or pilgrimage to Makkah is a once-in-a-lifetime obligation upon male and female adults, whose health and means allow it. As the Qur’an enjoins: "those who can make their way there."

The Hajj can be performed only during the eighth, ninth, and tenth days of Zul Hijjah, the 12th month of the lunar Muslim calendar. The most spectacular portion of it, as you’ve probably seen in countless photographs and documentary films in the past, is the tawaf, the seven-fold circling of the Ka’bah, with a prayer recited during each circuit. This circumnabulation of the Ka’bah, "the symbol of God’s Oneness", by huge crowds of white ihram-clothed devotees implies that all human activity must have God at its center. It is also described as symbolizing the unity of God and man.

The ritual prayer for each circuit contains the plea: "Lord God, from such a distant land have I come unto Thee . . . Grant me shelter under Thy throne."

No shelter for the Infidel, though. The Muslims call their community, the "House of God". Do you know what they’ve traditionally, in Arabic, called Christians? "The House of War". I kid thee not.

I think GMA, being a scholar, you might already know that. So be forewarned.

Last year, I read a fascinating book by M.J. Akbar named The Shade of Swords. (Routledge publishing, London and New York, 2002). On its last page, 213, he quoted an interview by John F. Burns, who had earlier done a breakthrough exposé on the cruel ethnic-cleansing by Serbs of Bosnian-Muslims, winning himself the January 2002 Pulitzer Prize. New York Timesman Burns had gone to Azhakhel Bala in Pakistan where he interviewed several former Taliban militants, like Ijaz Khan Hussein.

Khan, a college-trained pharmacist, had joined the jihad or Holy War, like thousands of Pakistanis who crossed into Afghanistan. He had operated near Kabul. Of the 43 volunteers who had boarded a truck with him to travel to Afghanistan, 41 had been killed in their pursuit of jihad.

"Now, with the Taliban and al-Qaeda routed." Burns inquired, "had Mr. Khan and other militants finished with jihad?"

"Mr. Khan, at least, said he had not."

" ‘We went to the jihad filled with joy, and I would go again tomorrow,’ he said. ‘If Allah had chosen me to die, I would have been in Paradise, eating honey and watermelons and grapes, and resting with beautiful virgins, just as it is promised in the Qur’an. Instead my fate was to remain amid the unhappiness here on earth.’ "

There you are.

"The jihad," author Akbar concluded, "goes on."

A government official told me yesterday that the deep-penetration assets their agency had in the field have reported that hundreds of mujahideen who are "sleepers" here are preparing to hit selected targets when (not "if"?) the US attacks Baghdad.

My reaction to that is: They’ve been bombing GenSan, Zamboanga, blowing up a bus in Quezon Ciy, attacking malls, bus stations, and other targets already. So what’s new? Another wave of attacks, of course. Even if they didn’t have GMA or George "Dubya" Bush to blame, they’d attack anyway.

The worst response to such bombastic threats would be appeasement. It doesn’t work. It has never worked.

Madam President: Be strong, please, for your "strong Republic". Spineless cowards did not win our freedom. Spinelessness will not defend it.