The US cannot make sweeping unsupported conclusions about us

The US State Department, in a report on the state of religious freedom in the Philippines released last September 15, concludes that "discrimination against Muslims by Christians has resulted in the persistence of conflict in certain provinces" in the archipelago.

First of all, the United States has no right to pass judgment on Philippine affairs. More so if the basis for its conclusions stems from the observations of a few armchair diplomats whose brief stint in the country does not make for instant expertise.

And how strange that a report can be proposed so conclusively by a country that has never understood Islam. It is precisely this very same self-righteous and all-knowing attitude that has placed the United States right smack in the crosshairs of global Muslim hatred and anger.

Time and again, but more increasingly of late, the United States as been proven wrong on many issues and concerns involving Muslims. September 11 was born of the combined failure of its homegrown intelligence, and to understand and then to anticipate the tenacity of its Muslim foes.

Its disastrous and continuing tragic involvement in Iraq is a product of a wily disregard for truth and a shocking willingness to manufacture evidence in pursuit of an ill-advised foreign policy dictated by no greater impetus than a belief in its physical might to solve its problems.

The Philippines, while continuing to consider itself a strong ally of the United States, for obvious reasons, ought to make a formal protest against the off-the-mark conclusions proposed in its State Department report.

That "discrimination against Muslims by Christians has resulted in the persistence of conflict in certain provinces" is simply not true. It is an assertion that is neither supported by fact nor deemed plausible by logic.

While there is indeed a persistence of conflict in the south, religious discrimination has got nothing to do with it. Christians are a minority in the south. It makes for pretty poor thinking for them to discriminate against a Muslim majority backed by heavily-armed militias.

Actually, it is surprising for the United States, especially at this time, to start mouthing this line about discrimination against Muslims when this is exactly the same line being mouthed by many Muslims in criticizing the US. So widespread is Muslim hatred for America that there is hardly anything the US can ever do without it provoking some incendiary Muslim reaction. It is the current thinking among Muslim hardliners that there is a crusade of discrimination against it waged by the US and the West.

Of course this resentful feeling, seeming to border on paranoia is clearly a throwback to historic conflicts that have refused to die in Muslim hearts and sensibilities. Terminologies in Muslim rhetoric such as crusaders and infidels are a dead giveaway to these resentments.

In the Philippine Muslim south, it is the Christians who must tiptoe for their lives. There is none of the Christian discrimination against Muslims that the US is talking about, not even if, for the sake of the argument, the proposition is expanded to apply nationwide.

There is no discrimination against Muslims anywhere in the Philippines. Or at the very least, not by Christians. If Muslims discriminate against each other, that is a different matter altogether and is no longer in context of this discussion.

This is not to say, however, that discrimination cannot be easily invoked by any Muslim, perhaps out of old habits that die hard. But this is not and cannot be supported by fact. It is an invocation that does not exist. And the US should have known better than to believe that.