Islamic State in Mindanao?

Gratitude and ignorance CTALK
By Cito Beltran
(The Philippine Star)
Updated October 23, 2009 12:00 AM

(W)hen the IED (improvised explosive device) bombing happened, the Americans got blamed for getting killed while on the way to help construct a school building.

Because of our island mentality our politicians were not aware that in the same month there was a simultaneous number of IED related attacks globally. That one incident that killed 2 US soldiers and a Filipino Marine was just a tiny bead in a global string of attacks that happened in the same period.

The terrorists in Mindanao have a clear agenda that the Nationalists in Metro Manila take for granted because it’s not happening in their backyard. The terrorists are not waging a war against US troops or our AFP per se. The battle is between education and ignorance.

The terrorists don’t want Filipino education, they want Islamic education. Because of this, the battle between education and ignorance is actually a “religious war”. This is the simple reason why the terrorists target teachers, principals, priests, pastors and missionary workers.

About seven years ago, I received a tip that a Muslim youth group in UP Diliman had been infiltrated by a terrorist. That small tip yielded information that a Middle Eastern individual had built up a foundation and a network of contacts that would build up “Islamic schools” all over Mindanao.

The school however turned out to be a recruitment machinery for impoverished young men who were led to convert from Catholics to Muslims which according to the claims of the “Middle Eastern operative” reached as much as one million converts over the years.

The “plan” was to build up an “Islamic population” so the Philippines could not prevent the ultimate creation of an “Islamic state” that would complete the chain in the region.

That operative eventually graduated from recruitment to direct terrorist activities or funding such operations. He was tracked down in another continent where government troopers literally flattened the house with high caliber automatic gunfire.

That however will not stop the terrorists from kidnapping priests, it will not stop them from abducting women and children, nor will it stop them from taking people who are trying to help people regardless of race, religion, or sex.

The only thing that will stop terrorists is a determined force with a just cause. Right now, the only people who have consistently stopped that determined force and subverted that just cause are politicians and Metro Manila Nationalists with good intentions with an address in hell.

Unfortunately, the kidnappers, the terrorists, the victims, the soldiers of the AFP and even the US troops have lived, fought, bled, and have died in Mindanao.

Meanwhile the critics, the politicians and the so-called nationalists all live in comfort here in Metro Manila.