Islamic converts face suspicion in Philippines
11 May 2005
Source: Reuters
By Stuart Grudgings
BAGUIO, Philippines, May 11 (Reuters) - Brother Isa says he found the path to Islam in the Bible.
"John chapter eight, verse 32 -- Jesus said seek the truth and the truth shall make you free," the wiry 50-year-old explained at a mosque in the northern Philippine city of Baguio.
"So I kept on asking and I came to Islam, and I was able to prove that the doctrines of Christianity were not true."
Living in Saudi Arabia for a decade helped shake the electrician's faith in Christianity and convince him that Islam was calling.
And so Isa joined the growing ranks of Islamic converts in Asia's largest Catholic country, inadvertently adding to what the government now regards as one of its biggest security headaches.
Fears of a potential enemy within have been fanned by terror attacks involving Islamic converts apparently working in tandem with the Abu Sayyaf Muslim rebel group.
For converts, known as "Balik-Islam" (returnees to Islam), that increasingly means living under a cloud of suspicion in a mostly Roman Catholic country where prejudice against Muslims has been ingrained by conflict in southern Mindanao and Sulu.
Converts to Islam are thought to number more than 100,000, adding to around six million born Muslims, mostly in Mindanao.
Often drawn to Islam after stints working in the Middle East, among the millions of overseas Filipino workers, they return to find they are the subject of prejudices they once held.
"Many people say to me: before I embraced Islam, I hated Muslims," laughed Bedejim Abdullah, an imam at Baguio's Al Maarif mosque and teaching centre, who estimates that around seven people convert to Islam every month in the city.
"I would say there are more people coming now; it's more intense."
THE USUAL SUSPECTS
Perched high in the Cordillera mountains, Baguio seems a world away from the troubles in the southern jungles. But the Al Maarif centre has not escaped the fallout.
In March 2004, shortly after a bomb sank a ferry near Manila in the country's worst terror attack, a Russian Muslim who occasionally taught at the mosque was bundled into a car by plain-clothes police as he strolled home from Friday prayers.
The man, Adis Khairoulline, was handcuffed, blindfolded and taken to police headquarters in Manila for interrogation, according to people at the mosque.
He was released two weeks later, but still faces charges of training militants at the centre, which a state prosecutor said in a report "directly provides financial support to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and other Islamic extremist groups".
The MILF is the country's largest Muslim rebel group.
To the astonishment of Benny Bomogao, a Muslim lawyer who campaigned for Khairoulline's release, the charge sheet also accused the centre of using "weapons or makeshift weapons intended to cause mass destruction".
"The only problem here is that the government is paranoid about those who converted," said Bomogao.
"We told them to come and visit, don't brand this school as a school for terrorists."
Attitudes to Muslims in the Philippines are shaped by the southern troubles, which still grind on four centuries after the Spanish conquistadors tried and largely failed to conquer the Moro people, as the Muslims in the south are known.
But security officials and analysts say there is real evidence that extremist groups are having success in exploiting the zeal of fresh converts.
"They (converts) have a role in most everything that is happening these days," said Zachary Abuza, an expert in Southeast Asian Islamic militancy at Boston's Simmons College.
That is a headache for the government because it allows groups like the Abu Sayyaf and regional terror network Jemaah Islamiah to expand their attack capabilities in Manila and other major centres with less chance of being detected.
SECURITY HEADACHE
Police believe a Balik Islam, Redendo Dellosa, worked with the Abu Sayyaf to carry out the February 2004 bomb attack on Superferry 14 that killed 117 people.
More recently, police charged a convert with carrying out a bomb attack on a bus in Manila, one of three Valentine's Day bombings claimed by Abu Sayyaf that killed 13 people.
A link has even been made with al Qaeda.
Officials say the Rajah Solaiman group of militant converts, broken up by police in 2002, grew out of a network of Islamic charities set up by Muhammed Jamal Khalifah, Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law who lived in the Philippines from 1986 to 1994.
Abuza said that diplomatic pressure from Saudi Arabia meant that hardly any of the charities, most of which actively support Balik-Islam groups, had been shut down.
"Khalifah's network is still up and running," he said.
"Many charities/foundations simply changed their names; but in essence what he managed to put together is still in current operation."
Although there is growing evidence of links between Balik-Islam and militancy, government attempts to crack down have often appeared heavy handed.
In January, police trumpeted the arrest of 16 suspected militants, saying they had foiled plans for a suicide attack by a group of converts on a crowded Catholic festival in Manila.
Fourteen were released quietly due to lack of evidence and the other two let out on bail.
Yusuf Ledesma, spokesman for the Balik-Islam Unity Congress, said he knew of around 15 Muslims, mostly converts, who had been picked up by police and taken away for interrogation.
Most had been released without charge and several told him they had been tortured while in custody, he said.
"I cannot vouch for guilt or non-guilt of different people," said Ledesma.
"All I'm saying is ... that we have to respect their human rights under the constitution."