Terrorism in perspective

International terrorists are a recent problem. From a local point of view, the Philippines attained international notoriety when the Abu Sayyaf kidnapped foreigners in Malaysia. Then, terrorism became the Number One World Problem after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York. The German Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder defined the problem well when he said, "This barbarian terrorism is directed against everything that holds the innermost core of our world together – namely, respect for human life and human dignity, the values of freedom, tolerance, democracy and peaceful conciliation of interests."

To understand terrorism in Basilan and Sulu, one has to look at the problem in historical perspective. Christianity is older than Islam. But not in the Philippines. Here, Islam antedated Christianity.

From an international point of view, the current terrorism is a reaction to the Persian Gulf War, the establishment of Israel, which is the cause of the unending Israeli-Palestinian war. But to really understand the problem, one has to go back to the seventh century. That is when the prophet Muhammad died and Arab warriors conquered Asia, North Africa and parts of Europe – including Spain. Then the Crusades began in the late Middle Ages to secure the right of Christian pilgrims to visit the Holy Sepulchre and recover the Holy Land, meaning Palestine, because it was the place where Christ was born, preached and died. Mecca is the Mohammeddan Holy Land because Mohammed was born there. There were no less than eight Crusades and France, England, Flanders, Spain and Scotland took part in them. The first was proclaimed by Urban II in 1095. The last ended in 1272. Islam held on in Spain for centuries till driven out at the end of the 15th century.

The Muslim Ottoman Empire once stretched from the Middle East to Indonesia. Today, there are 225 million Muslims in the Middle East but more than a billion in Asia. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world — 200 million people. So the locus of Islam is not the Middle East, it is right in Southeast Asia. It is also good to note that China, India and even the Soviet Union have notable Muslim populations.

There is no instant or short-term solution to the ongoing international terrorist problem. It will take more than the military defeat of the Abu Sayyafs, who are not fighting for any Islamic cause, but are just plain mercenaries. The terrorists, ironically enough, are the biggest barrier to the war against poverty. The international war against the present terrorists is a modern crusade. The only difference is that the old Crusade stood for the Cross; the current one is for freedom and democracy.