Your Brother's Keeper

WHEN God asked Cain where his brother was, the Creator did so not
because he lacked omniscience but instead out of a divine sense of due
process—he wanted Cain to have a chance to admit his murder of Abel and
confess his guilt. Unfortunately, instead of asking God’s mercy for his
wrongful act, Cain retorts, in a telling display of selfishness, “Am I
my brother’s keeper?” As the Torah teaches us, Cain was subsequently
condemned by God because he failed to live by the underlying message of
the great religions that indeed we are our brother’s keeper. The great
yardstick of the monotheistic faiths, upon which human action is
judged, is the action’s impact not only upon the doer but, equally
importantly, upon others. Put another way, personal salvation is deeply
intertwined with the salvation of the other.

Fast forward a
couple of eons and you find yourself asking a panel of experts a
question on the marginalization of minority Muslims in the Philippines
and the need for a constitutional mechanism on how to address minority
concerns within a democratic system that valuesmajoritarianism. Instead of obtaining an insightful answer, you get a plain denial that the Moros are, in any way, marginalized. Worse, all the while Moros were referred to as “Muslim brothers.”

The denial of Moro marginalization
reveals the predicament of “Muslim brothers” who must survive within a
culture of discrimination so deeply ingrained and historically enmeshed
that it operates automatically. This is prejudice of the most insidious
kind and its apex is the denial that marginalization and discrimination
even exist.

This kind of intolerance has an American parallel:
African Americans who experienced similar bigotry opine that
discrimination faced by blacks in the United States is, in a sense,
more difficult to combat compared to thepre -Brown v. Board of
Education context (read: American apartheid) because the structures and
systems that engender discrimination are now implicit instead of
explicit. Intolerance has learned the art of subtlety.

Despite
the denial, discrimination against Muslim Filipinos does not only exist
but also remains a pervasive force in Philippine society. In fact, the
starkest face of Moro discrimination is that the lowest levels of
literacy and income percapita in the Philippines are in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM
). This is the undeniable reality of prejudice against Muslim
Filipinos. The mundane aspects of bigotry, among others, are the
stereotyping ofMoros as terrorists or as a people who are violent, uneducated, and misogynistic; the refusal of cab drivers to take on hijab or veil-wearing Moro women as passengers; and the harassment of Muslim passengers at airports.

It
is this discrimination that breeds the social unrest in Mindanao and
fuels the calls for a separate Moro State. Mindanao, the country’s
latent agricultural, mineral and economic powerhouse, will remain
perpetually underutilized and our nation will never reach its full
potential for development unless peace is obtained in the region. But
unless this intolerance is addressed and overcome, Mindanao will
forever be embroiled in conflict.

So we are back to Cain and
Abel. The peace and development of this country is inherently
intertwined with building harmony and prosperity in the Muslim areas.
Indeed, until and unless there is an admission that the problem of
discrimination againstMoros exists and concrete steps are undertaken to
address the social, legal and economic marginalization of Muslim
Filipinos, this nation will never achieve the level of development and
prosperity that its people, both Muslim and Christian, deserve. Truly,
we are our brother’s keeper.