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Minority Care International Students’ Associations (MCISA) hosted a weekly students’ study forum about the BBL to apprise the students on the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) on May13, 2016. Mohagher Iqbal, the Chairperson of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s (MLIF) Peace Panel, gave updates, talked about issues and concerns, and answered questions about the MLIF perspective on the Bangsamoro Basic Law. The discussion was centered on the BBL and the MILF’s next step toward the BBL Iqbal, along with the Minority Care International’s Dr. Aland Mizell, and Dr. Norodin Salam of the Director of the Peace Center at the Cotabato City State Polytechnic College in Mindanao, Philippines and the Dean of its College of Business and Public Administration headed the event. Students from different universities, such as Ateneo De Davao (ADDU), the University of Mindanao (UM), the University of South Eastern Philippines (USEP), the University of Immaculate Conception (UIC), Holy Cross of Davao College, Rizal Memorial College, and several others attended the event. The issues discussed were about the ongoing process for peace in Mindanao specifically in the Bangsamoro region, Iqbal’s view on the Mamasapano incident, the President Elect Rodrigo Duterte’s stand on the BBL, and the latest progress of the MILF in achieving peace. In terms of Iqbal’s views on the Mamasapano incident, he believes it was set up by the Philippine government to make Muslims look bad; he thinks they were the victims. The Mamasapano incident was not the only reason that could cause the Congress not to pass the BBL, but it is one of the reasons because Filipino people could lose trust. He also thinks the people who do not agree with peace gave money and lobbied against the BBL.  Continue reading →

We will not have peace nor will we defeat violence in the Philippines unless we make massive changes. We have to keep in mind that no one is born a terrorist or a member of New People’s Army (NPA), Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), and no one is born innately good either. We are all consequences of our heredity, our environment, and the choices we make. Therefore, the government, with its purpose of ensuring liberty and the rights of its citizens, has to figure out the root causes of the problems and to address the grievances of victims. The President’s priority is to shore up the safety of the all the Philippines and to stabilize every corner of the country, so that Filipinos and international visitors alike can have freedom of movement in all zones. The state holds the monopoly on law, power, and order. It will be the duty of President-Elect Duterte to provide security and protection to all the Philippines, by negotiating and making peace with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the NPA. To do so, it will be useful to understand their point of view, because negotiations have thus far been unsuccessful due to human rights violations on both the government’s side and the guerilla’s side as well as due to internal disputes. Continue reading →

The World Humanitarian Summit was hosted in Istanbul in an attempt to tackle what the United Nations has described as the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II. An estimated 125 million people worldwide need humanitarian assistance. The summit was certainly an important event in the way that it collectively addressed the challenge facing humanity. The reason Turkey was selected to host this summit is that as a result of its neighbor’s devolution, Turkey has become one of the largest donor countries in the world, led only by the United States and the United Kingdom. The World Humanitarian Summit was a way for the UN General Secretary to acknowledge this and to encourage other countries to be generous like Turkey. Furthermore, the Secretary General, who himself was displaced during the Korean War, wanted alternative voices to emerge.A lot of the funds allocated for humanitarian and developmental goals go into administrative costs, and Turkey has objected to this process, operating its system outside the established mechanism. Turkey ranks twenty-fifth in contributing to the UN budget; instead, it prefers to follow its own way using the full-fledged agency called TIKA, the Turkish Cooperation and Development Agency. This was some kind of Islamic NGS that has given assistance to Syria, to Typhoon Haiyan victims in the Philippines, to Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar, and largely to Palestinian development projects. TIKA predominately helps Muslims countries hoping to become the leader of the Muslim world. Continue reading →

Corruption is an incurable cancer that kills millions of Filipinos. It needs chemotherapy to stop the cancer. Corruption kills, and corruption is pervasive. It affects all dimensions of people’s daily lives from poorly building roads, high prices for electricity, business practices, crime, violence, as well as unequal access to health care, education, medicine. Corruption erodes people’s sense of equity and their belief in justice. It undermines trust in the police, government, judiciary, military, business sector, and society. According to Transparency International Corruption takes many forms, but always involves the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.” I am not trying to blame the Philippines government for failing to tackle corruption, but rather I want to talk about the change that President Elect Rodrigo Duterte is talking about that we all can take part in to stop corruption.Duterte stressed that the death penalty must be reimposed during his administration. He was to deliver the promised crackdown on criminality plaguing the country. “I need it to combat crime and to deter it,” Duterte said during a media conference, before meeting foreign dignitaries who were among his well wishers. Duterte has made it clear that under his administrations, the war against drugs will start from the barangay level; Duterte said he would recruit militiamen similar to the special Civilian Armed Auxiliary, but they must have completed the basic Reservation Officer Training course. Continue reading →

According to Islam, one of the signs of the Last Day is the rising of the sun in the West. Of course, throughout history many people have interpreted the glory of the sun and the stars according to their own superstitions thinking that the universe is indestructible and will last for all eternity. However, according to the Quran this kind of perfect design that has lasted billions of years is the work of Allah who created everything and by his command, it will come to an end in a similar way. Also according to the Quran, the time when the universe, all forms of life from human beings to microorganisms, the stars and galaxies, come to an end is an hour. This is a particular hour used in the Quran to describe the Last Day. The Quran does not tell when it will happen, but only that there are many signs to be expected such as the Second Coming of Jesus, the killing of the anti- Christ (Dajjal), the appearance of Mahdi, and the dominance of Islamic morality throughout the world, including the increase in the number of wars, anarchy, poverty, adultery, prostitution, and sexual perversion, and the increased frequency of disasters and earthquakes. Many will recognize a similar list from the Christian New Testament, written six centuries before the Quran. Furthermore, Islam teaches that the world will suffer from many material and spiritual problems. Continue reading →

With this election season’s campaigns in the home stretch, the quadrennial in the US and in the Philippines, the quadrennial and sexennial, respectively, contest for lying, misdirection, fact bending, half-truths and lies in the challenge to win the hearts and minds of voters is in full swing. The lying seems to be a means of capturing the electorate’s vote; lying is reaching its apogee and the question is why are politicians getting away with lies? No matter what politicians say or claim, eventually someone digs up the truth. Then, because it is the truth, it eventually floats to the surface. If politicians have not been honest up until this point, how have they been lying? When politicians renege on campaign promises, they are not being “economical” with the truth but cheating the public in order to win the election. Everything politicians say about each other is probably true, but everything they say about themselves is most likely not true. Most of time politicians cheat their way to power because, evidently, that is the only to appear on the ballot box. The one who actually speaks the truth usually does not make it that far. Other politicians or media eliminate them beforehand. Continue reading →

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan waits for the arrivals of leaders and representatives of the Islamic countries before the opening of the 13th Organization of Islamic Cooperation, OIC, Summit in Istanbul, Thursday, April 14, 2016. Turkey hosts the two-day 13th OIC Summit with presidents, prime ministers and ministers attending to discuss several issues.(Presidential 

The leaders of the Islamic world met at their 13^th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference in Istanbul as the Muslims of the world face their greatest challenge in history. The Summit ended last week with Turkey’s Erdoğan becoming the term president. Muslims have lost their sense of nationalism, which was and still is the hallmark of the Islamic ideology. The Muslim world faces huge changes within; Iran is in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Syria; Turkey is at war with the Kurds in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Turkey; and Iraq is fighting the Kurds– all with Muslims killing Muslims. As of now the Shia-Sunni conflict is of primary importance, but the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) failed to take any measure to stop the killing. Continue reading →

It is a fact that the majority of profound thinkers in America are conservative; they used to have a conservative outlook on life, but this has been declining in that they have devising worldviews just like their liberal colleagues whether in the National Review, the City Journal, the Commentary Magazine, or the Wall Street Journal, among others institutions. Of course, there are bright leftist and liberal thinkers, but those who understand the depth of human nature, the state of mankind, life, history, and wisdom of the great conservative thinkers and writers hold to traditional values. I write this because true conservatism believes in American exceptionalism, that it is the only country founded on the principles that all men are created equal and that their human rights such as life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, are unalienable because they are granted, not by any government, but by the Creator. If the Creator does not create these rights, they are essentially worthless, since the government can declare them null and void at any time it wishes. Continue reading →

Nowadays, a very interesting question about the relationship between Islam and democracy arises: Is Islam compatible with democracy and democratic values or any form of government that empowers the people and limits the power of leaders to hold merely representative offices with limited terms of public service? Can Islam be modernized? Can the West and Islam coexist? Can the West defeat fundamentalism and stop terrorism? Can the West be successful in selling its version of democracy to Muslims? The answer to these questions has a huge impact on the lives of 1.4 billion Muslims around the world. The impact results from the fact that the overwhelmingly majority of Muslim populations are governed by either non-democratic nations or unstable democracies. In Islam the state is intended to be inseparable from religious rule. Islamic law, or Sharia–regulation that is complete and not designed to coexist with or to be subordinate to other legal systems. Continue reading →