There is a matter of fundamental importance missing from the story below, and that is the existence of specific injunctions in sharia law against the display of alcohol or pork by unbelievers. Umdat al Salik, a Shafi jurisprudence manual certified as reliable by Al-Azhar University in Cairo, states:
"The subject peoples must "pay the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya) [and] are distinguished from Muslims in dress, wearing a wide cloth belt (zunnar); are not greeted with ‘as-Salamu ‘alaykum’ [the traditional Muslim greeting, 'Peace be with you']; must keep to the side of the street; may not build higher than or as high as the Muslims’ buildings, though if they acquire a tall house, it is not razed; are forbidden to openly display wine or pork ... recite the Torah or Evangel aloud, or make public display of their funerals or feastdays; and are forbidden to build new churches." (o11.3, 5)
Thus, this story is not merely about one local population's quirky sensitivities, but about the intent on the part of the Muslims in this area to impose Islamic law.
"Sectarian tensions simmer over a pig in Cotabato City," by Jonathan Adams for the Christian Science Monitor, December 5:
To understand the culture clash wracking the southern Philippines, consider the lechon.
That's the name for the roast pig that's a Philippines' signature dish. Sold by the kilo in public markets, it's a must-have at any Filipino celebration.
But pork is taboo for Muslims, now a majority in this city (about 60 percent, compared with 40 percent Christian), and who see this part of the southern Philippines island of Mindanao as their ancestral homeland.
Eating pork is a no-no, and even smelling or seeing it is offensive to some.
So what to do about the street lechon sellers?
In Cotabato City last year, shop-owners were ordered to cover their lechon, says Flordeliza Cavite. I found her selling her swine at a stall downtown. Vendors had to use curtains, paint over windows, or move their pork inside to avoid offending passersby and to comply with the ordinance.
This year, rules were relaxed, she said – possibly the result of a power struggle between the Muslim mayor and the city council (mostly Christians).
In a region that's seen bloody, on-and-off warfare between the Philippines military and Muslim rebels, the lechon problem may seem trivial. But it highlights the tricky compromises needed in order for Christians and Muslims to live here in peace as neighbors.
For the fundamental question now is how to expand and enhance an already-existing, nearby, Muslim autonomous region, while respecting the Christian neighbors' rights and way of life.
The stakes are higher than dead pig displays. Get the balance right, and peace could finally come to Mindanao. Get it wrong, and the insurgency that's racked the island for some 40 years will grind on.
That conflict has drained Manila's coffers, killed thousands, displaced more, and caused a refugee problem in Malaysia. It's also created a lawless haven in this area for gunrunners, arms smugglers, kidnappers, and terrorists – including some involved in the murderous Bali bombings.
In early August, the government and Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), were on the verge of signing a preliminary peace deal. If signed, Cotabato City and some nearby, Muslim-majority communities would have become part of an expanded Muslim autonomous region. And not only a bigger region, but one with greatly expanded powers – to run its own courts, and security force, and control much more of its own resources.
Only an 11th-hour Supreme Court injunction stopped the deal. That outcome sparked renewed skirmishes between the MILF and the Philippines military, stalling the peace process.
But many of the area's Christians were relieved. Ms. Cavite worries that if the city becomes part of the Muslim autonomous area, Muslim leaders will ban the public sale of lechon. Her feelings are raw. "Muslims are very bad," she says. "They will control us Christians."
Other Christian locals say they'll move if it becomes a Muslim autonomous area.
Their fears are misplaced, says MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu. "Mindanao is totally different than in other parts of the Muslim world – here we are living side by side with Christians. So we will be liberal on [these] issues," he says.
Sure. This time, out of so many other Islamic conquests in the past 1400 years, will be different. Yes, right now, they are "living side by side with Christians," but Kabalu's group has made it abundantly clear that the present situation won't do; otherwise, there would be no need for a protracted conflict to wrest control of the area from a pluralistic, democratic government. And, it stands to reason that with their attention to details like sharia law's prohibition of the display of pork, they are not about to let its other prescriptions go unobserved.
In a region that's seen bloody, on-and-off warfare between the Philippines military and Muslim rebels, the lechon problem may seem trivial. But it highlights the tricky compromises needed in order for Christians and Muslims to live here in peace as neighbors.
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"Tricky compromises", huh? Seems like all the compromises have been on the part of the Christians.
more:
The stakes are higher than dead pig displays. Get the balance right, and peace could finally come to Mindanao.
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Hey, good luck with that.
more:
Their fears are misplaced, says MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu. "Mindanao is totally different than in other parts of the Muslim world – here we are living side by side with Christians. So we will be liberal on [these] issues," he says.
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Mindanao is *exactly* like every other part of the "Muslim world"--if a full-fledged conquest is not possible, wait until you have a large enough minority population, push for special "rights", intimidate local non-Muslims, initiate full-blown Jihad against their government, push for an "autonomous region", push local non-Muslims out or kill them outright, then tout how the region is majority Muslim and deserves to be its own separate country, when you gain independence, impose Shari'ah law, impose the Jizya, coerce non-Mulsims to convert to Islam, expel, cow and kill the remaining non-Muslims; rinse; repeat.
Muslims in the southern Philippines are on about step 5 now.
"The stakes are higher than dead pig displays. Get the balance right, and peace could finally come to Mindanao. Get it wrong, and the insurgency that's racked the island for some 40 years will grind on."
From the article
Looks like the insurgency will grind on, then. Muslims only do balance to gain time until they can dictate.
That hangs it.
"Tension" is now officially a media code word for mohammedan aggression.
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BTW Does anybody know why Typepad makes me sign in twice every time?
When Christmas decorations are forbidden in public buildings in Geneva because they're deemed "offensive", when a Filipino national dish is to nearly be forbidden in order not to offend mohammedans, when muslim males are allowed to get away with domestic violence by sharia courts on UK soil, and when so much more such outrages are allowed to happen because they say THEIR CULT DEMANDS THAT IT BE SO, why can't more political and religious leaders who aren't muslims raise their voices to point out that there is just no way for islam to exist alongside anything non-islamic?
Why can't more leaders, besides Geert Wilders and Father Zakaria Botros, raise their voices to show that there has to be a choice between the demands of muslims and everyone else's interests and freedoms?
The hope of the appeasers, and the guilt by association of those who keep their mouths shut because of political correctness or fear of being labeled racists (which ethnicity is islam again?), is that contact with Western civilization, more jobs, more economic development and such things will open up muslims' minds and make them more tolerant. The last 1428 years have shown that it cannot and will not be the case, ever.
The case should be clearly made to all who don't yet live in muslim-majority societies: it's US, or it's THEM. It's time to make a damn clear choice.
The Supreme Court did the right thing and stopped the Philippine government from the stupidity of turning Mindanao over to the Muselmaniacs.
"That conflict has drained Manila's coffers, killed thousands, displaced more, and caused a refugee problem in Malaysia. It's also created a lawless haven in this area for gunrunners, arms smugglers, kidnappers, and terrorists – including some involved in the murderous Bali bombings."
If the jihadists are running away to Malyasia that means the army is doing a good job. The terrorists must be rooted out. But that won't happen until the mosques and madrassas are razed and the clerics fed to the fish.
There is a way to resolve this. It only takes a bit of will....
joeblough, I had to sign in to TypePad SEVEN times this time. It's getting intolerable. They can put a man on the moon but they can't figure out a way to have people sign in once like every other Goddamned sign in process on the Goddamned Internet...!!!???
"Other Christian locals say they'll move if it becomes a Muslim autonomous area."
better to stand your ground and fight for every inch...sooner or later you will have to fight anyway as you will soon run out of places to run to ...if you run away...
Islam is involved in one of the grandest land grabbing schemes of all time...inch by inch..
Here in the D.C. area, I'm about to have breakfast: hard-boiled eggs and ham. I don't have to pull the shades. Yet.
Does anybody know about the distribution of Muslims in the Philippines? I ask because it's only 5% Muslim, so if they're 60% in one area they have to be mostly confined to it, which means that they're all agents of the Ikhwan, which tells them to concentrate themselves in certain areas.
"Mindanao is totally different than in other parts of the Muslim world – here we are living side by side with Christians. So we will be liberal on [these] issues," he says.
Uh, the Philippins isn't the Muslim world, you deluded narcissist. I love the taqiyya, whereby they take issue with it but then claim to be "liberal" about it. Islam isn't "liberal" about anything. It just keeps its claws retracted when it's weak. Muslims can't even live side-by-side with each other, let alone with Christians. I hope the Philippino military roots them out. I hope any nation finally evicts all of its Mohammedans, just to set the precedent.
Graven Image - Very well-thought out and clearly explained posting. Thank you.
Gravenimage, thanks for your post. I hope people realize why Kashmir is in the news now - step 5. Kashmir (the valley) was finally cleansed of its last Hindu in the 90s, and the Kashmiri Hindu Pandits live in refugee camps in Delhi today, with our government wringing its hands about all the oppressed Muslims - it's sad. India the ancient civilization is history.
Another example -- as if we needed it -- of Islam's bloody borders.
I have a Catholic Filipino sister-in-law, so I've tasted what Filipina cooks do to pork...mmmmmmm.
If the Philippines government and all sane non-Muslim Filipinos can screw up their courage and basically hammer the jihadists into the ground and evict all Mohammedans from Filipino territory, it will be a victory for human rights and religious freedom. If they do not - if the Muslim Mob is allowed to gobble up Mindanao and kill or drive out the Christians or turn them into miserable, exploited, degraded and humiliated (and periodically, just for fun, murdered) dhimmis - then the area of the planet that is Unfree, and the sum total of human misery, fear, oppression and slavery, will increase.
Did anyone notice *this* line? - "pork is taboo for Muslims, now a majority in this city (about 60 percent, compared with 40 percent Christian), and who see this part of the southern Philippines island of Mindanao as their ancestral homeland."
What? Were they always Muslims?
Their genetic/ ethnic ancestors - from whom, alone, they can claim a right to inherit the land - would NOT have been Muslims; their ancestors would have been, originally, animist Malayo-Polynesian people who CONVERTED to Islam.
But Islam attacks and destroys local loyalties and cultures, even languages. By insisting on being Muslim, these people have repudiated their ancestors and turned themselves into ersatz Arabs; they've joined the amorphous world-eating Blob that is the Ummah. They've broken - indeed, they are denying - the tie that, in non-Muslim eyes, would bind them to the land.
Since their intention, if they gain control, is either to exterminate, drive out, or ruthlessly oppress and dominate all others; and it is also clear that they are expansionist - "the fundamental question now is how to expand and enhance an already-existing, nearby, Muslim autonomous region" {note that we are not told whether there is, if one leaves Islam out of it, any ethno-linguistic difference between the group that identifies as Muslim, and those identifying as Christians - the reporter is treating 'Muslim' as if it were a distinctive ETHNIC group, rather than an IDEOLOGICAL group - dda} - why should they be allowed to get away with it?
I think they're mostly invaders from Malaysia and Indonesia, not converts, especially since they're all in one area, which would likely indicate mass immigration prompted by the Ikhwan. I don't know for sure, but that's usually how it happens. The Philippinos survived having their islands turned into concentration camps by the Japanese in WWII. They're tougher than that.
You know, Chinese muslims simply call pork "mutton" and eat it anyway. Trying to eat Chinese cuisine without pork is nearly impossible.
So, there you go, Muslims everywhere. Just call it mutton and get on with your lives.
Any more problems? Just call me the Muslim Answer Man and I will solve them for you.