Inexcusable November 27, 2006

IN THE PAST, I'VE WRITTEN SEVERAL COLumns protesting the way Muslims, or Moros, were treated in this country. I’ve protested the times when Muslims were profiled or stereotyped and had their homes raided, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11. I’ve protested the times when the MNLF and the MILF were portrayed as bandit or terrorist elements, deserving of slaughter. I’ve protested the raiding of “pirates’ lairs” in Quiapo and elsewhere, which grinds down only the Muslim poor, who are the retail sellers, and not the Muslim and Chinese rich, who are their sources.

All of which is to say that I’ve earned my spurs here. I abhor discrimination. But I am not going to protest what happened to Lanao del Sur Rep. Faysah RPM Dumarpa at the Batasan dining lounge. In fact, I am going to protest most vehemently what she did there.

The incident, as everybody knows by now, including the istambays in my neighborhood who discussed it over Red Horse and roasted pork ears for several nights, was that Dumarpa discovered at one point that the noodles she was eating contained pork. She went ballistic and allegedly started berating a staff member of the catering outfit, Virginia Fernando-Altamirano. Not content with that, she allegedly slapped the girl in the face while hurling words upon her that you wouldn’t hear in the Koran. And still not content with that, she went back to her table, reportedly grabbed a knife and was about to attack Altamirano when her colleagues finally held her back.

Never was the phrase “fit to be tied” more apt. Dumarpa should have been.

Let me be clear. I am not inappreciative of the scale of the injury. Some years ago, I also read a newspaper account of a Muslim security guard murdering two fellows for playing a prank on him. The two mixed pork in a dish they offered him, and after he had eaten it, they told him about it to much laughter. It would be the last time they would laugh. That night, while they slept, the incensed Muslim knifed them to death.

What can one say? Devout Muslims take the proscription against pork deathly seriously—the deathly there can often be literal. There’s no arguing with religion, and to the extent that the beliefs and practices don’t harm anyone, they are to be respected.

But devoutness does not justify murder. A Muslim deliberately fed pork as a joke may not just dispatch the pranksters into the next life and be excused for it. A congresswoman accidentally fed pork may not violently abuse a presumed culprit and be excused for it. I am not a Muslim, but I believe I can say with reasonable certainty that between having a body contaminated by pork and having a mind contaminated by thoughts of mayhem, I know which crime the most compassionate Allah is more likely to forgive.

Dumarpa had a right to be furious. She had the right to complain. She had the right to demand an apology. She had no right to act like a swine.

At the very least, the demand for Christians to respect the cultural and religious sensitivities of their Muslim brothers and sisters goes with a similar demand for Muslims to respect the cultural and religious sensitivities of their Christian brothers and sisters. Dumarpa is in Metro Manila. Mistakes like that happen, and to the extent that they are honest ones, she may only ask Allah to forgive the erring for they know not what they do. A Filipino diplomat in Vietnam or Taiwan may not attack a Vietnamese or Taiwanese waiter because the waiter found a rosary on the floor and threw it among the trash.

At the very most, Dumarpa is a representative, not a warlord. There is a difference, even if her elders and betters in the House and Malacañang can’t seem to see it, too.

Which brings me to why I find her behavior reprehensible. Because she abused someone who had no power to fight back. Obviously, she would not have done that to anyone of her colleagues who might have done that to her while she was a guest in their home. The only reason Dumarpa did that to Altamirano was that she figured Altamirano was nothing more or less than one of her menials whom she could treat like a germ. If Dumarpa can do that to someone in Metro Manila, think of what she can do, and probably does, to her constituents in Lanao.

What she did to Altamirano was not an act of faith, it was an act of arrogance. It was not an expression of devoutness, it was an expression of bad breeding.

I abhor discrimination, and none more so than the discrimination by the powerful of the powerless. Or those the powerful deem powerless. I’m glad Altamirano’s outfit is defending her and has pulled out of its Batasan concession. They may not cater to swine. Altamirano was not the author of discrimination, she was the victim of it. And a most unforgivable form of discrimination, too.

Dumarpa herself does not do Muslims proud, she does them ill. Coming as her action does at a time when Muslims and Christians are struggling to build bridges amid the divisions created by Bush’s and GMA’s concept of anti-terrorism, it sucks completely. It stokes the fires of racial and religious bigotry that responsible Muslims and Christians have been trying to douse. If the sentiments expressed by the istambays in my neighborhood about Muslims are anything to go by, much of it not being fit to print, Dumarpa has set progress back by leaps and bounds.

What she did was just plain inexcusable.

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Tomorrow the Stop the Killings Bar Tour stops at Pier 1, Ortigas home depot, between Vargas and Ortigas, back of Metrowalk. It’s the last stop. True Faith, Paolo Santos and Pido are playing. It is hoped that we can raise money for a Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, gig to end the first leg with a bang. We too got blown out by “Milenyo,” with many of those who pledged to contribute backing out to give to “Milenyo’s” victims first. Maybe you can help?

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