Monday, June 16, 2008 Arinday: Do something By G.H. Arinday Jr. Sunfare
"The stone takes pity and acts as though it had been moved:
while indignation, annoyance, and rage interrupt one another,/
The specialists in power appear smiling in front of the public. They make well-informed speeches about the price demanded for freedom: ....
-"Do Something", by Gunter Grass, German Nobel Laureate in Literature
BETWEEN THE poetic or philosophical conception of the human species, we tend to exalt Man "at the expense of ordinary men who live still as nasty, brutish, and short ever".
In "Between the Idea and Reality, Falls the Shadow", American poet T. S. Eliot once wrote, "In an era of deconstructive Faith, words are swaddled in religio-political dogmas even over acts of brutalization and excessive infliction of pain on individuals seeking to equalize freedom among the protagonists in the theatres of conflicting political and social perspectives under the guise of religious dogmas and the 'cleansing of the bloodied Earth of Sinners'."
Possessed by its own stained grace and precision by abducting the ABS-CBN
broadcast personalities led by Ces Oreña Drilon, the Muslim fundamentalists hewing along the Wahhabi interpretations of the Holy Quran have imposed fetishism of unnecessary cruelty indiscriminately in the name of martyrdom.
And what is sickening is the additional misery inflicted by the negotiators in competing for credit-rating for the release of the hostages.
Why? Why? Are the abductees pieces of inanimate objects in auction sales? Nobel laureate Gunter Grass, expressing his disgusts on situations of this nature, said, "All this becomes institutionalized, and by power is caressed, beaten, subsidized. Already the stone that was to be moved gather moss, unmoved. Can we go on like that?-Yes, in a circle. What shall we do?-Nothing. How express our rage?"
Why should ransom be institutionalized or subsidized? The hostaged broadcast journalists did give them the opportunity to have their "cause"-if it's really a valid cause-to ventilate their "grievances" and hatred against those outside of their world of culture and civilization!
Are these creatures symbolically the realization of poet Robert Blake's vision of the unknown Monsters with four heads interpreted from the Book of Daniel as emblems of "four kings which shall arise out of the earth"? It sounds out of the deep frame of the Holy Scriptures, but count the number of the foremost sects of Islamism figuring prominently on the theaters of atrocities.
We have the Talibans, Hezbollahs, Bib Laden's martyrs, and the Jemaah Islamiyah-all hogging the headlines almost daily.
The Abu Sayyaf-the Bearer of Swords-approximates the nature of their being as they bloodied the river of history from the very beginning. By definition they are disaffected individuals deeply committed to one another and a legitimizing ideology-the radical Islamism.
If reports are true that young men and women are drawn to join the Abu Sayyaf because of its lucrative enterprise by kidnapping or abducting of important personalities and thereby share in the profits of their "holy" efforts, then the challenge has become more complicated.
Psychoanalysts are given this opportunity to update their research on the theory of intentional existence and the purposeful of their activities. If this is so, the "missionary zeal" of their ideology is totally lost, hence, the legitimacy of the tag that they are plain terrorists.
However, if the tipping point in abducting ABS -CBM reporter Ces Drilon and cameraman Jimmy Encarnacion, including university professor Octavio Dinampo is consequent on two premises-that the Abu Sayyaf is still in control of the hinterlands of Sulu and other places, and that their mission includes the raising of funds as a legitimate part of their struggle to establish a Caliphate in the south, then we can be confronted of the same problem in the decades to come unless the government could devise a policy to avoid repetition of this sad drama. As suggested previously in this corner, deny them undue publicity to avoid inflating their egos.
The cretins desecrating the Quran have not realized that by their devilish acts they have promoted isolation of their own kin and kith willing to live in peace, thus relegating them to the Dark Ages.
But the worrisome aspect in this denigrating activity is the "mercenarious" interference of negotiators, which is one of the ugliest intercessions in the past kidnappings exposed by the media.
By examining the degree we have witnessed or suffered, it must be stressed that the experience in other countries as their solutions are not entirely relevant to our own share of this malady.
Neither our past experience in Moroland would give definite solutions as we did with the terror-solutions of bandit Tausog Kamlon where military action was the main solution to attain peace and order in Sulu.
With the present complexities of Muslim radicalism wired with similar goals all over the world, the intention is clear: Remove Western civilization from the Muslim world and let them establish their Caliphate Empire and their own laws. But a divided world with non-existing freedom on the other half would not result to reign of peace. It promises more bloodshed.
How could we therefore contain the terrorists' threats? How are we going to stop this practice of giving the terrorists the opportunity to launch their propaganda line?
This is a war of ideas and our democratic terrain has long been repeatedly furrowed by anti-democratic elements, much to our sufferings and anguish, and worst of the crushed feelings of the families of the abducted!
