Bohol Muslims keep peace

For their business to thrive

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol July 5 (PIA) –Muslims in Bohol, many of them showing more Boholano traits that Boholanos should, have insulated their communities from any criminal elements who can disturb the peace that they have been enjoying here.

According to Malabi Al-hady Taha, president of the Bohol Muslim Community Peace Movement (BMCPEM), during the recent Kapihan sa PIA, they have to do something after news spread out about the Marawi Siege and the Inabanga Incursion, both of which involved Muslim extremists.

“Muslim, is Arabic for he who follows the will of Allah,” explains ustadh Sohayle Guro, another Muslim leader whose community is settled beside Unitop.

Guro, an Islamic scholar, pressed however that some people often mistake the peaceful ways of Allah, thus, news about radical terrorists come out.

No matter how peaceful the Muslim communities are here, the news about Inabanga incursion placed every Muslim community in Bohol as a threat.

Muslims, owing to their religion, tend to congregate for common services: preparing, cooking, eating halal, and praying in masjids or mosques, that any Muslim coming in has to go to a Muslim community, making him easier to track and check on his person.

“It was in 2017 when we started organizing the Muslim communities here through their leaders and the Bohol Provincial Police Office (BPPO), to insulate the communities from just anyone who gets in but with bad intentions,” Taha shared.

Dimakota Alangadi, Muslim leader and president of the Islamic Community here in Tagbilaran said he has peacefully lived here, for about 50 years, and it was in Bohol where his parents died and are buried.

“We have never had any problems here, until 2017, that we have to make sure nothing like that ever happens again,” he said.

Muslims who have come to Bohol many generations ago; about 80 percent of them Maranaos, the rest a mixture of Tausugs, Maguindanaos and other tribes, have all been into trading, and which placed them here living in peaceful coexistence with Boholanos who are about 85 percent Christians.

But the term Muslim, has also been used to refer to the radical Islamic groups that have been terrorizing the world, leaving an uncomfortable enmity between the Muslims and Boholanos here.

“Bohol is such a good place, and we would like to keep it that way, so we can continue living peacefully,” shared Malabi Al-hady Taha, president of the Bohol Muslim Community Peace Movement (BMCPeM), the unified Muslim communities in Bohol.

BMCPeM is SEC registered and is an accredited organization of the National Commission of Muslim Filipinos, and has a local governing body housed at the Governor’s Mansion in Office of Muslim Affairs.

“We have lived here, started our families and we planned to make it that way,” Alangadi said, whose use of the Boholano language and its intricate hints of stresses, make him just like any Boholano.

“With that, if anybody comes to Bohol and to Muslim Communities to blend, we have to inform them that the community does not consent to his coming and that they can not allow the community to be used for such purposes,” Taha added.

Here, with the BPPO, Muslim communities put up their Salaam Peace Advocacy Groups (SPAG) to put up a system of policing their own ranks and advance the peace agenda, especially when the communiies are threatened.

With their intention to live and stay here, the Muslim Communities have asked the government to give them a lot so they can build a new Muslim cemetery, for their Islamic members who die.

Islamic believers practice burial within 24 hours after death, a custom that is also moves many Muslims scrambling to find burial sites now that the City Government-donated lot for their cemetery is already full.

“And that fact that we are requesting the Provincial Government through Governor Erico Aristotle Aumentado a lot for our cemetery also means we are here for good and that we are here to help everyone make things in order and in peace,” Taha ended.

MORE BOHOLANO THAN SOME OF US. Demakota Alangani, who sits as president of the Muslim community at the Islamic Center, said he has nearly some 50 years of living here, said he would hope to die and be buried as Boholano Muslim. Bohol hosts 16 Muslim Communities spread across the province. (PIABOhol)