(This is based on my speech at the graduation exercises of the Mahardika Institute of Technology, in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi, last Holy Wednesday.)

THANK you for selecting me as commencement speaker, even though I am a Christian, and nine out of 10 of you are Muslims.

I can’t resist the temptation to cite some survey numbers. Last December, 900 adults (90 percent Muslim) surveyed by SWS, in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, were asked to choose between saying “I am a member of my religion first, and a Filipino second,” and “I am a Filipino first, and a member of my religion second.” Eighty-nine percent said they were members of their religion first. That does not mean that being Filipino is of no importance to them; it only means that it is relatively less important.

Next, when the Muslims, in particular, were asked to choose between saying “I am a member of my ethnic group (meaning Sama, Tausug, etc.) first, and a Muslim second,” and “I am a Muslim first, and a member of my ethnic group second,” 91 percent said they were members of their ethnic group first. Of course, that does not mean that being Muslim is of no importance to them. The issue here is relative importance, not absolute importance.

This means that, whereas people from Tawi-Tawi can feel Sama, and also Muslim, and also Filipino, all at the same time, they also have certain priorities in self-identification. These priorities are somewhat different from those of non-Muslim Filipinos, and it is good to understand them.

Differences are interesting, but commonalities are fundamental. Christianity knows this. Pope John Paul II pointed to a “common fundamental element” and a “common root” in religions:

“There is only one community and it consists of all peoples. They have only one origin, since God inhabited the entire earth with the whole human race. And they have one ultimate destiny, God, whose providence, goodness, and plan for salvation extend to all.”

In the Christian churches, John Paul said, the basic difference between West and East was that the West emphasizes the Passion, whereas the East emphasizes the Resurrection. Yet Western and Eastern Christian churches are one in emphasizing the Redemption, i.e., that the aim of Jesus’ life on earth was to redeem mankind from its sins.

This belief in Redemption, said John Paul, is not found in Islam. That is a basic difference between Islam and Christianity. Both theology and anthropology – he specifically admires the practice of praying five times a day – are different.

But what impresses me the most about John Paul are his remarks on animistic religions, which stress ancestor worship. Is this, he speculates, a kind of preparation for the Christian faith in the so-called Communion of Saints – the belief that “all believers, living or dead, form a single Community, single body”? Is this why, he asks, African and Asian animists would be converted to Christianity more easily than followers of the great religions of the Far East? (Is this why, I can ask, African and Asian animists would be converted to Islam as easily?)

Do you know that, in terms of moral attitudes toward sex and abortion, surveys show big differences between Catholics in the Philippines and Catholics in Spain, Italy, Poland, Ireland or the United States? We Filipinos definitely did not get our moral attitudes from Spain; we are more conservative.

At the same time, the surveys also show hardly any differences in moral attitudes between Filipino Catholics and Filipino non-Catholics, including Filipino Muslims. Thus moral attitudes in our country should not be described as Catholic, but simply as Filipino. When I told this to the distinguished Jesuit psychologist Fr. Jaime Bulatao, his immediate comment was: “Basically, we Filipinos are all animists.”

For the Philippines as a whole, Christianity is a thin veneer of only five centuries over many millennia of animism. Even for Simunul Island, Tawi-Tawi, where the missionary Sheikh Karimul Makhdum arrived in the 14th century, Islam is likewise a veneer of only seven centuries over many millennia of animism.

When surveys of moral attitudes of Muslims in Middle Eastern countries become available, I think they will show differences between them and Filipino Muslims. Filipinos are closer to each other, Muslim or non-Muslim, than to non-Filipinos. Basically, we Filipinos are all animists.

Some years ago, I came to know of the 13th century Muslim poet Moulana Jalaluddin Rumi, and to admire his faith in God’s/Allah’s endless love and incredible mercy. Only in the last few days did I learn that he was also a wondrous mystic, miracle-worker, and saint. Here are a few of his lines (some from my rapidly deteriorating memory):

Consider that the sun,

For all the ages that it has warmed the earth,

Has never once said to it, “You owe me.”

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Before the word on this page

Reaches your eye,

I am there.

* * *

Open your hands

If you want to be held.

Representatives from all faiths came to Rumi’s funeral. It is said that “His place among world religions is as a dissolver of boundaries. He is the ocean that acknowledges oneness (the seawater) over the multiplicity of waves (our individual circumstances).”

Let me leave you with a blessing by Rumi:

“Some go first, and others come long afterward. God blesses both and all in the line, and replaces what has been consumed, and provides for those who work the soil of helpfulness, and blesses Muhammad and Jesus and every other messenger and prophet. Amen, and may the Lord of all created beings bless you.”

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Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.