For the past 30 years, radical Islamists have wanted to run and own southern Philippines. In spite of the long-drawn peace talks between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), numerous ceasefires and truces, as well as violations of ceasefires, the MILF will not settle for anything less than owning part of the Philippines.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is a militant rebel group that does not want to recognize the Philippines’ constitution and secular government. The MILF which has a long-term aim of creating a separate Islamic state in southern Philippines has not only become the country’s largest rebel group but a Muslim terrorist group. Operating openly across large areas of Mindanao, the MILF has set up checkpoints and even shadow governments in a number of towns and villages.

Southern Philippines has also become a microcosm of how radical Islamists have been destroying the Islam religion.

Islamism not just posits a political role for Islam, but also believes that the Islamist views merely reflect Islam. It asserts that Islam can never be apolitical. Islamists ask the question, “If Islam is a way of life, how can we say that those who want to live by its principles in legal, social, political, and economic spheres of life are not Muslims, but Islamists and believe in Islamism, not [just] Islam?”

The MILF, putting emphasis on its Islamic roots because many of its senior figures are clerics, has had broad popular support in rural areas where the lack of economic development has encouraged dissent.

The group has made it clear that it will not settle for anything less than self-rule for Muslims in Mindanao.

This has led to on-off negotiations with the Philippine government over a period of several years, popularly dubbed as the “peace process.” The MILF, however, has been violating on-off ceasefire agreements. Despite the truce, skirmishes continue between government troops and MILF militants.

Many of the MILF’s political leaders are former mujahideen or holy warriors. They volunteered to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, and had US backing to do it. Al Haj Murad, the MILF’s vice chairman for military affairs, met with Osama Bin Laden in the 1980s.

Both the US and Philippine governments suspect that members of the MILF have helped train Indonesians connected to Jema’ah Islamiah (JI), the group accused of carrying out the 2002 Bali bombing. The MILF does not deny that it has welcomed foreign visitors to its camps in the past, but its leaders say it has nothing to do with JI or al-Qaeda. These suspected links with foreign terrorist groups are what have been complicating the peace process.

In March 2007, the Philippine government offered to recognize the right of self-determination for the Muslims in Mindanao – something it had never done in over three decades of conflict and intermittent negotiations.

The Philippine government, however, has persisted to negotiate a peace deal with a group that does not like peace. Besides violating ceasefire agreements, the MILF has always refused to disarm its armies (estimated to be as high as 45,000 strong). The terrorist group has not closed down its paramilitary facilities (numbering at least 40 on the island of Mindanao alone). Before its main camp had fallen to Philippine military, Camp Abubakar was used as a training ground for combatants. It was a 10,000-hectare compound ran largely by Arabs that had trained 2,000 terrorists, many of them foreigners. Camp Abubakar’s course of study included lessons in assault weapons, stealth operations, hand-to-hand combat, and bomb-making.

On August 5, 2008, the Philippine government and the MILF were scheduled to sign a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) on the recognition of the ancestral domains of the MILF. However, the Supreme Court of the Philippines issued a Temporary Restraining Order against the signing when local government officials filed an injunction, claiming that they were not consulted on the drafting and execution of the MOA.

In the early dawn of August 18, 2008, elements of the MILF-Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces’ 102nd Base Command under Cmdr. Bravo Macapaar conducted swift, simultaneous raids on government and military installations in the coastal municipalities of Lanao del Norte. Passenger buses plying the highway were caught in the crossfire. Civilian casualties were incurred. Houses, buildings, and vehicles were torched. Civilian hostages were used as human shield when soldiers arrived. Thousands of civilian refugees, Muslims and Christians, fled their homes along the coast as battles raged between the Muslim mujahideen guerillas and reinforcing government forces.

The MILF calls the August 18 incidents as sending a clear message to the Philippine government and all Filipinos. The group has stated that it will not agree to revisit or renegotiate the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), even if it means the impasse of the peace talks indefinitely.

For 30 years, the Philippine government has been putting up with radical Islamists in the Philippines. The country has persisted to deal with this group peacefully and with reconciliation through a consistent peace process.

Islam is said to be a religion that advocates peace, with one of its teachings as ‘reconciliation is the best’ (4:128). The current resurgence of the Mindanao War is proof that radical Islamists do not like peace and reconciliation. They, therefore, slaughter the very religion they go by.

Radical Islamists do not tolerate democracy. It is a complete shame that it takes a democracy to tolerate them.