Bad faith
Bad faith
Updated 02:13am (Mla time) Oct 13, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the October 13, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
IN MANDALUYONG City, public land in the City Hall complex was donated so that the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy, a Catholic church, could be built. This was a clear contravention of the principle of the separation of Church and State, but no one complained.
Malacañang has both a Catholic chapel and a mosque, and no one is complaining.
What the government does, private developers routinely do. Many of the large malls in Metro Manila have Catholic chapels, even parishes, within their premises, and also have Masses celebrated in public areas. In the case of some developers, while having Catholic chapels and prayer rooms may be an offshoot of their own faith, in most cases it is a response to the wants of their customers. No one has questioned setting aside space for Catholic chapels, in part because the malls are private property, but also because the customers of these malls like it.
The developers of the Greenhills Shopping Center are responding to a need from non-Catholics in exactly the same way. The need has arisen from a growing number of Muslims who work there as merchants and traders and who have a problem of what to do when they break for prayer five times a day. For a time, the Muslims took it upon themselves to pray in a dark and smelly alleyway. It was inevitable that eventually they would grow sick and tired of having music blaring and crowds passing from neighboring shops staring at them while they kneeled and prayed.
Back in July, a magazine first broke the news that a mosque was being planned at the Greenhills Shopping Center. In recent weeks, the proposal to build a place for Muslims to worship in Greenhills has developed into an issue of property and community rights. It has taken on dangerous and reprehensible overtones of religious intolerance and cultural insensitivity.
The people objecting to a Muslim prayer room did not object when a chapel was built in the same shopping center. Now they object to the idea of putting up a special room for Muslims to pray. The basis for their objections is security. They suspect that Muslims, whether Filipino or not, are troublemakers, potential terrorists, untrustworthy people, thieves -- and the list goes on and on. They argue that as transients, that is, non-residents of Greenhills, the Muslims do not deserve a special place for prayer, because such a place might become a center for the teaching of radical Islam. Also, such a center might actually entice Muslims to live in Greenhills.
We repeat that such arguments and comments are reprehensible. They not only smack of intolerance and insensitivity, but are even dangerous. A shopping center is by its nature a place for transients, which is why Catholic chapels are built in them and Masses are said there. If transient Catholics deserve a place to worship or to hear Mass, so does any sizeable community of transients.
The question of security is one that must be addressed both by the developer and the state, but in a manner that does not impinge on two basic constitutional rights: the freedom to worship, and the freedom of abode. The fears of those who are opposing a Greenhills prayer center for Muslims are based on the refusal to tolerate the exercise of a particular religion, and stem from the benighted notion that a community has the right of to exclude others on the basis of faith or culture.
While attempts have been made to color opposition to a Muslim prayer center as being the will of the people, there are Greenhills residents who don't approve of it. They call such opposition bigoted and consider it conducive to violence due to the "us versus them" rhetoric and Christian supremacist attitude of those who are leading such opposition.
Although some residents opposing the Muslim prayer room have tried to get him on their side, San Juan Mayor JV Ejercito has, to his credit, made some very sensible -- and sensitive -- public statements on the issue. "Some Greenhills residents may consider the issue involved to be merely economic and the preservation of their way of life," he said. "However, to the Muslims, this denial of a place of worship is a religious issue."
Ejercito might have added that opposition to a prayer center for Muslims on the basis of protecting "a way of life" calls into question the validity of defending something so outrageously racist, bigoted and prejudiced. All communities, in the end, must adapt or perish.
Updated 02:13am (Mla time) Oct 13, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the October 13, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
IN MANDALUYONG City, public land in the City Hall complex was donated so that the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy, a Catholic church, could be built. This was a clear contravention of the principle of the separation of Church and State, but no one complained.
Malacañang has both a Catholic chapel and a mosque, and no one is complaining.
What the government does, private developers routinely do. Many of the large malls in Metro Manila have Catholic chapels, even parishes, within their premises, and also have Masses celebrated in public areas. In the case of some developers, while having Catholic chapels and prayer rooms may be an offshoot of their own faith, in most cases it is a response to the wants of their customers. No one has questioned setting aside space for Catholic chapels, in part because the malls are private property, but also because the customers of these malls like it.
The developers of the Greenhills Shopping Center are responding to a need from non-Catholics in exactly the same way. The need has arisen from a growing number of Muslims who work there as merchants and traders and who have a problem of what to do when they break for prayer five times a day. For a time, the Muslims took it upon themselves to pray in a dark and smelly alleyway. It was inevitable that eventually they would grow sick and tired of having music blaring and crowds passing from neighboring shops staring at them while they kneeled and prayed.
Back in July, a magazine first broke the news that a mosque was being planned at the Greenhills Shopping Center. In recent weeks, the proposal to build a place for Muslims to worship in Greenhills has developed into an issue of property and community rights. It has taken on dangerous and reprehensible overtones of religious intolerance and cultural insensitivity.
The people objecting to a Muslim prayer room did not object when a chapel was built in the same shopping center. Now they object to the idea of putting up a special room for Muslims to pray. The basis for their objections is security. They suspect that Muslims, whether Filipino or not, are troublemakers, potential terrorists, untrustworthy people, thieves -- and the list goes on and on. They argue that as transients, that is, non-residents of Greenhills, the Muslims do not deserve a special place for prayer, because such a place might become a center for the teaching of radical Islam. Also, such a center might actually entice Muslims to live in Greenhills.
We repeat that such arguments and comments are reprehensible. They not only smack of intolerance and insensitivity, but are even dangerous. A shopping center is by its nature a place for transients, which is why Catholic chapels are built in them and Masses are said there. If transient Catholics deserve a place to worship or to hear Mass, so does any sizeable community of transients.
The question of security is one that must be addressed both by the developer and the state, but in a manner that does not impinge on two basic constitutional rights: the freedom to worship, and the freedom of abode. The fears of those who are opposing a Greenhills prayer center for Muslims are based on the refusal to tolerate the exercise of a particular religion, and stem from the benighted notion that a community has the right of to exclude others on the basis of faith or culture.
While attempts have been made to color opposition to a Muslim prayer center as being the will of the people, there are Greenhills residents who don't approve of it. They call such opposition bigoted and consider it conducive to violence due to the "us versus them" rhetoric and Christian supremacist attitude of those who are leading such opposition.
Although some residents opposing the Muslim prayer room have tried to get him on their side, San Juan Mayor JV Ejercito has, to his credit, made some very sensible -- and sensitive -- public statements on the issue. "Some Greenhills residents may consider the issue involved to be merely economic and the preservation of their way of life," he said. "However, to the Muslims, this denial of a place of worship is a religious issue."
Ejercito might have added that opposition to a prayer center for Muslims on the basis of protecting "a way of life" calls into question the validity of defending something so outrageously racist, bigoted and prejudiced. All communities, in the end, must adapt or perish.
posted by Dante at 9:54 PM
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