By EDD K. USMAN
Manila, Philippines – Just like the government, Muslims rebels belonging to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) are also for a total logging ban in Southern Philippines, saying Islam’s Qur’an-ul Kareem (Holy Book) contains many passages on the preservation of the environment.
Its support for a total logging ban has been a long-standing policy, particulary “in areas where it has presence, influence, or control to ensure that the environment will be preserved for the incoming Moro generations.”
Sheikh Mohammad Muntassir, chief da’wah (missionary) officer of the Moro rebels, hinted that the MILF might lend its hand to the total logging ban in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
Earlier, President Benigno S. Aquino III declared a moratorium on the cutting of trees nationwide after seeing the effects of floods and its devastation believed caused by denuded forests.
After Typhoon “Sendong” and its flash floods and killer logs from Lanao del Sur killed over a thousand in Northern Mindanao, the President ordered ARMM caretaker Gov. Mujiv Hataman to impose the log ban in the region and find out who were responsible for the illegal cutting of trees.
Then, Hataman said he was eyeing the MILF to help in the implementation of the logging ban in the ARMM.
What’s the MILF response?
“There are always higher interests of Moros that must be considered by all,” Muntassir said, declining to to answer definitively.
As part of its anti-logging stance, the MILF, he recalled, even fought in 1998-1999 with “combined Army-security guards of the Victor Consunji Logging Company” that operated in the jungles of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur.
Islam, Muntassir said, has a broad concept of the environment.
“The environment is the medium in which man lives; the mother’s womb is a man’s first environment; home is an environment; school is an environment; the place where we live is an environment; the earth is an environment and the whole universe is an environment,” he said the Qur’anic concept.
Muntassir said caring for the environment is anchored on faith, saying “any violation or corruption on earth” of whatever nature violates God’s laws, and therefore the violator “shall be punished by God.”
“Islam cares for the environment in every sense of the word and in all its aspects whether in relation to the earth and the laws dealing with it or with man’s relation to it as its owner, custodian and protector from the harmful consequences of his vanity. As a consequence, Islam has encouraged scientific environmental research,” the MILF leader said. (Edd K. Usman)
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