Controlling radicalisation

The Swedish non-socialist alliance government plans to establish state-financed schools for future Imams and the objective behind this, is to put a brake on radicalisation. The media articles in the Swedish dailies reporting on Education Minister Lars Leijonborg's proposal indicate that, this would be a move not only to equalize one's opportunity towards priesthood, whether catholic or islam, but neutralise the inflow of radicalisation from outside.

I reserve my opinion on this plan for later. When I was in the lower education in the Philippines, catholicism was part of the curriculum but the protestant pupils were allowed to leave the room, if they wanted to. Philippines is a 85 percent Catholic nation since Portuguese discoverer Ferdinand Magellan planted the Cross upon his arrival in the southern city of Cebu in the 15th century. Since then, various religious orders came to the unnamed archipelago, settled in and begun its task of putting social and political order. The Philippines became a colony of Spain for the next 400 years.

Catholicism in the Philippines has its supporters and opponents, especially in politics. But it holds the heart of a nation where the Catholic religion has become "the opium of the people".While it preaches on moral order and decency, it also opposes liberal reforms to control an exploding population growth. I remember however, a glorious period in the long reign of Catholicism in the Philippines. It was during the Marcos dictatorship era - from 1972 to 1986, to be exact. The whole Filipino population cowered in fear as Marcos and his military henchmen ravaged the countrysides in particular, in a war against communists and Muslim separatist guerillas. In the absence of a free press, members of various religious orders - priests and nuns started an underground press to monitor human rights abuses. Many of these reports reached the international press through investigative journalists.

The theology of liberation which began in Latin-America came to the Philippines and inspired the creation of the Church of the Poor. While the official church ( the Catholic bureaucracy managed from Vatican) tried to balance its relationship with the Marcos regime through its policy of "constructive criticism", the Church of the Poor was nurtured by the priests and nuns who stood by the side of human rights victims. Through all my travels in near and far interiors of the country, poor and innocent victims of state terrorism had only the Church of the Poor for support and consolation. Justice was hard to find in Philippine courts where judges were political appointees.

What I am driving at in this article is that, radicalisation and fanaticism are both bred in poverty and injustice. For as long as these two factors - and all their unentended consequences are not addressed, no amount of moderating influence can come from education through government-sponsored schools. The peasants in the countrysides, the urban poor, the displaced ethnic groups will build their own schools, wherever... and whenever, the system of equality and justice fail to function.