Recently, a young girl who converted from Islam was forced to pray Islamic prayers in a classroom by her teacher in order to pass a class, who told her to forget about Jesus.
A young Christian schoolgirl in the Philippines recalled how teachers forced her to pray a Muslim prayer in order to pass a class, and ignored her explanations that she now prays to Jesus instead.
Persecution watchdog group Open Doors USA said on Wednesday that the Christian girl, Jen-Jen, had been attending a Vocational Bible School in the southernmost region of the Philippines, where she learned Bible stories and listened to the pastor's teachings on salvation and Christ.
At her regular school, however, she described how authority figures looked down on her faith and forced her to go against it.
"Although she performed well in nearly every subject, for instance, Jen-Jen encountered pressure in Arabic class where the teacher required students to memorize a Muslim prayer in order to pass," Open Doors reported.
"Despite being uncomfortable, Jen-Jen learned the words of the prayer to recite to the teacher. But rather than asking Jen-Jen to say the words in an oral test, the teacher later announced students would be required to go to a mosque and pray the prayer aloud."
The schoolgirl and another Christian classmate told the teacher that they now pray to Jesus instead, and therefore can not pray in a mosque. But the teacher ignored the request and told them to turn away from Christ.
"You must comply or else you will fail in this subject. You should revert to your Islamic faith," the teacher reportedly said.
Jen-Jen was then forced to complete the long walk to the mosque while wearing a traditional Muslim dress and veil covering, despite burning up with a fever.
The schoolgirl got so sick, however, that she lost consciousness and blacked out. Even as she came back to, the teacher refused to excuse her from listening to the entirety of the Muslim imam's message.
"Since the day at the Mosque, Jen-Jen has been pressured to conform to many other Muslim practices, such as fasting during the month of Ramadan. In addition to requirements from the school staff, other students have also teased and bullied Jen-Jen because of her faith, sometimes bombarding her as she walked to and from school and pushing her or insulting her," Open Doors added.
Jen-Jen, who is now in eighth grade, still does not speak ill of her Muslim teachers and classmates, however, and she continues to attend church, with the goal of one day becoming a teacher herself.
"I want to help children like me. I want to show them the love of Jesus that I experienced. Also, I want to help my people read and write so that they will also read the Bible for themselves," the girl said.
While the Philippines is not listed on Open Door's World Watch List of countries where Christians face high persecution, and even though Muslims make up only five percent of the Catholic-majority nation, there are certain areas where Christians themselves are a minority. (source)
The article does not say it, but this story took place in Mindanao, the southernmost island of the Philippines that constitutes approximately 20% of the total population of the archipelago and also home to the nation's largest Muslim population. The presence of Islam in Mindanao is not a recent arrival, but has existed there since the 14th century having been introduced to the area by Muslim missionaries from what is today the nations of Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. When the Spanish arrived in the 16th century and brought the Catholic Faith to the Philippines, Mindanao saw some of the heaviest fighting between the Spanish and the natives, as many in that area were Muslims.
Due to the American influence in the Philippines following the unprovoked wars of aggression against Spain and her territories at the end of the 19th century and historical distain for Catholicism, American Protestants sent missionaries into the Philippines to try to Protestantize the already Christian Filipino people. The first place targeted by the Protestant missionaries was none other than Mindanao.
Now Spanish Catholic missionaries had been working at converting the Muslims for centuries in Mindanao, as it came with much difficulty due to the nature of Islam in society. However, steady progress was being made in doing this. The American presence in the Philippines introduced misisonaries who actively sowed dissent against the Catholic Faith and attempted to undermine the Church's presence in the region with their own due not just to religious differences, but a nationalistic sense of superiority over non-Protestant Americans. The Spanish were presented as "non-Christians" and and "evil" that had to be "cleansed" from the islands and replaced with American Imperialism. As the Mindanao Journal notes:
With the coming of the American "missionaries" also came American corporatism, which as true today as then, used the local conflicts to take property and resources from the locals, displacing the native populations while at the same time building resentment against everything associated with the newcomers, including their religious beliefs.
As Wikipedia notes:
The Americans used their control over property and land laws to let American corporations and Christian settlers take over native resources and land and depriving them of self-governance after eliminating the sovereignty of the Moro Sultanates in the west, and ignoring Moro requests for their own independence, with the Philippine government continuing the colonization program after independence leading to a big number of Filipino settlers, consisting mostly of Ilokanos, Cebuanos, and Illongos, streaming into Moro territories in western and central portions of Mindanao, and thus led to native Moros making moves for independence and armed struggle against the Philippines. The natives, especially those who refused to convert to Christianity, became victims of land-grabs by the migrants who were promised big and fertile lands by the government.
Massive settlement by Filipino Christian colonists continued after independence was granted and rule passed to Christian Filipinos from the Americans, and land disputes the Christian settlers had with the Muslim and tribal natives broke out in violence; eventually the colonization, along with the Jabidah massacre, led to the formation of the Moro National Liberation Front and Moro armed insurgency against Philippine rule. Because of this strife between the two groups, The Philippine government encouraged Filipino Christians in Mindanao to form militias called Ilaga to counter resistances by the Moros. The Ilaga engaged in massacres and atrocities and were responsible for Manili massacre of 65 Moro Muslim civilians in a Mosque on June 1971. (source)
This pattern should be very familiar, as it is taking place today in Europe with the rise of the new National Socialism today as with the Nazis and Communists of the past. The National Socialists then and now use race, the Communists use class and economics, and the Americans use "freedom and democracy" and "(Evangelical) Christian missions" much in the same way- as a tool for social and political leverage against another nations as a way to create a social vacuum they can use to advance themselves at the expense of another.
What the Muslims in the Philippines did is that instead of continuing to become Christians, as they had been slowly doing, they turned against Christianity because they saw it as an extension of the abuses that the Americans were inflicting on their island. The result was the gradual consolidation of a stronger Muslim community with a deeper hatred for their Christian neighbors and thus setting up a future conflict. This is not to say that conflict would not have existed today, or that Islam would be eliminated from Mindanao today if this had not happened, as missionary efforts have been ongoing for centuries in Mindanao. It is to say that what has happened today is that much of the progress of the past has been reversed by men who seek to sow division for their own benefit without any care for others, which in this case happens to be the Americans in the ongoing quest for empire.
Recently the conflict between Muslims and Christians has flared up in the Philippines, despite Muslims being such a small percent of the population. As Ted noted:
This should be a real concern, given the fact that the US government murdered Saddam and Gaddafi, whose deaths have led to the utter anarchy in both Iraq and Libya. Is it possible that the US government is facilitating the violence in Mindanao? Its entirely possible, given all of the fundamentalist elements that the US could use to cause instability in the region.
“What’s happening in Mindanao is no longer a rebellion of Filipino citizens,” Solicitor General Jose Calida told a news conference. “It has transmogrified into invasion by foreign terrorists, who heeded the call of the ISIS to go to the Philippines if they find difficulty in going to Iraq and Syria,” he said, using the acronym for Islamic State. Duterte, in a speech to the military, spoke of Caucasian people entering the Philippines and percolating jihadist ideology. There is obvious foreign influence in this conflict. The CIA financed the Taliban, they also backed the Muslim terrorists who murdered Gaddafi, and the Americans are currently supporting the “rebels” in Syria to overthrow Assad.
Why is the US backing up jihadist rebels in Syria? To remove any preponderating Russian influence in that country. Duterte is getting close to China and Russia, and it would make sense that the US would want to support the jihadist cause in the Philippines as a means of punishment and neutralizing Russian and Chinese political leverage. Why are the Americans supporting Japan? Because they want to use Japan against Russia and China. Why did the Americans take down the Berlin Wall? To strengthen Germany against Russia.
So, I am suspecting Western influence in the Mindanao conflict. (source)
The more things change the more they stay the same. America is not a Christian nation, but an atheist nation who sees herself as the standard for distinguishing between right and wrong. American "Christianity" and "freedom" is our version of what the völkisch ideal is to Germany is to what the collective is to the former Soviet Union. It is a worldly struggle for power at all costs that cares nothing for the souls of men but sees them as animals to be herded, fed, and slaughtered as these other nations, who envision themselves as farmers, do so for their personal benefit.
Now it is also important to note that the problems and principles mentioned here are not uniquely "American" in that they have been practiced by various peoples and nations throughout history. What makes the American situation unique is not only that they are the ones doing this, but that America has been able to practice the same principles of the past more perfectly and over a greater area and more people with more efficient tools. It is no different that the eugenics practiced by the Germans in World War II- while the ideas came out of the American Eugenicist movement, the National Socialists of Germany simply took those same ideas and reapplied them in a more efficient way with better tools. The essence of the evil does not change, just the way is it applied against others.
So looking at this story, it is very sad that this girl, who is a convert from Islam to some form of Protestant Christianity, was compelled to do what she did. However, one must also be aware of the historical context of the area, since often times as is the case in Mindanao, many problems today is the fruit of an often unmentioned but twisted, difficult, and unfortunate past.
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