Muslim men regard their guns as an extension of their manhood, and itÂ’s the reason they can live without their wives and children but not without their guns, a neophyte lawmaker says.
Basilan Rep. Wahab Akbar says guns are an obsession with Muslim men. “That’s how they love their guns,” he said in a recent privilege speech. “Any action that would remove their guns from them is an insult.”
Muslim men carry their guns everywhere but find it hard cradling their own children on their laps, he says. “Every morning they see to it that their guns are clean and ready, but they do not bother wiping their children’s dirty noses,” Akbar said.
And many Muslims in Mindanao are sympathetic to the Abu Sayyaf, a murderous kidnap-for-ransom group. “I would claim that 80 percent of the Muslims are sympathetic to the Abu Sayyaf,” Akbar said.
He denies he was a co-founder of the group along with its slain chieftain Abdurajak Janjalani, whose idea of a separate Islamic state he describes as “unrealistic.” But he stands by his position that the July 10 killing of 14 Marines in Basilan and the beheading of 10 of them were the result of the military’s “intrusion and transgression” of MILF territory in Al-Barka town.
He opposes a planned military offensive in Basilan to get the Marines’ killers, saying “pursuing peace through war cannot be a solution and can never be employed as an effective means to an end.” He says the men who killed the Marines as they were looking for a kidnapped Italian priest are members of a “lost command” aping the Abu Sayyaf. |