Paying Respect to Independence of the "Invisible" Muslim Filipino
Back in December when the author first arrived in the Philippines, his spoke of Muslims in Malaysia at his first dinner with his real estate agent in the local shopping mall. The first reaction of the real estate agent, a good Catholic Filipino, born and brought up in an exclusively Catholic environment, was to express his detestation of Muslim food. "Those Muslims are so filthy...I cannot eat their food...I'm afraid I might get sick." His straightforward condescension toward the country's Muslim minority (less than 5%, concentrated in the deep-south island of Mindanao) was simply shocking.