José Rizal and the Moro

If you're to do a Ranaū-Iranūn translation of the Noli Me Tángere, how would the title be?

In the late 80s in Jeddah, I had listened to one of Ahmed Deedat's lectures titled "Cruci-fiction." He said that when Mary Magdalene couldn't see through Jesus's disguise as a gardener, the latter saved her from the confusion and sang out her name: "Mary!" And "mad with happiness" (realizing her Master was still alive when everyone had given him up for dead) she "lunges forward to grab him," but Jesus stopped her on her tract: "Touch me not!" (John 20:17). Why Jesus would not let her to touch him is made plain by the second-half of the verse. "For I am not yet ascended unto my Father." Among the Jews, this is a working-man's idiom intoning: "Hey dude, I ain't dead yet!"

Deedat went on to add that touching him would be excruciatingly painful, given the "violent, physical and emotional ordeal" he had gone through. I venture to add that Jesus was in a state of ablution at the time Mary found him, so it would invalidate it if he was touched by one of the opposite sex (whom one is marriageable). So my take on the title is: "Di ako'ngka mbatalī."

(c) 2015 artwork N. Sharief

For its sheer title alone, the Noli spoke volumes. Anyone caught with a copy of it was persecuted. Rizal foresaw this, and goaded by Father Bardorf and Pastor Ullmer while he was finishing up the novel in Germany, he made some last-minute surgery of it to tone down what the priests thought were "outbursts."

BBL or no BBL, this is becoming an anomaly. Because the Moro in the South had been forcibly woven into the Philippines, so too we were compelled to swallow everything about our national heroes, hook, line and sinker (sans the bait!). Against our will—and our bitter opposition—our generation were made to ape everything and memorize dates that remotely relate to our existence, the most unpalatable of which is getting "discovered" by Magellan, which the innocently and happily naïve Yoyoy Villame keeps reminding us in his song that indeed it was on March 16, 1521. What is continually glossed over is that our Iranūn ancestors had centuries before been routinely riding the monsoon to Zaynun (Ceylon, now Sri Lanka) and even as far as Madagascar (where the famous Ilang-ilang is mass produced till now as a perfume for export).

We can't even say that Rizal inspired us to "revolt" against the Spaniards, because we've been at it from day one. And we were not even revolting; we're just keeping the enemy from encroaching into our turf.

So what has Rizal said about us? (Go ahead, google all you can 'till you drop, and then claw your way back here when you have your yield). Practically, nada. If there had been, people like Ambeth Ocampo and other self-professed experts on Rizal would have jumped at the opportunity and deluge us with their trumpeting free-flowing narratives to show us and say: "Gee, Rizal cares for you people too!"

This is sad. the most you would find is a crumb of a poem entitled The Combat: Urbiztondo, Terror of Jolo. This obscure piece didn't figure among Rizal's famous works because there's nothing redeeming about it. Judged today, it is even counterproductive in the way of nationalism and self-healing (not to mention that it employed tired adjectives, etc.). The poem celebrated the Basque Antonio de Urbiztondo, the Governor-General, heaping on him the title "Lion of Castille" in mythical proportions. And in the fading stanza, poor "Sultan Muhammad" of Jolo had to flee for his life with his tail between his legs.

But let's not censure the good doctor harshly. The piece was written by Rizal when he was an impressionable kid attending the Jesuit-run Ateneo Municipal de Manila. He was just too eager to please his sponsors. A vast tract of knowledge was opening up before him and he was insatiable. That he was able to put up his novels many years later only spoke of the nature of writing. Writing comes with experience, what you have gone through life. That's the reason why that while we could talk about prodigy pianists and chessplayers and the like, we could not talk about prodigy novelists. In the case of Rizal, it's the accumulated frustration and the matured outlook that had allowed the dam to finally burst which culminated into his twin novels, the Noli and the Fili.

Had his outlook on the Moro matured then along with what he had gone through? Judging by the two novels, it seemed that with Rizal the Moro had occupied pretty little space in his thoughts. Again, nada.

If it is any consolation, the version of the Noli Me Tángere released to the public was actually a watered-down version of what he originally wrote. In Germany, the last leg in the writing of his novel, he was cautioned to tone down the content of his novel, so he did so. We could only speculate what items he had left out. Even then, Rizal suffered a lot more than the characters of his novel, which eventually cost him his life.

But let's not dismiss Rizal outright. For one, let's remind ourselves that Rizal went out on a limb to learn classical Arabic and that speaks volumes. Millions of Filipinos in our age had gone to the Middle East (thanks to the oil boom), but how many of them have a good command of fuṣḥá, let alone write?

Between 1889 and 1890, excited by the opening of the Suez Canal, Rizal spent a good deal of what precious funds he had to travel to Europe in his quest to research the pre-colonial setup of the Philippines. He suspected that his country used to be economically prosperous and politically sound to deal with dignity and aplomb with the neighboring countries. He believed that the native population held arts and literature worthy of their generation. He intuited that the Spaniards were playing fast and loose with the minds of the natives. That's why he was seeking a more independent source. Alas, given the state of the world at the time, the best the good doctor could muster, holed up in London's British Museum, was Antonio Morga's work.

Rizal was a fair man. If he were alive today, he would oppose the wrongdoings being done to the Moro.  One blogger, De AnDA (not a Moro), for instance, was so unusually ruffled to remind everyone that the entire province of Rizal was once called the province of Morong:

"They renamed the province after Rizal (as if he needs more publicity). It baffles me why they changed the name? Morong refers to its former inhabitants, the Moros, said to have lived in the peninsula’s mountainous parts. Could this be the reason why? Were they (Americans and Filipino leaders in the early 1900′s) uncomfortable with such a name?"

Yes if Rizal were alive today, he wouldn't be too happy and oppose such a bill and restore the name.

So has that Moro been in Rizal's mind even in a peripheral sense? Ah, in a last ditch to save his skin, he knew that the Moro could be counted upon in dire need, and in a thinly veiled hint, he alluded to it in his defense addressed to the Spanish Court Martial on the charges of sedition foisted on him: "…If I still had had intentions of political activity, I might have gotten away even in the vintas of the Moros whom I knew in the settlements…"

Clutching at straws?

I'm not giving up. If you dear readers hang on, I might be tempted to divulge early some original research I've been saving for a book…