‘Tis the season for school graduations. You can tell July is the month for commencement exercises by the horrendous traffic on the national highways with crowds of well-wishers carrying leis of flowers and graduates resplendent in their school togas swelling along the roads, where the numerous parked cars disrupt the travel of motorists.

(There should be a law banning the construction of schools along national highways because of the danger this poses to schoolchildren the disruption of the flow of traffic during the flag ceremony and the ingress and egress of the students.)

Due to the frequent invitations to be a commencement speaker, I have developed a template message that I repeat in schools where the students are predominantly Muslim. After congratulating the students for reaching a monumental milestone in their life’s journey, the parents for having shelled out hard-earned money, and the school faculty and administrators, I start by presenting the current state of our society that is being torn by fratricidal conflict and swept over by the evils of prejudice, bigotry, distrust, sectarian division, social enmity and cultural differences.

To the Muslim graduates, I never fail to warn them of fake Muslim charlatans masquerading as advocates for an Islamic caliphate, not dissimilar to the zeitgeist during the lifetime of the Prophet Mohammad, Peace and Blessings be upon Him. The tragedy that befell Marawi City is too recent to forget and the devastation at so-called ground zero stares at passersby. The holocaust-like ruins could be attributed principally to those advocates of violent Islam who in truth are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

The destruction would not have been that much if the residents who had earlier noticed the black-clad non-residents who came in dribs and drabs proselytizing a kind of creed that was deviant from pure Islam had spoken up.

I urge the graduates not to let their guard down because the enemy lurks in the dark through the sleeper cells that the uniformed services had discovered in the province and they should be part of the sentinels of the state who should report pronto any suspicious presence of non-residents.

As they leave the portals of their school for a new adventure, I tell them to face the future with the same passion and hard work they showed while studying as these are keys to success in life. I wish them well and the best of luck with the challenge to be catalysts for change for the better and to be effective instruments of society in the campaign for the healing of past social pains brought about by sectarian differences and other social malaise.

Anyway, last 4 July I was invited to be the commencement speaker by the Jamiatu Dansalan Al-Islamia Foundation Inc. on the occasion of their 5th Commencement Exercises in Marawi City. The college is one of the oldest and most progressive schools of learning in Marawi City that was founded by the late Sultan Rashid Sampaco and is now run by the Sampaco siblings led by Sultan Nasser Disomangcop Sampaco. The college churns out hundreds of graduates who are successful in their fields of discipline.

This school year, they had 130 graduates mostly in the field of nursing which has become the specialized discipline of the college. Its main campus was one of the hardest hit during the 2017 Marawi Siege but it is fast recovering with campuses outside Marawi City like the one in nearby Iligan City. Despite the damage caused during the Marawi Siege, it has maintained its high standard as one of the sought-after schools in the province.

The school authorities could not have chosen a better theme, i.e., “Embracing Unity in Diversity with Excellence and Resilience,” a message most profound and appropriate for the time. This dovetailed with my advocacy and squarely suited the theme of other graduation speeches I had delivered in the past which mirror a society wracked by disunity, distrust and social enmity which needs to be repaired through education.

amb_mac_lanto@yahoo.com