Edd Usman of Manila Bulletin with updates from Samira Gutoc of YMPN
 
It used to hold visitors in awe. But Manila's grandest Islamic structure, the Golden Mosque, has become a sight for sore eyes throughout the years.

A demolition of "illegal" structures, including an Islamic school and religious quarters, at the Golden Mosque compound in Quiapo, Manila, to be carried out by the City of Manila, will push through today unless the Tableegh religious group and others will be able to get a court order stopping it.

A Muslim military official said an order from the court is the only way the demolition could be stopped.
Other sources from the Islamic community in Metro Manila said tableegh groups were set to visit Mayor Alfredo S. Lim at his office early morning today to request him to stop or defer the demolition.

By IslamOnline.net & Newspapers

"[We want to use our own skills] to uplift the plight of the marginalized Muslim communities," said Gutoc.

CAIRO — Armed with knowledge and skills, a like-minded group of Filipino young Muslim intellectuals who retuned to their homeland Mindanao after pursuing education are joining hands to nurture peace and stability in the disputed Muslim-majority region.

“We could not remain apathetic to the plight of our communities," engineer Don Loong, a member of Young Moro Professional Network (YMPN), told the Philippine Star Monday, June 22.

Founded in 2000, the group joins some 200 highly-educated young Muslims who returned to their restive province of Mindanao after studying elsewhere in the country's best schools or overseas.

By Samira Gutoc , YMPN (19 June 2009)

With the first victory of a Filipino in bagging the coveted Cannes Film Festival Best Director award (for a police murder drama, KINATAY), here's hoping more filmmakers show uncovered stories of Mindanao and the poverty bred by evacuation. A Cebu-based theatre artist Rogelio Braga is slowly making his mark in collaborating with playwrights to write about the 1970 massacres in Lanao areas through the eyes of  migrants-turned working-class individuals in Manila (www.virginlabest.com). 

Bishop Ulama Conference's (BUC) Hamid Barra of the Ulama League of the Philippines defends the BUC from suspicions of government intervention in the BUC as it conducts "authentic dialogues" in the communities after a failed Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) and stalled peacetalks. BUC's recent 300 plus consultations nation-wide on the peace process is and will always be religious leaders-led, Barra noted.