MANILA -- It so happened that I arrived at Manila airport just one day after a bomb explosion there that, fortunately, created more worries than victims and was quickly characterized as "an oversize pyrotechnic." Still, it doesn't take long for a visitor to the Philippines to realize that this "pearl of the Orient seas" is unusually tense. The airport bomb was not a one-time incident. It and several similar incidents recently cannot be taken lightly: History shows that Muslim grievances in the south spawned bloody retaliations against Spaniards in the north during the 18th century. That is why the issue of Mindanao -- and the struggle to establish an autonomous Muslim state there -- dominates life in the Philippines today.

Ordinary Filipinos refer to Mindanao with sadness and anxiety, although not, interestingly enough, with irritation. Everyone seems conscious of the devastating effect of the conflict on tourism in particular and the national economy in general, and everyone condemns the illegitimacy of hostage takings. There are no calls for revenge, however. Some Christians even acknowledge the need of a restless south to generate greater interest in its problems.

Failure to acknowledge this need goes back a long way in the Philippines, as historian Teodoro Agoncillo points out in his "History of the Filipino People": "The various governments of the Philippines, from the Spanish period down to recent time, had already neglected the Muslim . . ."; to the extent that the latter "becomes antagonistic to any attempt to bring him to the Christian society's fold, for he believes that the attempt is made not because he is loved, but because his conversion to the Christian way of life is necessary. . . ." Compare that with the remark made by an unnamed U.S. senator in 1926: "The Moros are essentially a different race from the Filipinos, (and) for hundreds of years there has existed bitter racial and religious hatred between the two."