Why is Rizal a hero, our foremost national hero?

He is our greatest National hero because as a towering figure in the

Propaganda Campaign, he took an “admirable part” in that movement which roughly
covered the period from 1882 to 1896. If we were asked to pick out a single work by a
Filipino writer during this era, which more than any other writing, contributed
tremendously to the formation of Filipino nationality, we shall have no hesitation
choosing Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere (Berlin 1887). It is true that Pedro A. Paterno
published his novel, Ninay in Madrid in 1885;Marcelo H. del Pilar his La Soberanina
Monacal in Articulos Varios, also in Barcelona 1891; and Antonio Luna, his Impresiones
in Madrid in 1893, but none of these books had evoked such favorable and unfavorable
comments comments from friends and foes alike as did Rizal’s Noli.

Typical of the encomiums that the hero received for his novel were those he
received from Antonio Maria Regidor, and Prof, Ferdinand Blumentritt. Regidor, a
Filipino exile of 1872 in London said that, “the book was superior” and that “if Don
Quijote has made its author immortal because he exposed to the world the sufferings of
Spain, your Noli Me Tangere, will bring you equal glory..” Blumentritt after reading
Rizal’s Noli, wrote and congratulated its author, saying among other things: “Your work
as we Germans say, has been written with the blood of heart.. Your work has exceeded
my hopes and I consider myself happy to have been honored with you friendship. Not
only, I but also your country, may feel happy for having in you a patriotic and loyal son. If
you continue so, you will be your people one of those great men who will exercise a
determinative influence over the progress of their spiritual life.

If Rizal’s friends and admirers praised with justifiable and pride the Noli and its
author, his enemies were eaully loud and bitter in attacking and condemning the same.
Perhaps no other work or writing of another Filipino author has, up to this day aroused
as much acrimnius debate not only among our people but also among the reactionary
foreigners as the Noli of Rizal. In the Philippines the heroes novel was attacked and
condemned by a Faculty Committee of a Manila university and by the Permanent
Censorship Commission in 1887. The Committee said that it found the book “heretical,
impious and scandalous to the religious order, and unpatriotic and subversive to public
order, libelous to the Government of Spain and it’s political policies in these Islands”,
while the Commission recommended “that the importation, reproduction and circulation
of this pernicious book in the Islands be absolutely prohibited. Coming down to our time,
during Congressional discussions and hearings on the Rizal (or Noli-Fili) bill in 1956, the
proponents and opponents of the bill also engaged themselves in a bitter and long-
drawn out debate that finally resulted in the enactment of a compromise measure
known as Republic Act 1425.
 Republic Act 1425, otherwise called “Rizal Law” on June 12,1956, and it’s
implementation by the Department of Education awakened greater interest on things
Rizaliana. This law provides that “courses on the life, works and writings of Jose Rizal,
particularly his novels Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, shall be included in the
curricula of all schools, colleges and universities public or private”