JOLO, Sulu (MindaNews / 30 November) — On November 24, 2025, an aged Bangsamoro Army mujahideen quietly passed away in the obscurity of an undisclosed village in Sulu. He was known to many in the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)
(Opening message of Mucha-Shim L. Quiling, representative of the NCCA-NCLA Executive Council Western Mindanao and Sulu Archipelago at the opening of Tahik Anugpat: 1st Sulu National Literary Conference held in Sulu at the Notre Dame of Jolo College last week). ALHAMDULILLAH!
JOLO, Sulu (MindaNews / 19 October) — The death of Grand Mufti of Region IX and Palawan came as a big catastrophe akin to an earthquake that a mild one indeed followed 38 minutes after his last breath that day
JOLO, Sulu (MindaNews / 18 April) – Nora Aunor’s passing marks the end of my sister Rose and my generation’s fangirling and stalking the brightest Star of all. Her album covers were the FaceBook of our time, her shy insecure
JOLO, Sulu (29 October / MindaNews) — October, the Indigenous Peoples Rights Month, is soon to close. This year’s 2024 International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (IDWIP) theme was “Protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation and
Salamat Mauludun Nabiy 1446HSalamat 634th Sulu Year of Governance 2024CE MAULUDUN NABI or commemorating the Islamic prophet’s birth is not to be politicized let alone weaponized, while a bureaucratic institution celebrating its more than sixth centennial of political milestone with
Last of two parts JOLO, Sulu (MindaNews/12 August) — Endemic is the art of movement in Sulu archipelago that the various ethnicities in the region, having each their own localized rendition of the dance, laid claim respectively, naming it according
1st of two parts JOLO, Sulu (MindaNews / 11 August) — Among the current Sama dance masters, two of them looming huge and brilliant in their respective stages, are Earl Francis C. Pasilan of Lamitan City in the province of
JOLO, Sulu (MindaNews/ 04 August) — The Sama Bajau or Sama Dilaut have been referred to by various authors such as Fr. Jose Arong (1962), Fr. Pelagio Mandi (Juaini, 2003), Richard Stone (1962, 1974), and others, as Luwa’an, generally taken
“In the figure of the witness of a postcolonial modernity we have another wisdom: it comes from those who have seen the nightmare of racism and oppression in the banal daylight of the everyday. They represent an idea of action
Panyam and Sindul. Hauled out from the kitchen of pelagic people of Sulu, what do these two delicacies have in common? Both are made out of rice, and both are ritual foods perennially present as signatures in the periodic observances
Among the highlights of the Oceanic and Southeast Asian Navigators (OCSEAN)* 2023 International Conference were the conversations and dialogues navigating the seas between science and metaphysics. But, wait, do I hear condescending voices doubting, arguing that one has to be enrolled in
JOLO, Sulu (MindaNews / 28 March) — Due to its physical topography as archipelagic and its geographical location as having dispersed island municipalities, much of Sulu has never been accessed and is virtually unknown, therefore remaining to be boggling the imagination
JOLO, Sulu (MindaNews / 28 March) — The road to new normal Sulu is paved with ringing laughter and banter of giggly pre-teen boys in bright colored oversized jerseys of vermillion yellow and turquoise blue on whose breasts are announced
(Read at the First International Sama Summit at the Western Mindanao State University in Zamboanga City on 18 March 2023 by Mucha-Shim Lahaman Quiling of the Sulu Current Research Institute – Sharif Ul Hashim Inc. in Jolo, Sulu. The Summit
ZAMBOANGA CITY (MindaNews / 04 June) — Local stranded persons house-arrested for already more than 70 days are desperate to leave Zamboanga City, hoping to be relieved of its strict Quarantine protocols. Most are already horrified and scared of the
ZAMBOANGA CITY (MindaNews / 15 September) — Zamboanga is inundated by the overflowing tears of river Nawan because it has broken its covenant and lost its link to the sacred line of its sharifin ancestors. Here is Sambuwangan’s tarsila: Datu
BONGAO, Tawi-tawi (MindaNews / 11 August) — The prodigious son of Agosainog, Pilandok, climbs the peak of Bud Bongao and combs the shores of Simunul island, and there he meets the progeny of ‘Mbo Tuan Anjawtal, the indic venerable ancestor,
by Mucha-Shim L. Quiling (with Rizam Habibon – MSU-TCTO, BS History graduating student 2019) TAWI-TAWI (MindaNews / 26 March) — My first excursion into Tawi-Tawi’s capital town of Bongao brought me searching for a kadday pagkahawahan, a native coffeeshop. My
My Dear People of Sulu Archipelago and My Sama Homesea. I am going on a voyage that all of us must take at least once in our lifetime. From 2000 to 2010, I had gone on similar missions to the
Aim for the Heart. To make that part malfunction, tell it to the Commander in Chief, to shoot at the heart For women who fight, fight for love That women die in the battlefield not as women But as humanity
ZAMBOANGA CITY (MindaNews / 18 October) — At the press conference announcing the death of the Marawi Siege leaders Isnilon Hapilon of the Abu Sayyaf and Omar Maute in Marawi City last Monday, Defense Secretary said they “got the support
BONGAO, Tawi-tawi (MindaNews / 21 July) — Identity cards. Checkpoints. Bombing and shelling. Warrantless arrest and detention of jamaa tableegh who could have spared themselves had they shaved fast enough. Two of such religious missionaries claiming to be Sabahan and
[Religiously Plural, Cosmopolitan and a Sama (Part 2)] Flowers are born too even in precarity, cross-pollinated from seeds and pollens windblown or sea drifted. Their originary seedpods are clipped tightly in the beaks or restlessly balanced in the crooks of
Is Bai Tan real or fiction? But maybe when I meet a real one, she shall be a Sama, specifically, a Sama min-dilaut. No, not going by the royal-sounding Bai, who lives a land-away min-danaw. She is “rayang-rayang-rayOnnng!”, but not
BONGAO, Tawi-tawi (MindaNews / 07 Nov) – This day is yearly celebrated in the Philippines Muslim region of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) as the anniversary of the coming of Karim’ul Makhdum and the building of his mosque
JOGJAKARTA (MindaNews/16 January) — Alhamdulillah… it is heart-rending to see how our elders are once again putting themselves bodily on the line. This could only be for a worthy cause. In sha Allah. The memory of Zamboanga Crisis and the
TARAKAN CITY, East Kalimantan, Indonesia (MindaNews/20 March) – A friend and Tausug blogger, Calliter (http://lupahsug.wordpress.com/), recently wrote a beautiful and delightfully graphic story of taghuri (kites) of Sulu and he pointed quite dramatically to the similitude of tradition of kite
