(Delivered at the “National Solidarity Conference on Palestine and Call for Peace in the Middle East” by Prof. Elin Anisha Guro, CESE, Chancellor 1, Mindanao State University in Marawi City, on 10 April 2026 at the Acacia Hotel in Davao City)
Assalamo Alaikom warahmatollahi wa barakatoho. May peace and blessings of Allah be with you all. To all our international guests, welcome to the Philippines! Ingoma kano sa kapipiya ginawa. Welcome to Mindanao. I am Elin Anisha C. Guro, a native of Mindanao, is a Meranaw Bangsamoro, born and raised in Marawi City.
I would like to thank and congratulate the conference organizers for holding this important and urgent event in light of the volatile situation in the Middle East. A few days ago, we almost witnessed the annihilation of an entire nation, the obliteration of an ancient civilization, while in Lebanon and Gaza, the killings and genocide continue despite the ceasefire. When the most powerful man on earth announces online that he will exterminate an entire nation, we all become unwilling witnesses and spectators to the horror that unfolds before us in real time. We are justly horrified, and we all know that this did not start on October 7, 2023.
I am sure that other speakers before me can better articulate the present dynamics in the Middle East. Therefore, let me focus my talk on my personal experience regarding this issue as a mother, wife, daughter, an indigenous Muslim woman, a poet, and an academic, and most importantly, as a human.
It is very easy to lose our agency in the enormity of the events and the sheer availability of information, misinformation, and disinformation dumped on us via social media and legacy news in real time that we can hardly do anything but like, react, share, and repost. The volume of posts from those we follow for their content or because we not only support them but agree with them or we feel they speak for us is such that in some cases, we can only skim quickly so we can read or watch the next reel and share the next Lego video from Iran.
We are in the midst of a possible nuclear bombing or World War 3 as the whole world watches and finds it difficult to distinguish real things from reels. At times, AI-generated videos bring us laughter and hold more truth than what the media spouts. Amidst all these sounds and sights, we must not forget that out there, little children are bombed to oblivion, cultural heritage is destroyed, people’s lifelines are cut, mosques, hospitals, synagogues, churches, schools, and universities are not spared. Nowhere is safe, and we wonder what this war is on, if not war on humanity. It is a war on international law, common decency, and humanity.
As a Bangsamoro Muslim woman, I speak for myself and cannot and will not claim that my stand resonates with others with whom I share my religion, affiliation, and work. But I have always stood with the Palestinian cause and now with Iran, not because I am a Muslim or that I am also a Moro woman whose history and experience resonate with that of the Palestinians, but because I am a human being first and foremost. As an academic who has spent her career as a faculty member and university official, the destruction of 80 to 90 percent of the universities and schools in Gaza and the bombing of the girls’ school Shajareh Tayyebeh in Minab, Iran resonate with me.
Not long ago, Mindanao State University in Marawi City, where I work, was forced to close down during the Marawi Siege in 2017 when an ISIS-affiliated group took over Marawi City and held it hostage. From May 23, 2017, until August 22, 2017, the university was forced to close its doors to its students as fighting between that group and the government forces raged on and the city where I grew up was reduced to rubble. My city became reminiscent of Gaza in 2014, and I could not believe that my first online witnessing of the Israeli demolition of Gaza was being replayed in my city.
Like the Palestinians, we fought back to reclaim our university. In a campaign that I spearheaded with the support of MSU alumni all over the world, faculty, students, staff, and ordinary Filipinos and non-Filipinos alike who sympathized with us and supported our campaign to re-open the university and bring back the students, the campaign BALIK MSU: Somombak Tano sa Pantaw a Mareg became the rallying cry and was instrumental to the re-opening of Mindanao State University on August 22, 2017.
Our online campaign, organized and led by ordinary MSUans whose only aim was to counter terrorism and the attack on education by reopening the university, gained support from ordinary people, including non-MSUans, artists, students, vendors, and the media from all over the world. Their material support reminds us that the fight against terrorism, for education, and freedom is everybody’s struggle and concern. Our success came only because so many people rallied to support us.
Those working in the academe should find resonance, if not sympathy, with the plight of our fellow educators anywhere in the world. In the recent war in Gaza, at least 450 academic and administrative staff members were killed. If we aren’t so bothered by the genocide that is happening, then perhaps as academics we are concerned about what can only be termed as educide. As British actor Liam Cunningham says, “Silence is complicity.”
The Power of the Heart
Back in 2017, I was far away from Marawi City when the Siege happened. The innocent and casual question asked by my then 17-year old younger daughter, “Who will fight for us?” made me give up my personal advancement for her sake and for the sake of my alma mater, Mindanao State University and my hometown, Marawi City.
At that time, I and my fellow risk takers were not dreaming big nor were we thinking of responding to the call of our city. We were simply doing our bit, what we can, doing our share, and contributing our efforts and what little we have so that one day we can at least look back and say we did our part. That our campaign suddenly and unexpectedly led to the reopening of MSU was totally unexpected and we are glad we took the risk and we were both stubborn and naïve in our determination to do our part.
The lesson that I learned in light of what is happening anew in a far bigger scale today is that we must continue to do our part in this effort no matter how paltry or how unpopular, alone or with a few, or a together with a larger group. One ripple is more than enough to create an effect.
Many Avenues to help
Most of us have become keyboard warriors. I think we should rename that to mobile warriors because our fight right now is no longer through the keyboards of our laptops but the screens of our mobile phones. After October 7, many businesses in Lanao del Sur raised the Palestinian flags, stickers were put on cars, establishments and cars were painted with the Palestinian flags. Some fund-raised to donate earnings of their sales to Palestinian causes. Project A+ and Ombus Nabulsi Soap are some of the examples who used their small businesses to help Palestinians.
Hirbawi and Palestinian Thobes as Political Statements in Solidarity
Some Meranaws express their solidarity through fashion. They may not send financial support directly but they are comfortable in purchasing Palestinian cultural identity markers such as keffiyeh and thobes.
A group of friends purchased original Hirbawi keffiyeh from Hebron and gathered together to wear our keffiyeh to commemorate World Keffiyeh Day to an audience of none and the world at the same time. Through the possibilities provided by social media, our efforts can have the entire world as the audience, for as long as Meta doesn’t erase, block, or suspend your account which is always a possibility for activists and sympathizers of humanity. I have provided the link if you are interested to watch.
Our family and other families use the occasion of Eid celebrations to use keffiyeh and Palestinian thobes in lieu of the Abayas flooding Marawi markets mostly from Dubai but made in China. We are lucky in the Philippines that we can wear Palestinian cultural identity markers in peace and sport it as fashion statement after Hollywood stars who use the keffiyeh deliberately as a political statement. We may think this is not a visible and huge political statement or a huge support to the cause, but it is. We know that in Palestine, they have resorted to using watermelon images because they cannot even display Palestinian flags. Apart from its being a political statement, it is definitely a viable economic support but please buy authentic hirbawi keffiyehs because you are also supporting a cultural heritage that is in danger of vanishing. Buy authentic Nabulsi soaps to support a centuries-old Palestinian tradition recognized in 2024 as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Surely for culture bearers among us indigenous people, we can identify with fellow indigenous people whose cultural traditions are also in threat of disappearing. While we struggle to interest our younger generation to learn our hand-weaving cultural tradition, the threat to the Palestinian cultural heritage is both intrinsic and extrinsic.
Collective Voice of Meranaws: Sumud Nusantara
I have had the privilege with working with a large number of individual Meranaws and groups in celebrating the International Solidarity Day with the Palestinian People on November 29, 2025. Instead of the usual speeches at rallies, we celebrated through a Family Day because we understand families in Gaza cannot celebrate. Sometimes only an infant or a toddler orphaned with nobody to celebrate with, no idea that she has lost all of her family members. Sometimes an entire multiple generations of family are erased in history. To make our celebration memorable and attract all generations of Filipinos for awareness and information dissemination, we included poster making, poetry-writing, wasiat, and video-making, and kite-flying contests. The competitions attracted participation from Muslims and non-Muslim students from Marawi City to Cebu City.
We have seen the Zionists use all means necessary to control the narrative in this genocide. As supporters of humanity, we should equally employ all means within our expertise and control to counter their narrative and stand as one humanity against genociders, pedophiles, aggressors, and enemies of education, cultural heritage, and freedom. If we can only manage to wear keffiyeh, then let us do so. If we can sponsor contests for consciousness raising among the youth, so be it.
Let me share with you the winner of our video-making contest by a high school student. Here is the link.
Future Directions
Our advocacy is far from being concluded. In fact the most frustrating aspect of our struggle is that while we seem to have reached our wits’ end and being so spent, the enemies of humanity have just leveled up their attacks. No longer hiding in diplomatic language and expanding its scope. Just when we think that there is no crime greater than genocide, we are woken to the information of a bigger and far-ranging network that reaches our Holiest Muslim Site, the Kaaba. Its scope and human depravity are too much to comprehend.
How do we counter such a powerful network and class? To be honest, I wish I can provide an answer that would make a significant dent in what we are fighting for. But here is one thing that I know, as a Meranaw, I know that one tiny ripple in the Lake Lanao is already significant enough to change the waterscape, no matter how temporary it is. All of us creating ripples at the same time will be significant enough.
As Muslims and as activists for humanity, let us keep supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Iran is humbling the world superpowers not because of the superiority of their arms, but because of their capability to impact world economy. Let us all boycott products which support genocide. We know these brands. We use them every day. Boycott and let’s go local and support our economy. Let us not despair as Muslims and let us remember Allah’s promise:
“Indeed, Allah does not allow to be lost the reward of those who do good” (Surah Hud 11:115).
In closing, let me read a snippet of Palestinian poet and martyr Refaat Alareer’s poem: If I Must Die with my translation:
If I must die
Let it bring hope
Let it be a tale
Naino o malab ako
Asara makanggay panginam,
A mabaloya iringa a da khlasan iyan.
Wassalam.
(Elin Anisha Guro is Chancellor 1 at the Mindanao State University in Marawi City)
