ALAL BIMBANG | Frantz Omar Fanon and Death-and-Rebirth of a Sulu-Moro mujahidat

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) as Kumander Panun in Sulu. 

“Panun” in Sinug means ‘companion.’ Prophet of Islam is always spoken in the same voice as with his ‘companions’, so a ‘panun’ is somewhat always connected with prophets and martyrs, companionship, and a mission. 

But Hadji Awing Alidain lived in the obscurity of his own self-veiling and un-disclosure, but he was well-loved by his comrades. The official FB Page of Moro National Liberation Front – Members of OIC, PUIC is quoted in a tribute saying: 

“Commander Panon’s distinguished career spanned decades, marked by pivotal roles in security, military operations, and relentless advocacy for the Bangsamoro cause.

“…(He) was among the pioneers who received training at the OCSA (Organization of Islamic Cooperation Special Action Force) in Libya in 1975, an experience that laid the foundation for his lifelong commitment. He utilized this expertise serving prominently in the NASCOM (National Security Command) under the leadership of Hji. Jul-amri. His most crucial role involved serving as a vital member of Inner Security for the founding Chairman Misuari during profoundly critical periods, including the administrations of Presidents Cory Aquino and Fidel V. Ramos (FVR). Throughout Chairman Misuari’s “Maas” time, Commander Panon remained unwavering, never once leaving his post, demonstrating extraordinary courage and sacrifices.

 “…the founding chairman named him Moro Fanon in reference to the influential anti-colonial intellectual Frantz Omar Fanon, a physician and psychiatrist who was a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front—the very organization from which the MNLF drew its name.” —  MNLF Moro National Liberation Front – Members of OIC, PUIC

I have no personal encounter with this man and his remarkable life (and death). But this old mujahidin’s death and the circumstances of his naming and (re)birth as a Moro revolutionary has something in common with my own death-and-rebirth as circumstanced by a name. Of French intellectual and Algerian revolutionary figure, Frantz Omar Fanon. Fanon’s politics of translation and symbolic language fed into my own “cultural translation” and has been a major theory in my dissertation on politics of subalterity and liberation titled “Mbal Alungay Bissala”* (*Quiling, M. 2015. “Mba Alungay Bissala.” Yogyakarta:ICRS. Unpublished).

In developing autoethnographically a ‘third-space’ in decolonization of the subalterns (i.e. Sama Dilaut) of Sulu sea, I borrowed his concept of the “organic intellectual” that Frantz Fanon shared with Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci despite the three decades between them, and also used by Ali Shariati in his “What Is To Be Done’ in the case of Iranian Revolution.”

As the cultural translator, the role of intellectual as interlocutor is strategic in the politics of translation, that, according to Fanon, is to wage the cultural/intellectual revolution. Mao Zedong considers this stage among the important post-revolutionary reconstruction phases.

In our case, in Sulu, a ‘jihadun nafs,’ or greater jihad of interiority and the psychical is necessary self-purificatory process of transformative further‘ becoming,’ that I used the punny term “sayantis dupang”(foolish scientist) that my beloved Inah hja Meriam Allahu yarhamha used to call me, in reference to my scholarly backgrounds as alumnae of prestigious Philippine Science High School, UP Diliman, and the Ateneos (Zamboanga and Manila), perhaps in frustration over why I chose to devote my scholarship and intellectual capacity for the Sama Dilaut (Badjaos) “who could give me nothing in return.” 

As my own transformative self-effacement, indeed, I opted for the utopian, shooting-at-the-moon “suntok sa buwan” defense of sea-nomads’ sovereign rights over Sulu waters.

In 2011, on endowment by Nippon Foundation and the Rockefeller foundation, I devoted my intellectual energy in studies of Philippine sea nomad as public intellectual. It was to be the turning point of my scholarship. To be true to my advocacy, I self-groomed into “sayantis mundu” (pirate scholar) and chose to be  “luwa’an,” an outlier, outcasted like my intellectual clientele. 

I used my academic and scholarly capital holding spaces for the excluded and erased, and enabling the pahriaed and outlawed by hegemonic institutions to penetrate and breach the hypocritical civility of the official, and allowing them to make appearances in the mainstream stage and then, like any pirate into her cove, retreat into obscurity and divest myself of the spectacles of academic titles, actively abstaining from claiming entitlements such as publishing for posterity, and refusing – as act of resistance – the elitist glorification of academic pride and scholarly ego.

This supposed final purging is a spiritual journey. It is a tall order, but the humble aim is not to take or profit from the world. In the epistemic parlance of Islamic spirituality, Sheikh Abdul Qadir al-Jilani prescribes this to those who have taken the Path, the ‘mureeds,’ as suicidal white death and dying to the self as to “die before you die.”

In all practicality, it is the fighting and resisting the fascistic (epistemic violence) and reactionary tendencies of counter-revolutionary intellectualism of the elite borne out of stubborn egotism and narcissism resulting from long-term/deep-seated colonial mentality. Thus, the imperatives of organic intellectual is to decolonize and liberate the community by first liberating ego’s soul as self-reflexive and intersubjective intellectual revolutionary process organically working from within  (i.e. the heart) and in the self (i.e. ego). This is the isthmus or barzakh where the two seas of intellectual movements of Sulu Moro nationalism and the bearers of traditional epistemology of Sulu spirituality meet. 

Subtle but decisive, the Bangsa Sug would call this ultimate nonviolent jihad as “Bunuh Akkal” (war of minds and hearts), essential of which is one waged within as burning of the self-righteousness of intellect.