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Source: Battle of Jolo (1974)

The battle of Jolo, also referred to as the burning of Jolo or the siege of Jolo, was a military confrontation between the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the government of the Philippines in February 1974 in the municipality of Jolo, in the southern Philippines.
It is considered one of the key early incidents of the Moro insurgency in the Philippines, and led numerous Moro leaders to resist martial law under Ferdinand Marcos.
MNLF forces initially managed to control the municipality, except the airport and an adjacent military camp. Government forces led by the 14th Infantry Battalion managed to regain control of the town. The United States military also reportedly participated according to both government and MNLF officials.
Jolo had a population divided into three groups, Muslim (Moro), Chinese and Christian. The Philippine military which burned Jolo in 7-8 February 1974 killed 20,000 civilians.
Mixed Chinese-Tausug people (Lanang) engaged in business and moved to Jolo since the Sulu Sultanate. One man named Mario who survived in 1974 Jolo burning identified as a Christian Tausug and was of Chinese descent. He said "We have a Chinese community, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. My father was a member of the Chinese Chamber. The Chinese community [in Jolo] had a Chinese School … that was the Sulu Tong Jin school. My grandfather was one of the pioneers of that school. He came from China. So, he went to Jolo and married my grandmother, who was a Muslim. But I’m not a Muslim. I’m a Catholic." Tausug in Jolo denied there was any religious sectarianism or hatred before the 1974 burning of the city by the Philippines. MNLF member Khalifa used to have the rosary in his house along with images of Catholic saints and in elementary school he went to church services. They prayed the Lord is with thee, Hail Mary full of Grace and the Rosary. Another Muslim Tausug said “ Jolo was very beautiful. The relationship between Muslims and Christian was extraordinary … there ’ s no discrimi-nation. There ’ s no religious disparity. There were intermarriages among Muslims and Christians, ”. Since there was a large Chinese community in Jolo, it was called "Little Hong Kong" by a Tausug named Muhammad. Omar, another Tausug Muslim said “ The Chinese sold products from Malaysia and Indonesia. If they saw something that is pro 󿬁 table, they would make it their business. ”
In Jolo politics, the pure Muslims, Chinese and Christians serving as councilors in Jolo were categorised according to Muslim, Chinese or Christian identity but the Chinese-Moro mestizo Tuchay Tan's group identification was left unclear.
An MNLF member named Khalifa who lived in Jolo said that before the war "The Christians and Muslims had a good relationship with each other. As a matter of fact, my friends were mostly Christians. I also attended church services when I was an elementary student. We had so many santos and santas (images of saints) in our house. We prayedthe rosary, the Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. “ Blessed is thy among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. ” We prayed like that before their image,what the Muslims called idols."
Samuel Kong Tan wrote that he was familiar with MNLF members and their ideology and he reprimanded G. Carter Bentley's review of Samuel Kong Tan's work in "Historical Perspective on the Muslim Armed Struggle? (Critical Review of Samuel Tan's The Filipino Muslim Armed Struggle, 1900-1972), G. Carter Bentley. Bentley had assumed that all Moros practiced sharia and prohibited intermarriage of non-Muslim men with Muslim women and that MNLF was an Islamic movement. Samuel Kong Tan, who was a mixed Chinese-Moro mestizo himself, reprimanded Bentley for his errors, reminding him that Moros practiced folk Islam and sharia was not applied in Moro lands and that Moros allowed intermarriage of non-Muslim men with Muslim women, with his own grandparents being a non-Muslim Chinese trader, Kong Bu Wa who married a Moro Muslim woman Latia Jaham. Samuel Kong Tan also said he had personal knowledge of MNLF leaders and that MNLF was not "purely Islamic" unlike what Bentley said.
Samuel Kong Tan mentioned the use of "jihad", Marxist-Leninist program by the MNLF, Nur Misuari, the Sulu movement and the Corregidor Massacre in "The Filipino Muslim Armed Struggle, 1900-1972".