A world Without Islam pdfdrive com

The Uyghurs
The story is entirely different when it comes to the other half of the Muslim
population that is not ethnically Han at all, but primarily Turkic (along with a
small group of Iranian-language Tajiks). Of these groups, the Uyghurs are
overwhelmingly the largest, numbering some ten million people and living in
Xinjiang province. As with Russian Muslims absorbed into an expanding
Russian Empire, the Uyghurs came to be included in China primarily due to the
expansion of the Chinese Empire. These Turkic and Tajik minorities live far
from central China, in the western zones that border on Pakistan and Kazakstan
and, historically speaking, were only relatively recently incorporated into the
Chinese state. Uyghurs form an integral part of extended Central Asian Turkic
culture and are closely related to other Turkic peoples in Central Asia, especially
the Uzbeks, toward whom they had been oriented for most of history. These
minorities therefore differ ethnically, culturally, and religiously from the Han,
which makes for more powerfully distinct identities and intensifies potential
resistance against the absorptive Han state.
Communist rule in China alienated many minorities in China, especially
during the Cultural Revolution, when their cultures were ravaged. The Uyghurs
have offered periodic armed resistance over many years to Chinese state policies
that have crippled Uyghur autonomy and culture. The resistance, armed or
peaceful, has been episodic and largely suppressed by police but has not
disappeared as the Uyghurs continue to react strongly to Beijing’s efforts to
Sinicize them.
Their fear is hardly unfounded: as a means of exerting control over an
“unruly” minority, Beijing has deliberately stimulated a massive flow of Han
Chinese to migrate into Xinjiang province; these migrants are part of a relentless
push to overwhelm the Uyghurs, who will eventually be swamped in a rising tide
of Han settlers moving into the Uyghur homeland. Over time, ten million
Uyghur will have little ability to preserve their identity and culture in the face of
over 1.2 billion Han Chinese in China. At some point, Uyghur culture may
become little more than a quaint tourist attraction and a museum piece from the
past. And China was quick to take advantage of the Global War on Terror to
proclaim that the Uyghur separatists are part of the same terrorism network that
Washington is fighting.
It is evident that, as elsewhere in today’s world, Beijing’s problems are really
not with Islam at all, but with ethnic minorities, especially when their unique
ethnic identity is reinforced by a distinctive religion as well. We see this, for

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example, with the Muslim Uyghurs and Buddhist Tibetans and Mongols; this
double distinction increases their determination to preserve their cultural
existence under some form of autonomy.
Beijing knows that its own future power in Asia depends on close working
relations with Muslim states and peoples, including the all-vital energy sector
that lies primarily in Muslim hands from Xinjiang to the Caspian Sea. The
chances are that the “bloody borders of Islam” is not at all an active working
assumption for the leadership of Beijing, even as it seeks to crush sparks of
Uyghur or Tibetan separatism, resistance, or violence. A tiny jihadist minority
will probably seek to continue the struggle in Xinjiang, but with only minor and
diminishing impact as China gradually and quietly extirpates the Uyghurs as a
distinctive autonomous society.
In most of the Muslim world, China is seen as an important and welcome
counterpoise to the unlimited exercise of American power in the Muslim world.
Only in regions closer to China, as in Central Asia, does China present a more
ambiguous picture to Muslims, who are familiar with Chinese expansionism in
the past and its ability to permanently “absorb” (drown) other cultures through
sheer demographic weight. But even here, China and Russia each serve as
counterweights to each other, giving Muslims slightly greater breathing space.
It is clear, then, that diverse ethnicity in China is the particular problem, not
Islam. Problems with these ethnic groups would not have been greatly different
even without Islam. Chinese Han Muslims are essentially integrated and
creatively forge links between Muslim and Chinese cultures. Those Muslims
who are ethnically very distinct are fighting an essentially ethnic war of
separation, albeit bolstered by their religious differences with China as well.

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