Better Understanding the Uyghurs, and Islam in China

The Times has a profile of the businesswoman at the center of China's accusations of "foreign interference", while Avari uncovered (in the manner of a Spanish explorer claiming to have discovered half the planet) Islam in China, a blog which contains among other excellent resources a new post on the diversity of Chinese Islam and the political considerations behind the recent violence.  City of Brass has put up a short comment, via Talk Islam, on the Uyghurs and the Ummah: I do agree with the author's points, all very valid, I do think the author underplays simple panic. 

Appealing to the Ummah might seem unrealistic, even absurd.  But somebody, practically speaking, needs to be appealed to, for the sake of some hope.  In desperation, many sufferers cry out to the West to end their miseries, to rescue them.  Unlikely, yes, but deeply moving.  What else are the Uyghur to do?  It is one thing to seek accommodation, another to accept the apparent "solution": gradual cultural annihilation or marginalization so severe as to do the same.  Effect a people's erasure.  Besides, while the concept of a political Ummah is certainly deeply unlikely and pragmatically unpromising, the cultural connections the Ummah creates do produce huge outpourings of relief, aid and sacrifice; not always to the right places or in the right proportions, but effect people it does.  Her strategy is a long-shot, but might shame people into a response.

Whether that response changes anything on the ground, I do not know.  I don't suspect it ever could.  But it is part of the tragedy of a people who are facing a power too big, too populated and too strong to be meaningfully resisted, and it unfolds before us in its ugliness and our ugliness, for our powerlessness.

City of Brass has also kindly reposted an earlier essay I'd written, The Myth of Secular Inevitability.  Do check it out.

Rushda Majeed writes on Sarkozy's move to ban the burqa, a decision that fits into a larger headdress anxiety; just blame the French.  It's what we Americans love to do, and now American Muslims have a raison to do so as well.  Another step in the mighty project of cultural assimilation.  (From France to Germany.)

Next up: Hussein Rashid, activist, brilliant academic, writer and panelist from the blow-your-mind Blogistan panel, argues that Bloomberg was right to threaten to veto the Muslim holidays proposal.  Avari disagrees: I think Bloomberg's decision is just part of a larger pattern of indifference to the city's huge Muslim population (witness his partisanship during the Gaza Crisis).  He can claim that approving Muslim holidays will open the floodgates to other religions, but that assumes there are that many other faiths waiting at the gate.  Since Bloomberg will never cancel Jewish or Christian holidays, as a public servant fairness -- indeed, the principle of secularity -- demand accommodation.  While, yes, this demands the state deciding which Islam to support, the state does the same for all religions: Why Christmas on December 25th, and not the Orthodox celebration?

That two school days are lost, at most, is a weak argument, considering that there are other ways to accommodate the loss of two school days. 

What do you think?

Comments

[Hussein Rashid]

Thanks for the link love. Just a quick semi-correction. I don't think Bloomberg has said that the Ids will open up floodgates, but a Council Member. If Bloomberg has said it, I would love the link.

RE: the Ummah, from the perspective of needing hope, I think it's a good point. I will admit my understanding of Chinese Islam is weak, but do you get a sense that they were thinking in terms of Ummah before this?

[Haroon Moghul]

From what I've read on Chinese Islam, the regime has basically a two-track policy. Since the Uighurs are ethnically distinct and have a national claim, like the Tibetans, they are both religiously and culturally suppressed (in fact, demographically as well.) Since religion and culture are so fused -- for example, the Uighur are the only Turkic peoples to still use the Arabic script -- what is an attack on a potentially politicized people is also an attack on their religion. But the Uighur and the Hui, or Han Chinese, have deep divisions between them.

The Chinese government often shops around the Hui in the Middle East and the Muslim world more generally, especially in places like Saudi (and allows Saudi to finance mosques and schools albeit under strict gov't supervision). That allows China to say they treat their Muslims well, and win brownie points in oil-rich Middle East. Hence, Kadeer's appeal to the Saudis is not as absurd as it would seem on the face of it, although it is unlikely to accomplish anything. She just wants someone to note the hypocrisy, and if al-Jazeera does, the Saudis potentially lose at least some face.

The Ummah is just a strategic tool used by all the players, and I guess the Uighur attempt is to steal the language or the policy and try to use it to win some attention. As an aside, it seems they have gotten far more press this time around, although that might be because we as Americans feel more threatened by China and more eager to critique them (or to notice that critique.)

As for Bloomberg, that's a good question. You're right, a Council member says the same thing, although Bloomberg does, too:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/nyregion/01muslim.html?hpw

See the fourth paragraph.

Your point on Eid-e Ghadr is fantastic, and reveals the blinders I, as a Sunni, often unconsciously operate with. May Allah reward you for keeping me on my toes.