I'd already linked to this article, but felt it would be nice to draw attention to this paragraph, in light of some great recent comments:
“…if someone politically savvy planned this action, then they may have actually called on female participants to wear headscarves. The image of a crowd of apparently traditional Muslims facing down what looks like a faceless army of Chinese can draw on over a billion sympathizers.”
The story behind the picture has indeed become front page material on the websites of Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, Al-Quds, Hürriyet, Milliyet, Sabah, Today’s Zaman, Yeni Safak etc. etc. On Pakistan Daily, one headline read ‘China to further ties with Pakistan’ and next to it, ‘Muslim Unrest in China’. Some of them carry extremely gory pictures of dead people. Xinjiang is clearly important stuff in the Muslim world. But not in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The issue of Iranian media responses to the Xinjiang unrest carries some interesting points.
That Iran's Revolution long since went from revolutionary to conservative is well-known; that the recent elections and subsequent protests pitted the masses, resorting to religious slogans, against the head of a Shi'i Islamic state invoking the impermissibility of protest in the name of religion, only shows how damaging the institutional politicization of religion can be.
This happens all the time. In claiming to oppose the un-Islamic West, Muslim states cozy up to Russia and China, as if the latter two are "more Islamic" -- never mind Chechnya or East Turkestan. I applaud the Uighurs for pointing out this hypocrisy, which is especially severe when the political interests of a religious class trump the ideals and goals of the religion itself. In other words, when power for Muslims trumps the ideals of Islam.
Iranians are noticing; reformists have picked up on the deep hypocrisies at work. The comment below berates Ahmadinejad for being unable or unwilling to stand up to China, as if Palestinians were the only Muslims:
ا.ن فقط فلسطيني ها مسلمان مسلمان نيستنداگر مردي به چين اعتراض كن به سبب كشتار مسلمانان سين كيانگ.چين مسلمانانش را قتل عام كردو ا.ن خفه بود
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