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Muslim voices rising in China
Controls on Islam spur resentment among a
restive minority
By Jehangir S. Pocha,
Globe Correspondent
November 19, 2006
HETIAN, China - On a recent Friday, the holy day of
Islam, crowds swelled inside the antique Jame mosque,
the largest in this ancient town in Xinjiang Province
in the far west of China, home to the nation's small
but restive Muslim minority.
The turbaned and bearded clerics who preached to the
gathered faithful had all been vetted for their
political beliefs by local Chinese authorities, who
determine what sermons they can give, what version of
the Koran they may use, and where and how religious
gatherings can be held.
The Chinese government forces all Muslims in China to
adhere to a state-controlled version of their religion,
and banners placed around town warn locals not to
stray from the official faith. The imams are not even
allowed to issue the call to prayer using a public
address system.
The Chinese government has tightened its constraints
on the Uighur ethnic minority in western China amid
official fears of a rise in militant Islam. The
Chinese are acutely aware of the growing strategic
importance of Xinjiang in Central Asia and the large
oil and natural gas reserves under its soil. In turn,
resentment among the Uighurs toward perceived
repression by the Chinese has intensified. And
increasingly, the Uighurs are speaking out and
demanding autonomy, thanks in part to the emergence of
articulate Uighur voices at home and in exile.
Though Xinjiang is ostensibly an autonomous province,
Wang Lequan, the local Communist Party secretary, who
is Chinese, has publicly called for Uighurs (pronounced
Wee'-gurs) to learn more Mandarin and adopt more
Chinese customs.
To dissuade Uighur youths from inheriting their
traditional Islamic culture, the government has banned
children from entering mosques, studying Islam, or
celebrating Islamic holidays.
During the month of Ramadan, when devout Muslims fast
through the day, schools take special care to ensure
that all their students eat, a local school principal
said.
The fear and state control under which Uighurs live in
Xinjiang was apparent when some foreign journalists,
who are generally not allowed into the province, were
taken on a tour by Chinese officials last month. The
journalists were carefully monitored, but when they
did manage to go out alone, most Uighurs were too
scared to talk about the antipathy they bear toward
China.
A man who identified himself only as Abdel rubbed his
clean-shaven chin anxiously as the four Uighur Muslim
friends finished their dinner of goat soup and noodles.
"The government doesn't allow young people here to
grow beards," he said as the sun set. "If you do, they
will send you to the forced labor camps. This is a
communist country and it is scared of Muslims. Our
Uighur ethnic group is suppressed the most."
Abdel asked not to be fully identified out of fear of
reprisal from local authorities. But his is just one
of the angry whispers filtering through the crumbling
buildings and twisted alleys of Xinjiang's Uighur
cities and villages.
Resentment against Beijing has been building here
since 1949, when Mao Zedong annexed the independent
nation of East Turkestan and began to assimilate it
into mainland China. To do this Beijing imposed
strictures on Islam and sought to dilute the culture
of the local Uighurs, a Central Asian people with a
Turkic-Persian culture.
Abdel fidgeted uncomfortably throughout the few
minutes he talked to the journalists, saying the
biggest problem Uighurs face is that of social and
economic exclusion.
"The truth is, where you see money there will be Han,
where there is poverty you will see us Uighurs," Abdel
said. Han is an ethnic group that makes up the
majority of China .
 Some
Chinese officials say they are baffled by the
criticism China receives for its policy on Xinjiang,
where the nation's relatively small Muslim population
of about 8 million is concentrated.
"On the one hand the world complains that Pakistan
doesn't do enough to control its madrassas, and on the
other they complain when China does not allow them,"
said one official, referring to Muslim religious
schools. The official asked not to be identified as he
was not authorized to speak to the press. "We believe
Islam can be an unbalancing force so we need to
control it."
Though Uighurs have traditionally followed a moderate
blend of Sunni Islam and Sufi mysticism strongly
influenced by local folklore and rural traditions, a
rising Islamic mood is palpable in Xinjiang. More and
more women are wearing veils, residents say, and
mosques are packed on Fridays.
Mostly this is due to a rising interest in religion
that is common across much of China, where people are
reacting to the intense atheism of the Maoist years.
But in Xinjiang, rising Islamic sentiment has also
taken on a political hue, with many separatists
demanding the re-creation of an independent East
Turkestan on religious grounds. Some of these
separatists have conducted armed attacks against
Chinese targets, and Chinese officials say they are
also behind most of the public protests that have
rocked Xinjiang in recent years.
After the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States,
Chinese authorities have used the global war on
terrorism to crack down on suspected separatists.
Plainclothes policemen routinely roam the rustic
mosques and bustling markets of Uighur towns. Human
rights groups and local residents say anyone thought
to be acting suspiciously is hustled away and often
punished without a fair trial.
Though Chinese actions in Xinjiang have been very
similar to its actions in neighboring Tibet, whose
Buddhist culture has been systematically undermined by
Beijing, the situation in this remote western province
has received much less global attention.
That is changing, thanks to the emergence of a new
generation of articulate Uighur leaders and to growing
support for Uighur separatists from Islamists in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other Central Asian
countries -- part of the global upsurge in
pan-Islamism.
Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur exile living in Washington,
D.C., who reportedly had been considered a leading
candidate for this year's Nobel Peace Prize for her
human rights work in Xinjiang, says the world is
taking notice of the Uighurs' suffering from what they
see as Chinese colonization.
"The Chinese have denied us basic rights and freedoms
-- that's why we now want them out of our land,"
Kadeer said in a telephone interview. "A lot of doors
are being opened to me [in Washington] so I am able to
raise the issue of the Uighur people at very high
levels."
In the streets of Hetian, it is easy to see how
different Xinjiang is from most of the rest of China.
The skyline is crowded not with traditional Chinese
sloping roofs but with Islamic domes and spires. Most
of the older buildings have elegant Turko-Persian
style balconies decorated with floral filigree work,
and men wearing doppas -- small four- or five-cornered
brimless embroidered hats -- sit on benches in the
street smoking water pipes and eating grilled skewers
of meat.
But Chinese officials insist Xinjiang was historically
part of China until the Soviet Union briefly helped
separatists create East Turkestan in the 1930s.
Part of the reason China is tightening its grip on
Xinjiang is its growing strategic importance. The
province has been found to be rich in oil. It also
borders Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, and has
become an essential launching pad for China's
geopolitical interests in these areas, where the
United States is also jockeying for influence.
Beijing is also worried that the disintegration of the
Soviet Union and emergence of the independent "Stans"
could motivate Uighurs to re-create East Turkestan.
Faced with the might of the Chinese state, many
Uighurs fear their unique Persian-Turkic culture,
which also includes its own language, will soon fade
into history.
Ahmet, a 16-year-old student in Kashgar, a city near
Xinjiang's southern border with Pakistan that is a
hotbed of insurgent activity, said the solution his
parents are holding out is simple.
"They tell me to marry a Han girl," he said. "That way
we can get some chances. Otherwise, as Uighurs, life
is very hard."
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