{"id":888,"date":"2018-07-12T20:01:33","date_gmt":"2018-07-12T20:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=888"},"modified":"2018-07-12T20:02:08","modified_gmt":"2018-07-12T20:02:08","slug":"islam-in-xinjiang-de-extremification-or-violation-of-religious-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=888","title":{"rendered":"Islam in Xinjiang: \u201cDe-Extremification\u201d or Violation of Religious Space?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Asian Dialog<\/a><\/p>\n

Written by Joanne Smith Finley.<\/a><\/p>\n

As recently reported in the press, since Spring 2017, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other minority Muslims in Xinjiang have \u201cdisappeared\u201d into \u201cpolitical re-education centres<\/a>,\u201deuphemistically labelled m\u00e4kt\u00e4p <\/em>(Uy. schools) by frightened locals. Their purported crimes\u00a0<\/a>vary from travelling abroad to study (or having a relative who did so) to having Western social media apps on their phone. Most are taken simply because they \u201cappear too religious\u201d or holdfast to religious practice. Detainees are held in these extra-judiciary internment camps\u00a0<\/a>for months without charge or due process, ostensibly required to study the Chinese language and Chinese laws on Islam, whilst learning to appreciate the benevolence of the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n

This \u201cPeople\u2019s War on Terror\u201d\u00a0<\/a>is not surgical like earlier \u201cStrike Hard\u201d campaigns against \u201cillegal religious activities\u201d; rather, it is a \u201ccarpet-bombing approach\u201d<\/a>, described by the state itself in terms of an indiscriminate use of \u201cweed-killer\u201d<\/a>. In one case, a female undertaker was imprisoned for washing bodies according to Islamic custom<\/a>. In another, a man in his sixties was incarcerated for \u201cpossession and dissemination of extremist religious content\u201d<\/a>\u00a0after sending a non-authorised explanation of the Qur\u2019an (Uy. tabligh<\/em>) to his daughter\u2019s mobile phone. In a third, a Uyghur student studying in the U.S. was incarcerated for 17 days\u00a0<\/a>when he attempted to visit relatives in Xinjiang, and forced to watch videos on appropriate interpretations of Islam. There have been reports of torture\u00a0<\/a>and death in custody of respected religious scholars<\/a>. Frequently, the state conflates non-violent nationalist sentiment with \u201creligious extremism\u201d<\/a>. One early victim was master dutar player, Abdurehim Heyit, detained over his song \u201cFathers\u201d (Uy. Atilar)<\/a>, which employs the phrase \u201cmartyrs of war\u201d in reference to the sacrifices of Uyghur ancestors. He has since been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and told he will never perform live or record songs again.<\/p>\n

The CCP claims it must halt the \u201cpenetration of extremification\u201d within society, as outlined in the XUAR Regulations on De-extremification (2017)<\/a>. Stated goals include \u201cmaking religion more Chinese\u201d (Article 4); prohibiting the rejection or refusal of public goods (e.g. alcohol or cigarettes) and the \u201cgeneralization of the concept of halal into areas beyond halal foods\u201d (Article 9); leading believers to \u201cestablish correct beliefs\u201d (Article 13); and guiding believers to \u201ccorrectly handle the relationship between law and religion\u201d whilst confirming \u201ccorrect faith\u201d (Article 35). Yet the true aim of China\u2019s surveillance state\u00a0<\/a>in Xinjiang seems rather to be to erase the religious (Islamic) identity of Uyghur communities, via a racist system of cultural cleansing<\/a>. Intrusive religious policing practised in Xinjiang since 2012 has accelerated since the arrival of new Party Secretary, Chen Quanguo, in 2016.<\/p>\n

Those not yet interned in the camps must endure the \u201cBecoming Family\u201d policy<\/a>, involving visits to Uyghur homes by Han \u201crelatives\u201d. Over 10,000 teams of visiting officials descended on rural Xinjiang in 2017 to report on \u201cextremist\u201d behaviour\u00a0<\/a>such as not drinking alcohol, fasting during Ramadan, sporting long beards, and possessing \u201cundesirable\u201d items like Qur\u2019ans. Individuals are categorised as \u201ctrustworthy,\u201d \u201caverage\u201d or \u201cuntrustworthy\u201d depending on their age (the youth are considered more likely \u201cextremified\u201d), ethnicity (people are suspect based solely on Uyghur ethnicity); employment status (the unemployed are high-risk); and depth of religious knowledge and practice (where praying five times a day indicates an \u201cextremist\u201d position). Meanwhile, mosques are being closely controlled<\/a>, with the result that they currently stand largely empty, even during Friday prayers.<\/p>\n

In 2018, the \u201cBecoming Family\u201d programme\u00a0<\/a>was expanded to require between five and fourteen \u201chome stays\u201d by Chinese officials in Uyghur households every 1-2 months, during which families must provide information about their personal lives and political views. Officials, tasked to warn families against \u201cpan-Islamism,\u201d report back on \u201cproblems\u201d \u2013 e.g. extent of religious beliefs \u2013 and act to \u201crectify\u201d them. As one researcher\u00a0<\/a>put it: \u201cMuslim families across Xinjiang are now literally eating and sleeping under the watchful eye of the state in their own homes\u201d. State agencies post videos and images online of scenes in which non-Muslim Han officials share intimate aspects of Uyghur domestic life: sharing meals, sleeping in the same bed, and feeding the family\u2019s children. In the context of Uyghurs\u2019 general adherence to a halal mode of living, which extends well beyond simple dietary prescriptions, this scenario constitutes a clear violation of pure, halal space.<\/p>\n

Other such violations include the punishment of a Khotanese official for refusing to smoke in front of male elders<\/a>\u00a0(thus \u201crefusing public goods,\u201d \u201cextending the concept of halal beyond halal foods\u201d); making Uyghurs make and eat Chinese New Year dumplings<\/a>\u00a0with Han \u201colder brothers and sisters\u201d (in a context where to ask if the dumplings contained pork would constitute \u201cextremification\u201d); ordering women to take off their headscarves<\/a>\u00a0at public checkpoints innumerable times each day; coercion of Khotanese villagers to conduct a Han foot-washing tradition (to express respect for elders) using bowls rather than the clean, running water required by Islamic practice (image posted on Twitter, 16 May 2018); and forced Uyghur-Han marriages<\/a>\u00a0undertaken by mortified young women in the hope of saving their relatives from the re-education camps. While the \u201cde-extremification\u201d drive\u00a0<\/a>calls on state organs and citizens to combat social \u201cpenetration\u201d and \u201cpermeation\u201d by religious extremists, intrusive state controls on moderate, everyday religious practices, stretching deep into the domestic sphere,are experienced by Uyghur locals equally as \u201cpenetration\u201d, indeed, as violation by a violent and coercive state.<\/p>\n

As University of Sydney historian, David Brophy, recently asked<\/a>, how did a Chinese revolutionary state, which had promised to end all forms of national discrimination, end up resorting to this? The disproportionate \u201cStrike Hard\u201d policies deployed in Xinjiang after the 1997 Ghulja disturbances<\/a>, and ethnicized, discriminatory security policies\u00a0<\/a>deployed following China\u2019s instrumental embrace of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in 2001, threatened by 2008 to create a self-fulfilling prophecy<\/a>. But it was religious policing in the wake of the 2009 \u00dcr\u00fcmchi riots\u00a0<\/a>that fully ignited the ugly cycle of state and retaliatory local violence that erupted between 2012 and 2015. Now the state employed the label of \u201creligious extremism\u201d to\u00a0securitize all religious behaviours, not just violent ones<\/a>, a position that led to highly intrusive forms of religious policing that violated private Uyghur homes and humiliated local people: sweep-and-search operations, attempts by non-relatives to snatch women\u2019s veils, invasion and closure of unauthorized mosques, and harassment of respected local clerics were all experienced as violation of pure, halal space by a Han state perceived as haram\u00a0<\/em>(unclean). In the face of this threat to their moral framework, some locals formed spontaneous movements of religious defence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The state in turn seized upon the cycle of violence to justify its assertion that it must \u201cde-extremify\u201d Uyghur society and set out to do so via mass incarceration and indoctrination<\/a>, in Cultural Revolution style. As things stand now, Chinese state treatment of the Uyghurs has gone beyond Stage 3 (Discrimination) on\u00a0Allport\u2019s \u201cLadder of Prejudice\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to reach Stage 4 (Physical Attack). Indeed, by the UN\u2019s definition, it also meets some of the broader criteria for the crime of genocide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It did not have to be this way. In the 1950s \u2013 the early years of CCP rule \u2013 state nationality policies were progressive<\/a>,\u00a0including the public rejection of \u201cGreat Han chauvinism\u201d (attitudes of Han superiority), respect for local religious practices, and the provision of mother-tongue education for Uyghurs. Only a small number of Han Chinese had settled in Xinjiang; many attained functional fluency in the Uyghur language, and nearly all abstained from \u201coffensive practices\u201d<\/a>\u00a0deemed haram by locals. Uyghurs who grew up in the fifties and sixties tell me\u00a0<\/a>that, during their childhoods, they sometimes entered the homes of Han Chinese playmates, although differences of diet were \u201cmanaged\u201d so that Uyghur children did not eat or drink while there. Elderly Han report a similar picture. Ren, a Beijinger in his early eighties who spent part of his youth in Qaramay,\u00a0recollected<\/a>: \u201cWe got on very well [\u2026] we learned some of the language, we had lots of Uighur friends\u201d. That relative communal harmony was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution\u00a0<\/a>when, intent on smashing the \u201cFour Olds,\u201d Red Guards forced Muslims to raise pigs\u00a0<\/a>and eat pork, mosques were demolished<\/a>, and Islamic clergy were paraded through the streets with pigs\u2019 heads tied around their necks. Yet the goal of eradicating Islamic practice did not succeed then; religion simply went underground, resurfacing again during the \u201cgolden period\u201d of Deng Xiaoping\u2019s conciliatory minority policy in the 1980s. The same would happen again tomorrow if China halted its present \u201cde-extremification\u201d drive.<\/p>\n

And, if a return to comparatively relaxed ethnic relations was possible after the ravages of the Cultural Revolution, then it should also be possible now. But it will require an acknowledgement that current policies of securitization have failed<\/a>, plus a commitment to some sort of reconciliation process, perhaps like that established by South Africa\u2019s Government of National Unity<\/a>\u00a0to deal with abuses that occurred under Apartheid. Each, in turn, depends on what the Chinese state really wants to achieve<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0http:\/\/theasiadialogue.com\/2018\/06\/15\/islam-in-xinjiang-de-extremification-or-violation-of-religious-space\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The Asian Dialog Written by Joanne Smith Finley. As recently reported in the press, since Spring 2017, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other minority Muslims in Xinjiang have \u201cdisappeared\u201d into \u201cpolitical re-education centres,\u201deuphemistically labelled m\u00e4kt\u00e4p (Uy. schools) by frightened locals. Their purported crimes\u00a0vary from travelling abroad to study (or having a relative who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinas-uyghur-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=888"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":892,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888\/revisions\/892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}