The Imam at one of Almaty\u2019s biggest mosques gets busy around Ramadan when his Uighur \u201cbrothers and sisters\u201d from China flock to the Kazakh city to pray, finding it increasingly difficult to practice Islam at home.<\/p>\n
By Ting Shi
Jan 6, 2015 11:01 AM ET<\/p>\n
The Imam at one of Almaty\u2019s biggest mosques gets busy around Ramadan when his Uighur \u201cbrothers and sisters\u201d from China<\/a> flock to the Kazakh city to pray, finding it increasingly difficult to practice Islam at home.<\/p>\n As the western Chinese region of Xinjiang grapples with ethnic tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese, and President Xi Jinping vows to crush separatist activity, more Uighurs are finding a warmer reception about 235 miles (380 kilometers) away. In some parts of Xinjiang, Uighurs risk fines or detention for wearing veils or growing beards and some are warned against observing Ramadan — Islam\u2019s holiest month.<\/p>\n \u201cUighur Muslims want their religion and want to practice their religion freely,\u201d Imam Knanat Ali said outside the blue-domed Prophet Muhammad Mosque in the industrial north of Almaty. \u201cIn China this is strictly controlled, so we see many Uighurs come here during Ramadan to pray, to fast, to learn more knowledge about Islam,\u201d said Ali, who has presided over the mosque for three years.<\/p>\n The flow of worshippers to Kazakhstan<\/a>, which has the biggest Uighur population outside Xinjiang, persists even as China is boosting ties with its neighbor, a gateway to the west in Xi\u2019s plan to rebuild the ancient Silk Road route. China has displaced Russia<\/a> as Kazakhstan\u2019s biggest trading partner — the two-way relationship accounts for around 70 percent of China\u2019s trade with central Asia<\/a>, and China is the biggest foreign investor in the country\u2019s oil and gas sector.<\/p>\n China\u2019s crackdown on violence in Xinjiang, which authorities have linked to Islamic extremism and terrorism, is driving Uighurs to come across the long, shared border with Kazakhstan. Uighurs have \u201cquite a balanced position\u201d with other ethnic groups in Kazakhstan, said Konstantin Syroezhkin, chief research fellow of the state-sponsored Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2018Fully Assimilated\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not restricted here,\u201d Syroezhkin said. \u201cThere are around 260,000 Uighurs living in the country and they\u2019re fully assimilated in the Kazakh society. Kazakhstan doesn\u2019t support a policy of ethnic separatism.\u201d<\/p>\n Many Uighurs have family in Xinjiang, the Imam said. There are around 10 million Uighurs<\/a> in China\u2019s western province, according to the Xinjiang Statistics Bureau. About 1.5 percent of Kazakhstan\u2019s population are Uighurs, a Turkic language-speaking group, and many live in the Almaty area, says London-based Minority Rights Group<\/a> International.<\/p>\n \u201cWe Uighurs are brothers and sisters; we care a lot about what\u2019s happening in Xinjiang,\u201d Ali said. \u201cThe Uighur rebellion\u201d in Xinjiang has sprouted because \u201cthe Chinese government punishes them for their religion.\u201d<\/p>\n Han Chinese<\/strong><\/p>\n Uighur communities in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, live in compact, closely-knit neighborhoods where they have their own cafes, restaurants and mosques. That kinship prompted hundreds to rally in Almaty after riots in Xinjiang\u2019s capital Urumqi in July 2009. The most violent clashes between Uighurs and Han Chinese in decades left nearly 200 dead, most of them Chinese.<\/p>\n Even though about 92 percent of China\u2019s 1.3 billion population is Han, more than 45 percent of Xinjiang\u2019s 22 million people are Uighurs.<\/p>\n Violence picked up in Xinjiang in 2014 and spilled to other Chinese cities such as Kunming and Guangzhou. In November, 15 people, including 11 assailants, were killed after a group hurled explosives at a food court in Kashgar in south Xinjiang. In September, 50 people, including 40 that police identified as rioters, were killed in what authorities called a terrorist attack in Luntai county, while in July, 96 people died in an assault on government offices in Shache county.<\/p>\n \u2018All Uighurs\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cDuring the 2009 riots, Uighur prayers here were crying because we all had relatives in Xinjiang,\u201d said a 65-year-old mosque worker known as \u201cAuntie Sonya\u201d who moved to Almaty from Xinjiang in the late 1960s. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know who was responsible for this conflict and who was guilty, but we felt for them because all Uighurs are family.\u201d<\/p>\n Last month the Urumqi legislature banned the wearing of veils in public areas. Communist Party members, civil servants, teachers and students are \u201cencouraged\u201d to eat during the day over Ramadan \u201cfor the sake of their health, work and study,\u201d state media reports say. Some officials must sign a document pledging not to observe Ramadan, according to the website Uighur Online, whose founder Ilham Tohti is serving life in jail for promoting separatism.<\/p>\n Alimzhan Bavatov, a 56-year-old Uighur farmer who owns a parcel of land growing apples and tomatoes in the northern part of Almaty, said his relatives in Korla in central Xinjiang feel anxious because \u201cthey\u2019re treated with suspicion by local authorities\u201d. \u201cWe\u2019re peaceful people and we\u2019re different from terrorists,\u201d Bavatov said.<\/p>\n Two Caravans<\/strong><\/p>\n Not everyone shows a close kinship with Xinjiang. Rustam Zapiyer, a mid-30s owner of a travel company, is a \u201cyerliklar,\u201d Uighurs who have lived in Kazakhstan for several generations and speak Russian most of the time. He considers Kazakhstan his only homeland.<\/p>\n Zapiyer\u2019s great grandfather crossed the border between Afghanistan and China in 1916 with two caravans of marijuana that were captured by border guards. He escaped because he rode a faster horse than his pursuers. He returned for his caravans and later persuaded the head of the border guard to let him marry his youngest daughter. He was 52 and she was 16, his fourth wife. They moved from Xinjiang to Almaty in 1920.<\/p>\n Zapiyer said he has around 200 relatives in Xinjiang, and his grandfather and father still write letters to them. In 2008, he went on a motorbike trip to Xinjiang and said he was singled out by border guards for security checks when none of his four Russian traveling companions were.<\/p>\n Politicizing Religion<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThey searched my five empty videotapes and found nothing,\u201d Zapiyer said. \u201cThat was quite annoying.\u201d Beijing\u2019s actions in Xinjiang amount to \u201cpolitical assimilation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Religious freedom dominates family discussions for Talgat Tairol, a former Uighur history and literature teacher. Tairol, who runs a bakery after quitting teaching, said he had more than 20 relatives in Aksu and Yining in Xinjiang and they are faring well financially.<\/p>\n Even so, one relative is looking at moving to Kazakhstan in order to pray freely. \u201cThey\u2019re all doing quite alright in Xinjiang but they rather admire our way of life here,\u201d Tairol said. \u201cReligion is politicized in Xinjiang by the Chinese government. Each person must be given the right to choose their own religion by themselves, not by the government.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Han Chinese and Uighurs aren\u2019t enemies, but some people may try to make them enemies,\u201d Tairol said. \u201cWe Uighurs are hospitable people and what you saw on TV was only a tiny portion of us. The politics of the country largely determined how these people have reacted.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Imam at one of Almaty\u2019s biggest mosques gets busy around Ramadan when his Uighur \u201cbrothers and sisters\u201d from China flock to the Kazakh city to pray, finding it increasingly difficult to practice Islam at home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1553"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}