It\u2019s erroneous to portray the conflict in Xinjiang as a struggle between Islam and the Chinese government<\/p>\n
Last month Chinese authorities in the predominantly Uighur province of Xinjiang reportedly ordered<\/a> civil servants, students and teachers not to fast and restaurants to remain open during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Similar allegations were made<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, the report was met with widespread<\/a> outcry outside China. The global protests even forced the Chinese Foreign Ministry to address the allegations in press conference with reporters on July 6<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cUighur is one of the 56 ethnic minorities in China. More than 10 million Uighur Turks are living happily and peacefully,\u201d ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing, denying the ban. \u201cThese people have the freedom of religion under the Chinese Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n There is little independent reporting from Xinjiang, but China routinely denies allegations of religious persecution against its Uighur population. The ruling Communist Party is officially atheist, and therefore some implicit bias is to be expected. But it is erroneous to conclude that the Uighur crisis is solely religious. The Uighur nationalists\u2019 desire for more autonomy has long been at odds with China\u2019s centralization policy. If anything, Chinese authorities are using the \u201cwar on terrorism\u201d as a cover to demolish the Uighur people\u2019s nationalist aspirations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A struggle for autonomy<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Uighur struggle for self-rule arguably dates back to the 18th<\/a> century, when the Qing dynasty conquered<\/a> the Xinjiang province and incorporated it into China. Uighur nationalists organized several uprisings against the dynasty, which ruled China until the early 20th century. In 1949, Mao Zedong\u2019s forces thwarted Uighur aspirations by imposing total control over Xinjiang, setting off the protracted tensions that have characterized the Uighur-state relations to date.<\/p>\n The Chinese government often blames violent episodes in the troubled province on Uighur separatists, attributing at least 200 violent incidents, including bombings and assassinations, to them from 1990 to 2001. But the violence and Uighur demonstrations have decreased since the late 1990s<\/a>. Tensions escalated again in 2008, when a military police unit in Kashgar in western China was attacked during the Beijing Summer Olympics. The government blamed the Uighurs for the attack.<\/p>\n Members of the Uighur diaspora contend that the Chinese government<\/a> is committing genocide against their people. For example, the U.S.-based Uighur Human Rights Project, which advocates for human rights in East Turkestan, says close to 700 Uighurs were killed from 2013 to 2014. \u201cAlthough these numbers should not be considered definitive \u2026 they are indicative of deterioration in security conditions since Xi Jinping became Chinese president,\u201d the organization said earlier this year.<\/p>\n In addition to the routine scapegoating for violence, the Uighur people have had their civil rights<\/a> seriously compromised. Last year Georgetown University professor James Millward wrote that most state institutions in Xinjiang allegedly require Han ethnicity as a condition for employment. He added that the state interferes in the Uighur community\u2019s cultural practices \u2014 for example through teaching only Mandarin in schools and restrictions on weddings, funerals and pilgrimage, or hajj.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Out of China\u2019s 20 million Muslims, Uighurs account for approximately 6 million. Muslims in China are spread across the country, with most of them living outside Xinjiang and majority of them being Hui, who are closely related to the Han, who make up the majority of the Chinese people. But the state has been far more tolerant of the Hui than of the Uighur population.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems clear that Hui Muslims have been granted so much more latitude because almost none have challenged secular authorities,\u201d writes Gardner Bovingdon<\/a> in his 2010 book, \u201cThe Uyghurs.\u201d In fact, according to him, in Ningxia province a Sufi sect of Islam was even allowed to establish a \u201cvirtual religious state,\u201d with several mosques and hundreds of thousands of followers. So much latitude, he says, that the leader or the movement openly proclaims listening to Osama bin Laden and meeting several \u201cfundamentalist clerics\u201d in Pakistan.<\/p>\n