As in previous<\/a> years<\/a>, there are numerous<\/a> reports<\/a> that Muslims in Xinjiang have beenforced<\/a> to eat during the day. Restaurants have been forbidden from closing, mosques are closely monitored or shut, and government workers and students have been expressly banned from fasting. Not showing up to a midday college meal or village feast can get your name put on the kind of list you don\u2019t want to be on.<\/p>\n In other parts of China, though, fasting Muslims face little more than the thoughtless questions<\/a> from colleagues that Muslims in the West frequently encounter. So why, then, is an act that\u2019s private and religious in Xi\u2019an or Beijing viewed in Xinjiang as public, political, and dangerous?<\/p>\n The answer is that for Xinjiang\u2019s Muslim residents, who are deeply resentful about rule from Beijing, religious piety is increasingly a signal of resistance to Chinese domination. And even when it isn\u2019t, local Chinese officials will treat it as if it is anyway.<\/p>\n A lot of people might be surprised to learn that China has any<\/em> Muslims, let alone a substantial Muslim population. But in fact, Muslims have been settling in China since the foundation of the faith more than 1,400 years ago. Many came during the Yuan Dynasty (1271\u20131368), when whole populations shifted across the vast Mongol <\/a>E<\/a>mpire<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ed Jones\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Muslim worshipers attend Friday prayers at a mosque in Beijing on November 1, 2013.<\/p>\n Today there are more than 20 million Muslims in China. (For comparison, there are an estimated 3.3 million<\/a> Muslims in the United States, and the entire population of Saudi Arabia is around 29 million, nearly all of whom are Muslim<\/a>). Ten out of China\u2019s 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities are Sunni Muslims.<\/p>\n One such group is the Uighur (pronounced WEE-gur), a Turkic-speaking ethnic group native to China\u2019s vast far western Xinjiang region (officially called the Xinjiang autonomous ethnic region).<\/p>\n Javier Zarracina, Vox<\/strong><\/p>\n Although Chinese empires have often ruled parts of Xinjiang throughout history, their control over it was only ever shaky at best: Even when claimed by Chinese rulers, it was often independent in practice. The Qing Empire changed its name to Xinjiang (\u201cNew Frontier\u201d) when it annexed the region as an official Chinese province in 1884, after reconquering the territory from local warlords and rebels.<\/p>\n The idea of a distinct ethnic group that identifies as “Uighur” is also relatively new, dating back to 1921 when locals adopted the term from Russia. The Russian government had itself borrowed the term from a medieval Turkic empire that had once seriously threatened Chinese power \u2014 a connection that appealed to the modern Uighur.<\/p>\n But while the Uighur name is new, the people\u2019s sense of themselves as a separate ethnic group different from their neighbors \u2014 and determinedly non-Chinese \u2014 is much, much older.<\/p>\n For this reason, many Uighur today passionately believe their region should be its own independent country, like their Central Asian neighbors. The proposed name for this country is \u201c<\/a>East Turkestan<\/a>,\u201d<\/a> which harks back to ideas of pan-Turkic unity that were popular in the 1920s. Like many aspiring countries, it even has a flag<\/a>, left over from a short-lived and unrecognized republic formed by rebels in 1933\u2013\u201934.<\/p>\n Bulent Kilic\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Demonstrators hold up East Turkestan flags in support of China’s Uighur minority during a rally in Istanbul on July 12, 2009, to protest the deadly riots in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang.<\/p>\n Many Uighur still keep the flags \u2014 secretly. That’s because for Beijing, talk of East Turkestan is criminal sedition: an attempt to break up China and throw the country into chaos. (The concept of a single, unified China with unchanging borders is historical nonsense, but it has a powerful grip on Chinese.) Indeed, separatism is grouped in Chinese propaganda with terrorism and religious extremism as the \u201cthree evil forces\u201d that threaten the region.<\/p>\n Since the founding of the People\u2019s Republic of China in 1949, any ideas of independence, especially in border areas such as Tibet, Mongolia, and Xinjiang, have been rigorously suppressed. Uighur have been encouraged to think of themselves as one ethnicity among many in China, all contributing to the nation. But with language, culture, and politics dominated by the Han Chinese majority, that\u2019s a hard pill for the Uighur to swallow.<\/p>\n Ethnic tensions in Xinjiang between the Uighur, who are the majority population in Xinjiang, and the Han Chinese, who are China\u2019s majority ethnicity but are in the minority in Xinjiang \u2014 have grown in recent decades as more and more newcomers (mostly Han) have begun settling in the oil-rich province since the beginning of China\u2019s economic reforms in 1979. Energy has created new jobs, but most of these are limited to Mandarin speakers, which excludes the majority of Uighur.<\/p>\n Guang Niu\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Uighur woman protests in front of policemen and riot vehicles on July 7, 2009, in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.<\/p>\n In 2009, those tensions exploded in a vicious pogrom<\/a> by young Uighur men against Han, in which at least 197 people were killed. (Though the violence was primarily directed against Han, other Muslim groups and ethnic minorities were also targets, <\/strong>since they were seen as intruders threatening Uighur businesses and culture.)<\/p>\n The pogrom, crushed by China\u2019s paramilitary units, kicked off a wave of counter-violence from Han communities. Beijing reined in the Han communal violence but instituted a new wave of repression that further fueled Uighur resentment.<\/p>\n As a result, Xinjiang today is essentially locked in a low-level insurgency, with dozens dying every month. However, the immense scale of the territory (the province isapproximately 635,900 square miles<\/a> \u2014 for comparison, the state of Texas is just 268,596 square miles<\/a>), coupled with the inability of journalists to visit many areas, makes it hard to tell who\u2019s killing whom<\/a>. What the Chinese authorities call a terrorist attack, exiled Uighur groups will describe as a massacre of protesters by the police.<\/p>\n Peter Parks\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n A Uighur woman begs as armed Chinese paramilitary police march past on a street in Urumqi on July 5, 2010, the first anniversary of deadly unrest that laid bare deep-seated ethnic tensions in the far-western Xinjiang region.<\/p>\n China blames every incidence of violence on the \u201c<\/a>East Turk<\/a>e<\/a>stan Islamic Movement<\/a>,\u201d<\/a> a supposed Islamist terrorist group founded by militant Uighur separatists with ties to global Islamic terrorist networks.<\/p>\n However, much of what is known about the group comes from the Chinese authorities and press, who are eager to label any opposition<\/a> to Beijing as terrorism. Indeed, many analysts think it\u2019s more likely there are a number of splinter groups operating in the region, with different agendas and varying degrees of ties to global Islamist terrorism.<\/p>\n But there is growing evidence of jihadist propaganda<\/a> spreading among an angry Uighur population, mixed in among the hugely popular Turkish and Central Asian music and videos exchanged on DVDs and memory sticks.<\/p>\n There have also been verifiable terrorist attacks, as the violence \u2014 which had previously been largely confined to Xinjiang \u2014 has begun to spill over into the rest of China. In 2014, <\/strong>a small Uighur group armed with knives attacked a crowd at a railway station in Kunming, hundreds of miles from Xinjiang, killing 29 innocent victims and sparking widespread horror and rage<\/a>.<\/p>\n For many Uighur, especially young men, the cycle of violence and repression has caused them to become more anti-Chinese<\/a> than ever.<\/p>\n In this heated context, Ramadan fasting, as well as many other outward expressions of Islamic piety and identity, has become a potent political symbol. Uighur observance of Ramadan has sometimes been spotty in the past, especially outside of Xinjiang, but many Uighur have become more religiously observant in recent years.<\/p>\n Starting around the 1990s, displays of public piety became more common, historian Rian Thum, an assistant professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, told me, <\/strong>as <\/strong>many Uighur began reasserting their Islamic identities in deliberate opposition to the Chinese state.<\/p>\n Kevin Frayer\/Getty Images<\/p>\n A Uighur family gathers for a meal to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan, on July 29, 2014, in old Kashgar, Xinjiang.<\/p>\n The official Chinese position is that Muslims in Xinjiang enjoy \u201cgreater religious freedom than at any time in history,\u201d according to a w<\/a>hite <\/a>p<\/a>aper<\/a> the Chinese government released just before Ramadan this year. The paper claims that any restrictions are the result of existing regulations against Chinese Communist Party members, who must voluntarily pledge atheism, or because of regulations that forbid the religious indoctrination of minors.<\/p>\n In practice, however, while private fasting is possible, attempts at communal piety are strictly restricted in Xinjiang. Mosques are closed during the day, while restaurants are forced to remain open. Students\u2019 and government workers\u2019 names are checked for attendance at mandated daytime meals, and the individuals are called in for questioning if they fail to eat. Repeated offenses can mean being expelled from school or fired from a government job.<\/p>\n According to one Chinese expert<\/a> who interpreted the white paper, the policy is essentially that Muslims \u201cwithout political obligations\u201d are welcome to fast. But what these “political obligations” actually are is kept deliberately vague, allowing the state the flexibility to punish as it pleases. And in Xinjiang, even the course of the sun can be political.<\/p>\n Officially, the region is in the same single, Beijing-centered time zone that every other part of China is in. Even though the country spans roughly as much territory as the continental US, which has four different time zones, the whole of China sticks to the same clock, thanks to a 1949 policy implemented by Mao Zedong in an effort to promote national unity.<\/p>\n In reality, though, Xinjiang is so far west that it\u2019s two hours behind the capital. Since Muslims determine when to begin and end their fasts each day based on the position of the sun, this means that Uighur keep \u201c<\/a>local time<\/a>\u201d<\/a> whenever possible. But as far as the Chinese state authorities in Beijing are concerned, letting the sun, rather than Beijing, decide when you eat implies defiance.<\/p>\n The fasting restrictions are just one aspect of a raft of religious constraints applied tightly in Xinjiang, although the details vary from area to area. Schoolchildren are forced torecite atheistic<\/a> pledges. Public prayer is often forbidden, and even parents teaching the Quran to their children at home can be punished by authorities claiming this constitutes \u201cillegal religious schools.\u201d<\/p>\n Uighur are often harassed for visible symbols of faith, with long beards and the veilsingled out<\/a> as signs of the \u201cthree evil forces\u201d of separatism, terrorism, and extremism.Propaganda posters<\/a> throughout the region extol the virtues of ditching religious symbols. In some regions, street patrols harass veil-wearing women, while businesses are \u201casked\u201d to sign pledges that they won\u2019t allow the hirsute or veiled onto their premises. Refusing to shave can mean prison time<\/a>.<\/p>\n Greg Baker\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n This photo taken on April 17, 2015, shows a propaganda poster that reads, \u201cParticipating in extremist activities is playing with fire,\u201d on a street in Awat, in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n It might be tempting to attribute this to Chinese state policy aimed at suppressing religious sentiment in general and promoting communist-style atheism. And indeed, that\u2019s how the Communist Party defends the policy: It claims that Uighur simply have to follow the same rules that apply to everyone, such as requiring Communist Party members to be atheists and forbidding the religious education of minors.<\/p>\n But while religious groups are often squeezed tightly<\/a> in China, the restrictions on the Uighur are far tighter than for anyone else. It\u2019s not just party members who can\u2019t fast, but all government workers. It\u2019s not just minors who are forced to eat in the daytime, but college students too.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not religion by itself that worries Beijing most, but the potential religion offers for resistance \u2014 especially among a fiercely independent people sitting on a critical strategic border region.<\/p>\n The restrictions placed on Uighur are not generally applied to members of other religions, especially those seen as indigenously Chinese, such as (accurately) Daoism and (inaccurately<\/a>) Buddhism. Buddhist monasteries regularly run schools, and temples in Beijing fill up every year with party members praying for their children\u2019s examination success.<\/p>\n And, perhaps even more telling, the restrictions aren\u2019t even applied to most otherMuslims<\/em> in China. Outside of Xinjiang, restrictions on Ramadan fasting or other Islamic religious practices are relatively uncommon. And when they do occur, they’re more on a scale with the occasional persecutions of Christian or Buddhist sects \u2014 nothing close to the concerted repression campaign against the Uighur.<\/p>\n For the Chinese authorities, forcing Uighur to publicly deny their own traditions serves multiple purposes, as asking Christians to trample the cross<\/a> once did in Japan or pushing Catholics to attend Protestant mass did in Elizabethan England. It directly asserts the authority of Beijing over everyday life. It allows potential dissidents and militants to be singled out and monitored or arrested. And it puts pressure on young Uighur, in particular, to accept the official Chinese Communist Party narrative.<\/p>\n Andia\/UIG via Getty Images<\/p>\n A Uighur woman walks past a statue of Chairman Mao Zedong in the city of Kashgar in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n The pressure is exceptionally harsh when it acts as a gate closing off<\/a> potential education and future possibilities. Since access to good jobs, especially outside of Xinjiang, depends on receiving a Chinese-language education, adhering to even the most basic Islamic religious practices requires a huge personal sacrifice by young Uighur enrolled in the state education system, as they risk being kicked out if they disobeying restrictions.<\/p>\n By pushing them to deny their own practices, officials hope that young Uighur will internalize the party\u2019s values in order to justify their own submission.<\/p>\n The past decade has seen distrust of Muslims spread beyond Xinjiang to a much wider swath of China, as James Leibold, a political scientist and senior lecturer at Australia\u2019s La Trobe University, recently noted in a paper<\/a> for the Jamestown Foundation.<\/p>\n Online commentators are agitating against \u201cIslamization\u201d and \u201cArabization,\u201d and government policies on issues such as halal <\/em>butchers \u2014 that is, butchers who follow Islamic religious laws regarding the slaughter of animals and food preparation \u2014 are becoming increasingly contentious.<\/p>\n Paranoid critics argue that laws regulating the halal <\/em>meat trade or allowing the building of new mosques are, in fact, cover for a wider campaign of infiltration and \u201cIslamization\u201d of a vulnerable China. Public opinion has turned hostile toward Muslims, with anti-Islamic memes often picked up from far-right European and US media and repackaged on social media for a Chinese audience.<\/p>\n Yet China\u2019s Muslims are unlikely to face wide-scale persecution \u2014 at least from the government. Even as the authorities cracked down in Xinjiang over Ramadan, Leibold noted to me in an email that the central government had issued notices calling for officials to \u201crespect and uphold the cultural customs and legal rights of ethnic minorities\u201d and redoubled propaganda efforts (such as the white paper) to preach China\u2019s tolerance of religious freedom.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, Beijing is doing this not out of concern for religious rights but for political ends. Beijing is currently pursuing an ambitious geopolitical plan known as the \u201cOne Belt, One Road\u201d initiative. Here’s a really good basic description of it from Scott Kennedy and David A. Parker, two experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (a DC-based think tank) who have studied the policy:<\/p>\n Often referred to jointly as the \u201cOne Belt, One Road,\u201d details released so far by China\u2019s official media outlets show the \u201cBelt\u201d as a planned network of overland road and rail routes, oil and natural gas pipelines, and other infrastructure projects that will stretch from Xi\u2019an in central China, through Central Asia, and ultimately reach as far as Moscow, Rotterdam, and Venice.<\/p>\n Perhaps awkwardly named, the \u201cRoad\u201d is its maritime equivalent: a network of planned port and other coastal infrastructure projects that dot the map from South and Southeast Asia to East Africa and the northern Mediterranean Sea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s a massive project, and one on which China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping, has effectively staked his own political legacy. Showing support for the project is mandatory for Chinese academics and officials trying to prove their loyalty to Xi or advance their own careers.<\/p>\n To make it happen, China needs the cooperation of a whole bunch of countries \u2014 including a substantial number of Muslim ones. This means the central government in Beijing has a pretty strong incentive to make sure it’s not perceived as persecuting Muslims all over China, as that would almost certainly infuriate many of its Islamic partner nations.<\/p>\n Indeed, right after scathing reports about the Ramadan restrictions on Uighur in Xinjiang began making headlines in Pakistan<\/a> and Indonesia<\/a>, the Chinese government invited officials from both countries to come visit the region and then took them on very carefully controlled, government-guided tours to convince them that Uighur have religious freedom.<\/p>\n (Farooq Naeem\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n Pakistani laborers arrange a welcome billboard featuring the Chinese and Pakistani national flags ahead of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Islamabad on April 18, 2015.<\/p>\n On the other hand, though, many of these Muslim countries also have strong incentives to keep up political and trade relations with a powerful neighbor like China, even if that means looking the other way at its repression of their Muslim brethren. For instance, following their Potemkin tours, those Pakistani and Indonesian officials seemed eager to parrot the official Chinese government line about religious freedom in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n There are a lot of Muslims in the world, and China doesn\u2019t want to piss them off; unfortunately, there just aren\u2019t very many Uighur.<\/p>\nWait, China has Muslims?<\/h3>\n
![\"](\"http:\/\/docs.uyghuramerican.org\/images\/Muslims%20praying%20Beijing.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"](\"http:\/\/docs.uyghuramerican.org\/images\/xinjiang-locator-vox.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe \u201cthree evil forces\u201d: terrorism, religious extremism, and separatism<\/h3>\n
![\"](\"http:\/\/docs.uyghuramerican.org\/images\/Turkestan%20flag%20protest.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"](\"http:\/\/docs.uyghuramerican.org\/images\/Uighur%20woman%20police%20trucks.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"](\"http:\/\/docs.uyghuramerican.org\/images\/Chinese%20paramilitary.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWhy is the Ramadan fast so important?<\/h3>\n
![\"](\"http:\/\/docs.uyghuramerican.org\/images\/Eid%20Uighur.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"](\"http:\/\/docs.uyghuramerican.org\/images\/Propaganda%20poster%20xinjiang.jpg\")
<\/p>\nGood Muslims, bad Uighur<\/h3>\n
![\"](\"http:\/\/docs.uyghuramerican.org\/images\/Mao%20statue%20Uighur.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAnti-Muslim sentiment is on the rise in China \u2014 but the government has an incentive to keep it in check<\/h3>\n
![\"](\"http:\/\/docs.uyghuramerican.org\/images\/China%20Pakistan%20flags.jpg\")
<\/p>\n