Jihad in China? "Chinese border assault kills 16," from the BBC, August 4 (thanks to Un:dhimmi):
Sixteen Chinese policemen have been killed in an attack on a border post in the restive Muslim region of Xinjiang, state media say.Two attackers reportedly drove up to the post in a rubbish truck and threw two grenades, before moving in to attack the policemen with knives.
The attack came four days before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games....
Fourteen policemen died at the scene and two on the way to hospital. Another 16 policemen were hurt....
Xinjiang, in the north-west of the country, is home to the Muslim Uighur people. Uighur separatists have waged a low-level campaign against Chinese rule for decades.
Human rights groups say Beijing is suppressing the rights of Uighurs.
The BBC's Daniel Griffiths in Beijing says China has spoken in the past of what it calls a terrorist threat from Muslim militants in Xinjiang, but it has provided little evidence to back up its claims....
Last week, a senior Chinese army officer warned that Islamic separatists were the biggest danger to the Olympics.
Col Tian Yixiang of the Olympics security command centre told reporters the main threat came from the "East Turkestan terrorist organisation".
The term is used by the government to refer to Islamist separatists in Xinjiang.
Late last month a group called the Turkestan Islamic Party said it had blown up buses in Shanghai and Yunnan, killing five people.
But China denied that the explosions were acts of terrorism.
The Washington-based IntelCenter, which monitors terrorism communications, said the Turkestan Islamic Party had released a video entitled Our Blessed Jihad in Yunnan.
In it, the group's leader, Commander Seyfullah, said it was responsible for several attacks and threatened the Olympics.
"The Chinese have haughtily ignored our warnings," IntelCenter quoted him as saying.
"The Turkestan Islamic Party volunteers... have started urgent actions."...
The Associated Press headline calls them "Rioters":
I just returned from a business trip to Paris and London and every time I go back I notice more and more evidence of the abdication of our freedom. Parts of London and Paris have more burkas per square meter than some places I've seen in the Middle East. For a single flight on my return I stood in no less than 7 queues to get through all the security layers.
The world is at war and only one side seems to know it. We just see "riots", disaffected "youths", common crimes, "separatists", socio-economic genesis of acts of war, "radical" actors, and the list goes on. Only our enemy frames the discussion in terms of military strategy and tactics, ideological struggle to the death and centuries of attempts to conquer through force of arms.
On NPR the report about the attack in Kashgar ended with a sentence to the effect -- I didn't write it down -- that "Western diplomats are worried" that the Chinese "will use this as an excuse to clamp down on Muslim dissidents.
Query: why "worried"?
Why not "grimly satisfied"?
Late last month a group called the Turkestan Islamic Party said it had blown up buses in Shanghai and Yunnan, killing five people.
But China denied that the explosions were acts of terrorism.
-from the article
If China won't call a spade a spade then it doesn't matter what people in the press call them. Funny, the Beijing government has no problem labeling Democratic activists as dangers to the state and clamping down, shutting down papers and websites but it can't call people who blow up buses terrorists. What gives?
This is what happens in authoritarian states. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It's hard to sympathize with either side. A pox on both houses.
Olympics offered as a carrot to totalitarian states? NEVER AGAIN!
For as long as the msm, npr types are controled by liberal elites, you not see proper reporting.
can they still blame the Jews on this attack by muslims, l mean this excuse is used all the time by msm.
liberal types say if because the ME is in turmoil (get rid of Israel) muslims have rightful excuse to act they way they do, that is rape, pillage, torture , kill.
Now watch for 'backlash'- the Chinese will not approach this with PC and humanitarian befuddlement...
OH, I'm suffering a large attack of Schadenfreude right now. I'm old enough to remember campus radicals inspired by that fat old marmot Mao terrorizing others; and a leftist world turning a blind eye to the horrors of Cambodia.
As for China's denial that they have a terrorist problem, chalk it up to the glories of having an unfree media. China also doesn't have prostitution--never mind those sickly young ladies in tight black shorts hanging out near major hotels and little eateries along truck routes. China also doesn't have AIDS--a physician who called the world's attention to China's catching that "capitalist" scourge lost her job and suffered police intimidation. Also, everyone knows that the serfs of Tibet are grateful to their Han "Elder Brothers" for liberating them from "feudal superstition", and c_________ing on their culture. That goes for the Muslim peoples of the northwest, too (not just Uighurs, but Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Salar, Dongxiang, Hui, etc.)
China has its cracks. It isn't just Uighur Muslims who are poking at totalitarian decay, but Evangelical Christians, advocates of multi-party politics, artists, and many others.
Further, Beijing is a great enabler of jihad in Sudan and other parts of Africa and a lover of regimes like North Korea and Burma. I'll feel sad for the Thai, who've been reasonable generous to their minorities; I'll support Israel, which is one of the few places in the Arabic-speaking world (second official language) where minorities are represented; and, of course, I remain a patriotic American. But part of me feels that Mainland China is really only reaping what it has sown.
This area will not stay "restive" for long. The Chinese autocracy and the mahometans truly deserve each other. The Chinese people don't deserve either of them.
Agree with Infidel33 above. To borrow a Debbie Schlussel phrase, another of those 'Alien vs. Predator' sequels. Nobody would give a more befitting reply to the Mohammedans than the Chicoms, and nobody deserves to experience the brunt of Jihadi terror more than the Chicoms.
If only all the world's 1b Mohammedans converged on Xinxiang, and then came face to face with 1b Chinese - that would be a battle really worth watching. The Chicoms could send out the Red Guards, the PLA and those old Tienanmen tanks into Xinxiang, and maybe have a celebration there parallel to what's going on in Beijing
What's the English translation of Seyfullah?
Memo to jihadists.
*DO NOT* pull the dragon's tail.
Ordinary Chinese people like: uncovered women in pretty dresses, alcohol (rice wine), pork, music, poetry, Chinese opera, dragon dances, dogs (Pekinese; and think of lion-dog temple statues), dancing, sculpture, paintings of living beings, and all the other good things that humanity amuses itself with. So China - the best of China - is most emphatically haraam. Compare Mohammed's hatred of poets, with the high place that poets and poetry have traditionally occupied in Chinese civilisation.
I pray for the deliverance of the Chinese people from the ruthless greed and oppression of the post-Maoist imperial lootocracy and thugocracy.
Mao was right up there with Mohammed and the Caliphs as a greedy selfish b*****d who wanted to be worshipped by the people whose lives he ruined; who deprived other people of their fun (e.g. his campaign against growing flowers, keeping pets, and against the bird population of Beijing) while, behind closed doors, hypocritically indulging himself to the fullest. (See Jung Chang's no-holds-barred biography of Mao).
I long to see China set free to be all that it could be. (The more so because one of my brothers is married to a lovely southern Chinese girl).
I pray fervently for the deliverance of Tibet from genocidal and ecocidal Chinese occupation and oppression, and for the protection of Taiwan.
But the ordinary Chinese, just as much as their masters, have everything to gain, and nothing to lose, by a singleminded and relentless squashing of the Mohammedans, once and for all.
A nice quote from Serge Trifkovic's 'Sword of the Prophet', page 109 of the paperback edition, in the chapter 'Jihad Without End':
"On the eastern front, China's T'ang Dynasty saw off the Muslim armies as smartly as Charles Martel".
PS - to PRCalDude - I think Seyfullah stands for 'Sword of allah'.
Ah, no... no way.. religion of peace involved?! Nah, it must be a mistake... Seriosly, everyone - stop picking on poor islamist - it is not their fault that there is just not enough space on this planet for them... and the rest of us.