We all know that only greasy Islamophobes link Islam with terrorism, and that doing so is part of a worldwide Islamophobic movement unaccountably dedicated to misrepresenting a peaceful religion.
The only problem with that narrative, which is the understanding of the dominant mainstream, is that Islamic jihadis keep exploding it (so to speak).
“Islamist group claims Urumqi bombing,” The Guardian, May 14, 2014:
An Islamist militant group called the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) claimed responsibility for a bomb attack at a train station in China’s western city of Urumqi in late April that killed one person and injured 79, the Site Monitoring service said.
China had said the attack in its restive Xinjiang region, home to the Muslim Uighur ethnic group, was carried out by two religious extremists who were killed in the blast.
Site, which tracks Islamist militant statements, said TIP had released a 10-minute video in the Uighur language showing the construction of a briefcase bomb it said was used in the station attack.
“A fighter is shown placing the explosive material and shrapnel of bolts inside a box, then inserting the detonation device in a briefcase with the explosive, and leaving the trigger exposed in an outside pocket,” Site said of the video.
It said the video had been produced by the TIP’s Islam Awazi Media Centre and posted on its website on 11 May.
Beijing says it faces a threat from militant Islamists in Xinjiang who want an independent state called East Turkestan. Authorities say many have links with foreign groups, although rights groups and some foreign experts say there is little evidence to support this.
The TIP, which China equates with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), keeps a low profile in Pakistan. Unlike the Taliban, it rarely posts videos promoting its activities or ideology. Its exact size is unknown and some experts dispute its ability to orchestrate attacks in China, or that it exists at all as a cohesive group.
In a rare interview with Reuters in March, Abdullah Mansour, who says he is the leader of the Turkistan Islamic Party, said it was his holy duty to fight the Chinese.
China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had not seen the video, but believed it might further bolster China’s position on separatist groups. “Some violent extremist terrorist groups have now emerged. They are colluding with foreign groups and are attempting violent activities in Xinjiang and other areas in China intended to destroy China’s national policy and social stability,” Hua said at a regular press briefing.
“We hope that everyone can recognise the goal of these violent groups and support the Chinese government’s will to crack down on all violent terrorist activities and preserve safety for people and society,” she said….
Not likely. The international media is relentlessly skeptical about the jihad in China — as always, it is more sympathetic to the jihadis than to those who resist them.
john spielman says
more murder and carnage in the name of Allah/Satan. I am glad the one true God doesn’t work that way. Jesus, who is God incarnate, said “No one comes to me unless the Father draw him”! Jesus does not gain disciples at the point of a gun nor with threats of murder and intimidation (unlike Allah/Satan)
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
My prediction is that the Chinese won’t be so dainty with their Moslems. Yeah, I know about the Hui, who’ve laid low for a long time now. But the ruling elite of the Celestial Kingdom will not tiptoe on eggshells for the Uighurs, who are much more uppity, who are more in line with their betters in Turkey, Persia and Arabia.
It won’t be long before the Autonomous Region is not so autonomous. In fact, the process of giving the Moslems what they’re asking for is well underway. This is a quintessential clash that pits Commie against Moslem. Classic. Thought systems that would take over the world are incompatible with one another.
Mazo says
Wrong, its Hui, Salar, and Dongxiang who are much more religious than Uyghurs.
China encourages gulf Arab counties to invest in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region. Countries like the UAE and Saudi pour millions into their every year to expand the local industries.
China is also building ties and close trade relations with both Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is NOT interested in spreading Communist ideology to other countries anymore,
MrSquat says
>> The international media is relentlessly skeptical about the jihad in China
There are interesting parallels between Holocaust denial and Jihad denial.
Same malicious intent of re-victimizing the victims, denying them the right to self-defense, and empowering the criminals.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
The analog between Holocaust denial and Jihad denial is an important thought. Hadn’t thought of that.
mortimer says
Only an ideology not based on the Golden Rule can suppress Islam…i.e. Marxism or fascism.
Marxism and Islam are polar opposites except for their methodology…both use lies, torture and liberal use of murder to succeed by keeping the populace permanently terrorized.
The West is instructed by the Golden Rule which Islamist use to thwart controls on Islam. They use our ethics as a weapon against us to stop us from being effective against jihad.
Mazo says
Another person shooting his mouth off without knowing anything about the topic. China gives more affirmative action to minorities than America does. People get extra points on university entrance exams, and quotas for jobs and positions.
Kepha says
Mortimer, the great hyper-modern projects of Fascism and Marxism-Leninism are ruinous luxuries for any country. If we fall back on them to fight Jihad, we will cripple ourselves terribly.
To wax fundamentalist:
When Moses gave instructions for a monarch for the Israelites, he said that the monarch should have the Torah at his side and fear the LORD. When the Israelites called for a King “like the nations round about” (I Sam. 8), Samuel gave a laundry list of exactions the monarch would impose, while God reminded Samuel that God Himself, not Samuel, was the one whom the people had rejected.
Besides, as many posters here have noted, Hitler was a moonstruck teen when he regarded Islam, wishing that the Germans had converted to that religion rather than Christianity (which he called a Jewish poison in his table talk). As for the Marxist-Leninists, those are the people who, in Gramscian phase, utterly weakened our Western society until we can’t face the jihadi challenge honestly. And when they control the state, the Marxist-Leninists have always been most brutal to their own peoples.
dumbledoresarmy says
The Golden Rule is a positive future-oriented formulation of the Principle of Reciprocity. ‘Do as you would be done by”.
But there is a different, negative formulation. “Be done by as you did”.
Muslims reject and deny the principle of reciprocity; they – in their megalomania, in their malignant narcissism – do not accept that it can or should apply to *them*. They feel entitled to do, and do, and do…evil…to others, and yet never be “done by”. (Or they pervert it: they pretend that the evil they do is “retaliation” and “revenge” for…for what? – in the end, the terrible “grievance” that consists in their not yet being the Lords of the World).
It’s waaaay past time that the Ummah got a sound thrashing from the tough old lady that Charles Kingsley called “Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid”.
Mazo says
We apply the golden rule, when the British supported Tibet invaded Qinghai province of China in 1932, the Hui Muslim General Ma Bufang not only crushed their armies, but recaptured land in Tibet itself from the Dalai Lama’s forces. General Ma later ended up as Taiwan’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia after the Republic of China moved to Taiwan.
You try taking land, your land gets taken.
Mazo says
Uyghurs are allowed to carry knives for “cultural reasons” in public, while everyone else is not allowed, Hui Muslims, Dongxiang Muslims, Salar Muslims, and Han and everyone else are not allowed to carry knives in public.
Mazo says
Here again you go with the BS that your media is sympathetic with Islamists or terrorists- it is not, your media is anti-China, any country who is an enemy of the west will get villified in your media and presented as if they deserve any terrorist attacks coming to them.
Your same western media which puts any news of terrorist attacks against civilians in China on their front page headlines including attacks which kill less than three people with articles insinuating China had whats coming to it, will bury articles about attacks in the Philippines by Moros against the Philippine military which kill dozens of personnel, and attacks by West Papuans against the Indonesian military, on the back corners of their news websites or news papers or frequently don’t report them at all.
American allies can massacre and rape civilians and American and western media won’t say a word, oh no, and any attack on the armed forces of American allied states will not get mentioned lest the American population learns about their government’s odious policies which provoked those attacks.
The western media is not sympathetic to anti-government groups in the Philippines and Indonesia because they are western allies but the international media is sympathetic to terrorists in China because the west is an enemy of China.
Kepha says
Mazo, since you jump to the conclusion that the West is an enemy of China, may I remind you of the words of someone you accept as a prophet (since I gather you are Hui):
为什么看见你弟兄眼中的刺,却不想自己眼中的梁木呢?你自己眼有梁木,怎么对拟迪雄说,“容我去掉你眼中的刺“呢?(马太福音7:3-4; Mt. 7:3-4).
You accuse many of us to jumping to unwarranted conclusions, but here you jump to a similarly unwarranted one. While relations between the West and China have been bad at times, I think you must be very much aware of how much good will Western states expressed towards China during the 抗日战争. As for more recent “ill will”, please do not forget who seized and held whose consuls in Shenyang back during your civil war, and who is was who said, “我们一面倒” (We lean to one side) about matters between the US and USSR during the early Cold War.
I believe that at this stage of the game, most Westerners have a great deal of respect for China’s ancient cultural heritage, believe that peace between China and the USA is important, and admit that the Opium Wars and Unequal Treaties were unust . However, considering the last, at least the extraterritoriality provisions, would you, Mazo, like to be subject to Qing Dynasty legal process if you didn’t have to, especially if your “legal DNA” included such things as Bills of Rights and Magna Carta?
Do you honestly think that China’s standard of living and position in the world would have been better than it is now had the Ming and Qing policies of isolation remained unchallenged?
I, for one, have recognized the propriety of your impatience and unhappiness that many here cannot distinguish the attitudes and political positions of Uighur separatists and Hui who identify as citizens of and participants in the Chinese state–and I have pointed these out on occasion myself. But I also think you need to be aware that concerning China and the West, we are no longer living in the days of the Black Flags vs. the French down in Annam; or even of the international intervention against the Boxers.
Now, I do not doubt that the West and China may often “misread” each other. I’ve seen a lot of this, and fear that some of this is going on on this thread. But this is one reason why I think it important for people on both sides to take heed to the admonition of Jesus the Messiah I gave above (the guy whom I call 耶稣 and whom you call 尔萨).
Further, I do not believe that all cultures are pure and impermeable (sorry, folks, but I think Fouad Ajami had a germ of truth to his criticism of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis)–even if I am something of a “culturalist”. After all, my sacred books were translated from Hebrew and Greek into English and Chinese (my main languages), just as those of many of your countrymen were translated from the Sanskrit. Jesuit translations of Kong Zi and Meng Zi led many of our 17th and 18th century thnkers to rethink how natural law (ethics and politics; not birds and bees, as so many graduates of US high schools are misled to think) works. Your own country’s government is very much thinking along lines worked out in 19th century Germany, torn between essentialist nationalist and socialist ideologies (as for the nationalism, the dislike of the West from so many of your countrymen is matched by the rankled hatred of France in German nationalists such as Arndt–and perhaps for similar reasons).
Perhaps how we here look for an Islamic angle to Islamic separatism (what are we to make of how some Uighur see these actions as jihad–just as some Hui mullahs saw fighting Japan as a jihad back in 1937-45?) is reason for you to feel badly about us. Maybe, then, you ought to explain a little more about how a Hui person might understand his position as both a Muslim believer and a patriotic citizen of China. After all, you have noted such things among Hui people here for some time. 请教!(please teach). This is something you probably can do much better than I can; since my Chinese connections are 客家 and not Muslim at all.
By the way, I’m now reading a bio of Bai Chongxi, written by his son.
Kepha says
Also, offical America does not support Uighur separatism. If it recognizes that there may be a real human rights grievance there, it still has no plans to back some Republic of Eastern Turkistan. As for the media, remember that our media is not government-controlled.
Mazo says
I have seen Philippine media online. They actually report about these clashes every week, which sometimes kill up to dozens of Philippines troops, none of this appears in western media. I believe this is intentional.
I have also seen western media blatantly and repeatedly lie about Xinjiang, they don’t mention that the Second East Turkestan Republic was a Soviet created Communist puppet state and only ruled three districts in Northern Xinjiang, they don’t mention that Dzungaria (North Xinjiang) is not native Uyghur land and that Uyghurs also also immigrants there, they even tried claiming that Tocharians were Uyghurs.
That is like claiming Aztecs are Hispanic Mexicans, or Incans are Hispanic Peruvians.
I have never seen the western media complain about Mindanao, Aceh, or Papua.
Also they don’t mention that the name “East Turkestan” was created by the Russian Nikita Bichurin, (the reason it is called “East”, is because to the Russians in central asia, that was the direction) or that Russians and Soviets were the ones who wrote alot of the fictional “Uyghur history” claiming that the great Uyghur Emprie ruled Xinjiang 6,000 years ago.
Have you seen what Turghun Almas wrote in “Uyghurlar”? He copied Soviet propaganda and claimed Uyghurs were in Xinjiang for 6,000 years, they were the origin of all human civilization, and that Uyghurs invented gunpowder, the compass, paper, and printing.
Many Uyghurs genuinely believe what was written in that book. Many of them are involved in the World Uyghur Congress and other sepratist movements, they basically copied Soviet propaganda history and present it as fact.
If Americans learn what is going on in the Philippines in Mindanao, or of the Philippines false irridentist claims on the Spratly islands, will they reject their government’s support for its odious policies?
The western media has been consistently promoting Obama’s policies and lies. They deliberately present the Philippines as a victim in the Spratly islands to gain support for Obama’s policies against China in the region.
They don’t mention that both mainland China and Taiwan have the exact same claims (both claim the entire Spratly Island and Paracel chain) and both reject the Vietnam and the Philippines claims. Taiwan’s biggest enemy in the Spratlys is Vietnam.
They don’t mention that the Philippines only started claiming the Spratlys in the 1970s or that the Republic of China already claimed and garrisoned the islands when Tomas Cloma allegedly “discovered” them.
Name says
You seems to like to blame everything to the west, how about the fact that none of the victims so far is a westerner?
So tell us your view on this matter, how do you see uyghur separatism and terrorism, last time i red there was more than 100 attacks in xinjiang alone last year.
Mazo says
Why do your propaganda stations like Radio Free Asia only pretend to care about human rights in certain countries? If 20 people get shot in the Philippines its guaranteed not to be broadcasted at all. Why doesn’t your media pretend to be concerned about them and write the truth about their history?
Do you know how many deadly clashes there were between Moros and Philippine troops every year in Mindanao? Go look up a Philippine newspaper website online, they happen virtually every week, and western media ignores it.
Name says
So what? Philippines rebel kills philippines soldier hasnothing to do with china and uyghur, why are you trying to twist the topic into philippines abd the west? Westerner and filipinos are not their target.
I am not westerner and i dont give a shit about human pricks or democrapy.
You are not answering my question, what do you think about uyghur terrorism that had killed more than 100 people last year?
Dont try to make this china vs the west debate, i am not talking about that
Mazo says
Poisonous Soviet indoctrination leading them to false illusions of grandeur over a greater past “Uyghur Empire” which never existed.
Do you remember the 1960s and 70s when the Soviets backed Uyghur Communist terrorists in attacking China?
Turghun Almas’ Soviet inspired book was read by many deluded Uyghur nationalists.
Name says
So you are basically saying that islam play no rule at all? But the recent crackdown proved that they are indeed influenced by jihad ideology from outside
Mazo says
You know these same maggots still hail the Soviet supported Second East Turkestan Republic and its Communist Uyghur leaders like Ehmetjan Qasim as heroes?
Name says
So what? They could be nationalist but that doesnt mean that they are less islamic. If we are to believe what the news told us then there is heavy islamic influence in their action, for instance the kunming attackers wanted to do jihad overseas, and the latest crackdown found books and videos about jihad
Kepha says
Having taught ESOL to students of Mexican and Peruvian Indigenous heritage–including one for whose grandmother the back to school night translation had to run English-Spanish-Nahuatl and another who was pleased to find that there was a Norteamericano teacher who actually knew that “Quechua” meant his parents’ native language–I can assure you that the ethnic bean counters see Los Indigenas as “Hispanic”. It’s a little like China’s lumping Bunun, Saisyat, Tayal, Tsou, etc. all under the rubric of “Gaoshan”. Ethnic identity and assignment is a political game start to finish: split when you’re rising to power to embarrass those in power; lump when you’re in power an administrative ease tops other concerns.