What about the Uyghurs?

Okay. It's well past due for me to address this particular issue, and I know it deserves more time and more depth than I'm going to give it here. But I just thought for now, let me sort of summarize my position. I've had many people tell me, you know, Shahid, you advocate for the Muslim world to cooperate with China. But what about the Uighurs?

And fair enough. So let me just say point blank. I simply do not believe a lot of the claims being made on this issue. Muslim sources outside of China always just regurgitate and often embellish, stories that are sourced from the western media, and the western media exclusively sources its stories from Uighur organizations that are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. Therefore, in my mind, these stories and these sources and these organizations have zero credibility.

They are engaging in a blatant propaganda project on behalf of The United States against China. And then you have Muslim sources inside China, which more often than not refute the accusations being made by NED backed organizations and by the western media. And then you have Muslims from outside China who go to China to visit Xinjiang in person, Muslim activists, Muslim leaders, politicians, and so on, civil society, NGOs who go to Xinjiang to see for themselves what the situation is like. But their testimony is always dismissed out of hand and they are accused of being liars and hypocrites. So you're disregarding the testimony of Muslims who live in China, who live in Xinjiang or who have personally gone to visit Xinjiang and you're choosing to instead believe western or western influenced or western funded sources who often allege the most outlandish and unevidenced brutality imaginable.

So, yeah, I have a problem with this approach to the issue. There's a propaganda war going on on this issue from both sides. Biased Western outlets and hysterical Muslim speakers, frankly producing clickbait to get emotional reactions from the Muslim population, spew allegations about atrocities without the slightest effort to verify them. I mean, I've seen videos shared on Muslim supposedly news platforms which purport to show Uighur Muslims being abused by Chinese security forces, but which actually show Indonesian criminal suspects being beaten by the police speaking Bahasa. So from the perspective of someone who works in PR, I look at a lot of this propaganda as simply laughable.

But then on the Chinese side, they produce equally absurd propaganda about how the detention centers are basically wellness clinics where everyone is just blissfully happy. So it seems like no one is really willing to tell the truth for whatever reason. My opinion is this, I'm no China expert, but what I see is that the Chinese government has two main priorities in terms of governing society. The first is maintaining and preserving their territorial integrity, and the second is that within that territory, their top priority is their version of social harmony, and their version of social harmony means total and absolute conformity. Well, the Uighurs have challenged both of these priorities for the CCP.

First, by the separatist movement, and second, by coloring the separatist movement as Islamic. They have basically told the Chinese government that their Muslim identity makes it impossible for them to be Chinese, and that it's because of Islam and because of their Muslim identity that they want to separate and become an independent nation. So according to the internal logic of the CCP, that means that Islam and Muslim identity pose obstacles to Uighurs being harmonious Chinese citizens. Their solution? Well, forcibly indoctrinate the Uighurs out of any concept of Islam that does not put Chinese citizenship first.

You see because the separatist movement connected Muslim identity to support for an independent East Turkestan. The Chinese government believed them. So in the minds of the CCP, if you take the Salah seriously, if you take fasting seriously, if you take Sharia seriously, if you take halal and haram seriously, it must mean that you also support militant rebellion against the central government. And so you will then be targeted for reeducation against your will, but in the eyes of the Chinese government for your own good. Look, Beijing deals with all dissidents in a similar manner.

I mean, most political prisoners in China receive extremely long sentences, while Uighurs spend on average a few months in the detention camps in Xinjiang. Obviously, of this is acceptable. China does not have a light touch when it comes to enforcing social uniformity. But on the other hand, their theory is not significantly different from The United States with regards to Muslim citizens. There's just a difference in how the two countries put that theory into practice, but it's essentially the same theory.

I mean, I think we all remember the infamous Rand Corporation document in the early two thousands where they talked about creating moderate Muslim networks, and they identified normal mainstream Muslim beliefs and practices as signs of extremism that had to be rooted out. They argued that masjids should be infiltrated by snitches who would report about anyone in the Jamah'ah who appeared too religious and so on. Basically, governments around the world, including governments in the Muslim world, have learned to view any form of political Islam as radical and dangerous, and that's not without reason. And because advocates of political Islam explicitly connect Muslim identity and Islamic practices with revolutionary action, governments and intelligence agencies around the world have decided that it is more prudent to air on the side of discrimination and to assume that any serious practicing Muslim is a potential militant. When you, for example, portray the hijab as a symbol of defiance against western or Chinese values, the West and the Chinese will believe you and they will oppose the hijab because you turned it into a political symbol of revolutionary Islamism.

And this is why other Muslim minorities in China are not being sent to indoctrination camps because they never politicized Islam. It's not fair to do this against all the Uighurs who may or may not support separatism. But I don't think it's rational on our part to expect the Kufar to understand how diversity of opinion and perspective can flourish in Islam. Genuine diversity of opinion is not something that they're used to neither in the West nor in China, and also Islam is not something that they're used to. So you have to know who you're dealing with.

Now with regards to Muslim countries cooperating with China, personally, would not expect nor would I want the leaders of the Muslim world to make their decisions based exclusively on their concerns about one particular oppressed segment of this Ummah, nor would I want them to address the concerns about that particular segment of the Ummah in a way that is futile and symbolic and theatrical. Cooperating with China is beneficial for the Ummah as a whole, and ultimately it paves the way for better situation for the Uighurs. Increasing and deepening relations between China and the Muslim world will give the Muslim world leverage, it will improve understanding, and perhaps it can move the Uighur issue away from the manipulative agenda of The United States, which is the only conceivable way that it can ever truly be resolved. As long as the Uighur situation remains little more than an anti China propaganda tool for The United States, they will only ever try to worsen the situation to further their own goals. The United States is trying to use this issue as a sort of moral blackmail against the Muslim world to disinclined them from cooperating with China even though it is in their best interest to do so.

They're using this issue to deflect from their own violent actions against the Muslim world, and they're using this issue to create contempt between the Muslim populations and their leadership. In my opinion, what Xinjiang needs more than anything else and what is opposed more than anything else by NED backed Uyghur organizations is economic development in Xinjiang that will elevate the standard of living of the population. This will decrease the appeal of separatism and it will decrease the appeal of politicizing Islam, which are exactly the two reasons why NED backed organizations oppose this. So rather than shunning China, it makes more sense to me for the Arab and Muslim world to invest in and to support economic development in Xinjiang specifically. Increase the number of foreign Muslim professionals, business people, and investors in that region as both a source of material improvement for the lives of the Uighur and as a positive non threatening form of dawah, as well as increasing the number of impartial independent Muslim witnesses to the situation in Xinjiang.

That in my opinion is what you do if you are genuinely and sincerely serious about trying to make a change for the better, not throwing your shirt at the Chinese embassy in London, for example. And Allah knows best.