On the Turkic Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang

Khristos Nizamis (November 2013)

1. On the role of religious traditions in China today

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. (Marx 1844)

It is safe to say that there is no single role that religious traditions play in China today. Not only are the functions of official and unofficial religions in China inherently complex, given Chinas cultural and political-economic complexities, but various differing perspectives will also inevitably be involved: e.g., that of religious practitioners themselves, as distinct from that of CCP state policy. Even if we take one religion, Islam, as an example, we find profound differences between, e.g., the situations of Uyghur Muslims, located primarily in Xinjiang, and of Hui Muslims, more widely disseminated throughout China; as well as significant differences in the historical and contemporary relationships between the CCP and each of these ethnic Muslim minorities. Nevertheless, a couple of interesting general observations and hypotheses can be proposed, before touching all too briefly upon the complex and tragic case of the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang. On the one hand, as Billioud and Palmer (2009: 2) observe, over the past 30 years, all forms of religiosity have been flourishing in China, a phenomenon with very wide demographic manifestations, affecting urban and rural, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, young and elderly, and even supposedly atheist Party cadres. Although Billioud and Palmer suppose that, in todays PRC, gone are the days when [religion] was considered the opium of the people (ibid.), there are good reasons to suggest that, officially, at least, religion may be serving other useful pharmaceutical functions (e.g., as a stimulant, analgesic, antidepressant, etc.). Alternatively, one might even argue that Marxs famous original characterisation of religion (in its full form) has now, once again, become acutely appropriate in the PRC (at least, with respect to officially sanctioned and monitored religions).

K. Nizamis, On the Turkic Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang

Vermander (2009: 4) notes that, since 1949, only five religious traditions (Protestant, Catholic, Islamic, Daoist, and Buddhist) have been granted legal recognition in the PRC, each of which is managed by an association that acts as a conveyor belt between civil society and the party-state whose policies and instructions it transmits. From the outset, heterodox cults and superstitions as distinguished from the five religions have been officially banned. Thus, there is an active distinction between state-recognised religions and unrecognised ones; while, within the recognised religions, there is a further distinction between those who abide by CCP religious regulations, and those who do not. Moreover, Vermander (2009: 13) argues for a situation of exit from religion with Chinese characteristics (based on the political theory of Marcel Gauchet); in essence, this refers to the separation of religion and political power in the modern state: a shift from religion as social foundation to religion as social auxiliary. Vermander argues that the revival of state-managed religions in the PRC is in fact an exit from religion, because the official religions have been appropriated as auxiliary dispensers of ... harmony by a regime concerned with better managing ongoing social transformations (2009: 15). The official religions function as expressions of a religious sphere that is no longer the foundation but rather the auxiliary to social relationships (ibid.); or, as Billioud and Palmer (2009: 2) put it, religion now serves as an auxiliary to social cohesion rather than its foundation. But this would include also all those unofficial religions that are not being actively persecuted by the state as heterodox or superstitious, no doubt because they conveniently serve the same social auxiliary function; whereas movements such as Falun Gong, have been targeted as evil cults since 1999 (ibid.: 5), perhaps precisely because they have foundational tendencies, and thus pose a potential threat to CCP hegemony.

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K. Nizamis, On the Turkic Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang

2. On the Turkic Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Muslims are estimated to constitute between one-and-a-half to three per cent of the PRCs population, i.e., approximately twenty million people (Poceski 2009: 236; cf. Vermander 2009: 6, who cites a possible twenty to twenty-three million, based on ethnicity figures). Vermanders foundation versus auxiliary hypothesis could be applied to the situation of the Uyghur Muslims, as contrasted to that of the Hui Muslims. Uyghur resistance and reaction to their gradual ethnocide under Han domination in Xinjiang has long attracted the label of terrorism, although more conspicuously and emotively so since the events of 9/11; whereas Hui compliance with the states efforts to establish Chinese-Arab trade relations is earning them the label of Good Citizens and Cultural Ambassadors (Ho 2013: 106). For the CCP, Hui Islam is a useful auxiliary to trade relations with the Arab countries; whereas, Uyghur Islam is dangerously associated by historical ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious bonds with a much-feared potential Pan-Turkic Muslim union into which Uyghur Xinjiang might be absorbed if it successfully seceded from Chinas colonial domination (cf. Castets 2003: 21-28). The Uyghurs and other ethnic Muslim peoples of Xinjiang constitute a fundamental challenge to the CCPs and PRCs self-promoted image of a united China pursuing the China Dream. As President Xi Jinping put it in his first address to the nation as head of state in March 2013:
We must make persistent efforts, press ahead with indomitable will, continue to push forward the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and strive to achieve the Chinese dream of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. ... To realise the Chinese road, we must spread the Chinese spirit, which combines the spirit of the nation with patriotism as the core and the spirit of the time with reform and innovation as the core. (BBC News 2013)

It is precisely this indefinable discourse of an all-encompassing yet singularly essential Chineseness that the long history and immediate present actuality of the Uyghurs of Xinjiang as a Turkic Muslim minority whose territory remains internally colonised by China inherently threatens with rupture. It is worth noting (to cite but one example) that, with reference to the Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz of Xinjiang, the expressions Turkic culture (Tujue wenhua) and Turkic person (Tujue ren) were forbidden by Beijing in official (including academic) discourse. The expression Turkish family language (Tujue yuzu) was
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K. Nizamis, On the Turkic Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang

tolerated in official discourse until about 1996; after which it, too, was displaced. Since 2000, Uyghur and Kazakh languages were officially treated as two autonomous languages, thus concealing the fact that they both belong to a common Turkic language family. (Dwyer 2005: 31) It would appear that Chinas fifty-five ethnic nationalities are all to be united under the concept of Chineseness, but they cannot be united amongst themselves under any other concept (such as, e.g., Turkicness), even though the latter may be experienced as far more relevant and real to those ethnic groups themselves than the former. The Qing empire expanded westward in the 18th century, conquering large regions of Turkestan and other parts of Central Asia which came to be called the Xinjiang region ( , Pinyin: Xnjing; lit. xin, new, recent + jiang boundary, border, frontier, limit (Sears 2013, s.v.)) thus increasing Chinas previous Muslim population, and its ethnic diversity (Poceski 2009: 230). The Uyghurs, Uzbeks and Kazakhs of this region are Turkic in terms of their ethnicity and language, and their appearance and culture mark them as being quite different from the Han majority (ibid.: 234). With the collapse of the Qing empire in 1911, this colonially appropriated region was consecutively transferred to Chiang Kai-sheks ROC, and then Mao Zedongs PRC; none of these regimes at any moment allowed the possibility of its liberation from the colonial rule of China (Ho 2013: 88). Today, advocacy of separatism is a political crime punishable by death; and the CCPs media organs systematically reiterate the catch-cry of three evil forces of terrorism, separatism and extremism (adapted, one suspects, from George W. Bushs axis of evil catch-cry) associated with East Turkestan forces that are allegedly linked to other international terrorist organizations (Xinhua 2013 a, 2013b). By contrast, the Huis ancestry dates back to early immigrants of mixed ethnic origins who settled and intermarried in China. The Hui retain no ethnic languages, but speak Chinese, and are hardly distinguishable from Han Chinese in either appearance or ethnicity (Poceski 2009: 235). Still, Hui tension and even violent conflict with the Han do exist (Ho 2013: 99-101); yet, the situation of the Uyghurs is even more complex and problematic. Nevertheless, in both cases, as Poceski (2009: 234) says, religious identity is closely interwoven ... with discrete ethnic and cultural identities. Faced with a culturally impenetrable Han majority, ethnic Muslims have tried to protect their cultural and religious traditions, and thus their identities. As Poceski notes: Islam fosters a strong sense of self-identity (ibid.: 232). Two points

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K. Nizamis, On the Turkic Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang

should be underlined, here: first, Muslims in the PRC feel deeper affinity with the umma (Muslim community), irrespective of ethnic background, than with the Han Chinese and their authoritarian CCP; second, the laws of Islam are experienced as authentic, unlike the laws of the CCP. Moreover, the Uyghurs did not willingly migrate to China; rather, China colonised them, and continues to exert colonial power over them, to the extent of seriously threatening their long-term identity and existence. The 2010 China census shows the PRCs Han Chinese population at 91.5 per cent; the 55 officially recognised national or ethnic minorities together at 8.5 per cent. However, ethnic minority autonomous regions, prefectures and counties make about five eighths of Chinas total territory (Ho 2013: 87) Ethnic minority populations face the problem of ongoing Han migration, a migration not only of Han people but Han language, culture, ideology, technology, and political economy (a practice that Takei (2003) refers to as settler colonialism). As Hos account illustrates (2013: 93-94), Han attitudes and practices towards ethnic minorities have traditionally assumed, and today still assume, a form of Asian Orientalism (although Ho himself does not use this term): e.g., Han Chinese perceive themselves as superior and civilised, and ethnic minorities as inferior and barbaric. Dwyer (2005: 29) explains that, since the 1980s, the CCP has enacted minority cultural policies that were at once accommodationist and assimilative: even while religious restrictions were relaxed and minority languages fostered, the CCP actively expanded efforts to dilute minority culture. The contradiction, Dwyer argues, results from the simultaneous implementation of overt and covert policy: the covert policy has been one of monoculturalism and monolingualism, aiming at an overarching national identity, person of China (Zhongguo ren), and thus diluting the individual identities of [Chinas] minorities (ibid.: 30). Even a new non-ethnic identity has been deliberately constructed and disseminated in the media, the New Territorean, or person of Xinjiang (Xinjiang ren), a term widely adopted by Han Chinese in the region. The ever-increasing Han population in that region which has risen from 6.7% of the total population in 1949, compared to 75% Uyghur, to 40% in 2000, compared to 46% Uyghur (Castets 2003: 5, 17) has even led to discussion about erasing the ethnic name Uyghur from the regional name Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (ibid.).

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K. Nizamis, On the Turkic Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang

Under these circumstances, the identities war between the CCP/PRC and the Uyghur Muslim minority of Xinjiang is complex, and potentially tragic. Perhaps we should say that it is not so much ethnic Islam that impacts on China, as that China impacts on ethnic Islam. Castets has arguably depicted the situation well:
By fencing off, even closing down, the last spaces for the expression of identity or religion, these restrictions [i.e., the intense campaign of repression by the PRC in the 1990s] put relations between Uyghur society and the Chinese regime under considerable strain. They gave the impression that the real target of the Chinese regimes attacks was not so much separatism or even Islamism but Uyghur identity itself. (Castets 2003: 32)

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K. Nizamis, On the Turkic Muslim Uyghurs of Xinjiang

References
BBC News 2013, What Does Xi Jinpings China Dream Mean?, 5 June, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-22726375 Billioud, Sbastien and Palmer, David A., 2009, Editorial, China Perspectives [Online], No. 2009/4, Special Feature: Religious Reconfigurations in the People's Republic of China, http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/4915 Castets, Rmi 2003, The Uyghurs in Xinjiang The Malaise Grows, trans. P. Liddell, China Perspectives [Online], Vol. 49 September-October, http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/648 Dwyer, A. M. 2005, The Xinjiang Conflict: Uyghur Identity, Language Policy, and Political Discourse, Washington: East-West Center Washington, http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/PS015.pdf Ho, Wai-Yip 2013, Mobilising the Muslim Minority for Chinas Development: Hui Muslims, Ethnic Relations and Sino-Arab Connections, Journal of Comparative Asian Development, Vol, 12, No. 1, pp. 84-112 Marx, K. 1844, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right, Introduction, Deutsch-Franzsische Jahrbcher, Vols. 7 and 10, Paris; trans. http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm Palmer, David A. 2009, Chinas Religious Danwei, China Perspectives [Online], 2009/4, Special Feature: Religious Reconfigurations in the People's Republic of China, http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/4918 Poceski, M. 2009, Christianity, Islam, and Other Western Religions, in Introducing Chinese Religions, London: Routledge, pp. 213-238 (Topic Four: Christian and Islamic Identities) Sears, R. H. 2013, Chinese Etymology, http://www.internationalscientific.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx Takei, M. 2003, Settler Colonialism, GreenLeft listserv, Yahoo Groups, http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/GreenLeft_discussion/conversations/topics/1931 Vermander, Benot 2009, Religious Revival and Exit from Religion in Contemporary China, trans. N. Jayaram, China Perspectives [Online], 2009/4, Special Feature: Religious Reconfigurations in the People's Republic of China, http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/4917 Xinhua 2013a, China vows to continue fight against terrorism, July 1, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-07/01/c_132502453.htm Xinhua 2013b, Islamic association condemns terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, July 3, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-07/03/c_132509547.htm

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