Daily Times

Every Ramzan, the Muslim world rails at China. The country’s eight million Uyghurs in Xinjiang are officially “discouraged” – but really banned — from fasting in the holy month. The Communist Party of China (CCP) explains it is important to “eat properly for study and work”. The rest of the year it cracks down on beards and scarves, and forces Uyghurs to sell pork and alcohol. On the surface, China is patently anti-Islam but that is not the case. A larger Muslim community thrives in the communist state with remarkable religious freedom. Perception is key here: for China, its 11 million Hui Muslims are “model citizens” when compared to the unruly Uyghurs.
The CCP, despite its need for control, cares little for religious stripes. The party is officially atheist and members found guilty of religious expression are quickly kicked out. Article 36 of the Chinese Constitution allows citizens “freedom of religious belief” as limited to “normal practices”. What “normal” looks like is up to the state but the Constitution offers clues. Right upfront, Article One clarifies: “Disruption of the socialist system by any organisation or individual is prohibited.” In short, religion is okay as long as it stays out of politics.
This is where the Uyghurs run into trouble with the state. In 1884, China’s Manchu empire took over their homeland and some keep fighting to take it back. The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is the current spear of this separatist movement. For a CCP that believes loyalty to China comes first, this idea is unacceptable. A fierce desire to protect China’s geography, coupled with fear of ‘foreign influences’, has made it come down hard on all Uyghurs. Since the ETIM uses Islam as a political tool, China has decided to play along. “Religious extremism is closely related to terrorism,” says CCP spokesperson Hou Hanmin, “and cracking down on this is one of our top priorities.”
The Uyghurs claim a 4000-year-old history in Xinjiang. Part of the original Silk Road, this land, for centuries, served as a crossroads for different cultures. Islam came to East Turkestan in 934 AD and the capital Kashgar soon became a major centre of learning. Even today, the locals speak a Turkic dialect and write in an Arabic script. This makes it hard for them to relate to China’s Mandarin-speaking Han majority. Though most Uyghurs do not support the ETIM, their Turko-Mongol heritage has them typecast as barbarians, and now fanatics. Since they also look different from the Han, this often results in racial profiling.
China’s Hui, meanwhile, get along swimmingly with the state. Most live in the northwestern Ningxia province but are scattered throughout the country. They trace their ancestry to Muslim traders and officials who came to China during the seventh through 14th centuries and married local women. Unlike the Uyghurs, the Hui look like Han Chinese and are comfortable in their midst. In reality, it would be hard to tell the two apart if not for their different religious practices. The Hui also have no language of their own, unlike the Uyghurs, and speak their local Mandarin dialects. With their Hanafi Islam tailored to China’s mainstream, the Hui are among the most moderate Muslims in the world.
Dru Gladney, an expert on Muslims in China, believes, “The Hui have extraordinarily illustrated this beautiful accommodation between Chinese culture and Islam.” The state happily agrees. The Hui have never shown interest in creating a separate homeland and are generally apolitical and loyal subjects. Even when the odd religious nut comes up in their ranks, the CCP has not cracked down on the community. In 2006, a Sufi sect leader named Hong Yan claimed to have created a “virtual religious state,” yet China let him be because he expressed his unwavering support for the Communist Party.
“The Han respect us and we respect them, too,” says Zhang Wen, the imam of a mosque in Ningxia. This statement underpins China’s attitude towards the Hui. Xinjiang, unfortunately, does not share this sentiment and suffers for it. When riots broke out in the provincial capital of Urumqi in 2009, the incendiary Uyghur battlecry was “Kill the Han, kill the Hui!” Besides religious freedom, China exempts Hui mosques from property taxes and renovates old ones with state funds. Astonishingly, the atheist state also pays for the training of new imams, locally known as ahongs.
China and the Uyghurs have traded jabs for a long time but things heated up once President Xi Jinping assumed office in 2013. Jinping’s “One Belt, One Road” project promises to hugely boost the country’s international profile and the ETIM is in his way. Sean Roberts, from George Washington University, says, “Xinjiang is of great strategic importance to China right now,” and cannot remain restive. The reality is that the CCP desires absolute control over all aspects of Chinese society. The day the Uyghurs stop asking for a separate homeland, all their troubles will go away. As the Hui can testify, Islam was never the reason for their predicaments.

The writer is a freelance columnist and audio engineer based in Islamabad