By: Matt Schrader
China has a serious together with worsening Islamophobia problem. While relations betwixt China’s Muslim minorities together with its Han bulk demand hold been fraught since 2009’s deadly inter-ethnic riots inwards the far western metropolis of Urumqi, recent years demand hold seen the normalization of online detest vocalisation communication directed at Muslims. The rising of Islamophobia within China is a production both of authorities action, together with of the government’s failure to act. Commentary on the recent decease of a prominent Muslim leader inwards the western province of Qinghai highlights the extent to which the province of affairs has deteriorated, together with suggests the ways inwards which China’s warped online discourse could blunt its efforts to construct influence together with win friends inwards countries across the Muslim world.
The Death of an Imam
On July 16, Ma Changqing (马长庆), a prominent imam together with a leader amongst the Muslims of China’s far western province of Qinghai, passed away at the historic current of 83 (Xinhua, July 19). Ma was too a fellow member of the China People’s Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC), a consultative legislative trunk used yesteryear the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to understand, engage with, together with co-opt those parts of Chinese guild non nether straight Party control. Ma had a brief brush with national notoriety inwards 2014, when, during a CPPCC plenary session, he failed to stand upwards during a 2nd of quiet meant to commemorate the victims of a fatal knife assault yesteryear homegrown Islamic terrorists (China News, March 10 2014).
Although it after emerged that Ma may demand hold failed to stand upwards because of age-related infirmities—he reportedly attended the session inwards a wheelchair—the supposed slight was neither overlooked nor easily forgotten yesteryear many inwards China (Wen Wei Po, March 7). When intelligence of large crowds handle Ma’s funeral to pay their respects began to spread on China’s internet, a disturbing proportion of responses contained shockingly blunt detest speech.
“Filthy swine … it’s expert he’s dead!”, read one. (The Islamic prohibition against pork makes Sus scrofa references i of Chinese Islamophobes’ favorite forms of insult). “Go meet Allah, together with convey some of your followers with you!”, said some other (Weibo, June 18). Another netizen, reacting to videos of crowds at the funeral, said, “Are those 200,000 [Muslims] people? They appear to a greater extent than similar fourth dimension bombs to me.”
Ma was, yesteryear all accounts, a compliant fellow member of the party-state structure. That netizens would assault him together with his immature human being Muslims on such slight grounds reveals the grade to which the CCP’s drive to postage stamp out Islamic terrorism inwards China’s far W has turbocharged latent xenophobic tendencies.
That drive has seen hundreds of thousands of Uighurs—a Muslim minority group—rounded upwards together with interred inwards “reeducation camps” meant to purge them of “extremist” behaviors (China Brief, May 15). It has too increasingly affected the Hui—China’s other large Muslim minority—despite Hui communities having co-existed peacefully amongst China’s Han bulk throughout the province for hundreds of years (AP, Apr 10 2017). At the same fourth dimension it has ramped upwards this drive of coercion together with control, the CCP has singularly failed to publicly condemn Islamophobic rhetoric engendered yesteryear province media’s vogue to associate China’s Muslim minorities with terrorism together with extremism (Asian Journal of Communication, March 28).
Fostering Islamophobia
This shortfall exists because, inwards the CCP’s eyes, the existent effect is non the undue harshness of its policies, or Islamophobia amongst China’s Han majority, but rather the inability of some of China’s Muslims to hew to acceptable, state-sanctioned, “modern” expressions of Islamic faith.
Even specialists on Islamic civilisation publicly toe this line. For example, at a high-level Sino-Arab dialogue concluding yr Xue Qingguo (薛庆国), a professor of Standard Arabic at i of Beijing’s top universities together with secretarial assistant of the China Standard Arabic Literature Studies Association, delivered a vocalisation communication inwards Standard Arabic on “Extremism together with Islamophobia” to officials from xvi majority-Arab countries (Baidu Zhidao; Hongse Guxiang, September iv 2017). In his speech, Xue lauded the achievements of Islamic civilization, together with admitted that “Islamophobia has gotten some traction inwards China inwards recent years”. But he placed the blame for this squarely on Chinese Muslims themselves, condemning those who would “distort a civilization that produced meaning advances inwards all fields of scientific endeavors, a civilization steeped inwards humanism, into a bulk of trivial minutiae most beards, veils, together with clothing”.
Xue’s vocalisation communication is emblematic of a party-state that preaches ethnic unity, but abhors whatsoever self-reflection that could locomote interpreted every bit criticism of the political party line, or every bit back upwards for greater political autonomy for China’s minorities. The work is exacerbated yesteryear the agency the CCP’s online censorship apparatus functions.
China’s censors choose their cues from political party leaders, scrubbing the meshing of views that leaders observe unacceptable, promoting those they espouse, together with leaving untouched those most which leaders demand hold expressed no opinion. The party-state’s failure to strongly condemn Islamophobia thence places anti-Islamophobic voices at a disadvantage inwards populace debate, since a song defence strength of China’s Muslims could too locomote read every bit implicit criticism of the government’s failure to verbalize out on their behalf. And since CCP leaders brook no criticism of their hardline policy towards Muslim minorities, all but the most anodyne expressions of back upwards for China’s Muslim citizens demand hold a hard fourth dimension gaining buy inwards wider discourse. By the same token, the censorship bureaucracy interprets top leaders’ failure to condemn vile expressions of Islamophobia every bit a tacit sanction for their existence, allowing Islamophobic views to circulate to a greater extent than or less freely, together with to larn largely unchallenged.
The Real Time Bomb
While China’s domestic politics offering footling prospect for change, external factors could check out to a greater extent than hope. If China’s handling of its Muslims minorities caused its ties with Gulf countries to deteriorate, it might, for example, prompt the CCP to rethink how it shapes the populace conversation some Muslims—for China, the Gulf is an of import marketplace for weapons, together with an of import supplier of oil.
But despite the worsening province of affairs inwards China’s far west, at that spot is footling indication that Gulf rulers or their publics volition plough against the PRC. Gulf countries lately rolled out the welcome mat for Xi Jinping during his tour of the region, together with were by together with large positive towards Xi’s telephone scream upwards for China to serve every bit a “keeper of peace together with stability inwards the Middle East” during a vocalisation communication earlier the Arab League—suggesting a possible willingness on Xi’s component subdivision for China to choose on a larger safety role inwards the part (South China Morning Post, July 10).
However, if the United States’ sense is whatsoever guide, a superpower’s deepening interest inwards Middle Eastern politics tin complicate ties with the Muslim basis inwards unexpected ways. For China, the existent fourth dimension bomb may non locomote the agency it treats Muslims at home, but how that handling is perceived abroad.
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