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TechnoratiWhat if the Uighurs were Christian Rather than Muslim?
According to The New York Times this morning, violent clashes between Chinese government forces and Muslim Uighurs -- that country's long-oppressed minority -- have left at least 140 people dead and close to 1,000 injured. This incident in Western China highlights an important fact about America's "War on Terror."
Just imagine if the Uighurs were a Christian -- rather than Muslim -- minority, battling against the tyrannical Communist regime in Beijing, resisting various types of persecution, and demanding religious freedom. They would be lionized by America's Right, as similar Christian minorities, oppressed by tyrannical regimes, automatically are. Episodes like these -- where a declared Tyranny like China violently acts against citizens with whom we empathize -- are ones about which, in general, the American political class loves to sermonize.
But the Uighurs are Muslim, not Christian, and hostility towards them thus easily outweighs the opportunity they present to undermine the Chinese Government. Rather than support and venerate them, we instead spent this decade declaring them to be "enemy combatants" and locking them up in Guantanamo -- despite the fact that they have never evinced any interest in doing anything other than resisting Chinese persecution, and have certainly never taken actions against the U.S. (as even the Bush administration ultimately admitted). Yet even now, both Congress and the administration actively block release into the U.S. even of those Uighurs we wrongfully imprisoned for years, while the Right screams with outrage -- and fear -- over the administration's commendable efforts to find a home for them elsewhere.
For all the Serious analysis about the War on Terror, so much of it has been driven by nothing more complex or noble than sheer hostility towards Muslims. Muslims generally -- not just Al Qaeda -- replaced Communists as our New Enemy and became the new enabling force for our endless state of War and never-ending expansions of executive power. Rather obviously, the Uighurs were swept into the Enemy category solely by virtue of their status as Muslims. What more compelling evidence of that could be imagined than the fact that we imprisoned -- and continue to imprison -- people at Guantanamo whose only political interest is in resisting oppression by the Chinese government?
12 Comments so far
Show AllGlen Greenwald, brilliant piece. Your insights are especially needed in times like these. Even I, as an atheist often feel a knee jerk reaction to events like this, that somehow the Muslims are automatically in the wrong. Similarly, if Christians are in conflict with Muslims, I almost always assume the Christians are the good guys. This is my instant, knee-jerk reaction not the way I see things after thinking about it more deeply. I have this reaction because I come from a Christian majority country and Christian culture and my family is/was Christian. If even I feel this way, imagine how much more pronounced it is among the Christian right.
immediately after 9/11 bush seized the opportunity to plunge this country into a state of Fear from which we have never recovered. So he made this speech about how he was going to wage a war on terror. Such an idea made no sense, but it served too many people's interests not to be used.
China understood this -correctly- to mean a war on Muslims, and gleefully proceeded to identify the Uigers as "terrorists" and therefore appropriate targets. So when this little group finally arrived at gitmo. the fact that the "kick me I'm a terrorist" signs on their backs had been stuck there by China did not seem to matter. and so the Uigers, like so many others, must bear this brutal burden. For the u.s., innocence never had any meaning. They filled a whole gulag with innocent people. And tortured them. What they had in common was never acts of any kind of terror. What they had in common was they believed in Islam.
It is truly remarkable how rarely the religious aspect of this "war"is ever mentioned. They are even using tortures from Torquemada's playbook.
everyone we imprison, and everyone we bomb are always and only Muslims. To qualify as a "terrorist" you must absolutely be Muslim.
one would think more people would have noticed this by now. this is also why the military always reports that the people they have killed are "terror suspects". All Allah's children are terror suspects, and under the holy rules we play by, suitable for killing.
The controlling Corporate State will not LET us recover from 9/11. They _want_ us to be afraid, because then they can control us.
I, for one, REFUSE to be afraid. My chances of dying from some kind of terrorist attack are far less than my chances of being killed by some stupid drunk, or a crazed gun-toting home-grown lunatic follower of Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly.
Note, ever since Bush uttered the word "CRUSADE" while talking about Iraq, there has been a concerted effort to _never_ mention this war in relation to religion.
The "Viet Cong sympathizers" of Vietnam have been replaced by the "suspected terrorists" of Iraq. Of course the guy behind the bullet that kills them is arresting officer, judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one, and never mind that the victim might have been a civilian ... and even a Christian.
But we all know it's really about OIL and corporate greed.
The Demoks would happily allow the Repuks to spend a trillion taxpayer dollars to drown a million Uighur prisoners in the Pacific Ocean if it meant winning the oval orifice. Demoks wrote endless blank war checks, hoping to turn the deaths of one million Iraqis into an oval orifice win. The Demok/Repuk partnership in crime is the big lesson learned over the past two years. 130 million Demok/Repuk voters share responsibility for all elite skulduggery.
Guess Who: If some people want Sharia, it's their business not yours. Or do believe you're the person who decides how someone wants to live. Perhaps you're aware that the Archbishop of Canterbury sees no problem if some people want Sharia for personal/family matters.
So if somewhere in the Union some restive Christian group wanted to throw out the State's Constitution and replace it with the King James Bible, you wouldn't have anything to say? Sharia is theocracy.
What if Sharia, or any other alternative system of law, conflicts with the existing system in place? Then what? What if the person being judged under Sharia, does NOT want to be judged under Sharia, then what?
It isn't a surprise that the Archbishop of Canterbury has no problem with Sharia. His greatest fear is secularisation, the lack of any religious belief.
While 160 dead is a sizeable number, we STILL hold more than 520 at Guantanamo - who may as well be dead - and they are Muslim - Imagine if they were Christian !!
China just passed a health care reform which will provide universal health care to al 1.3 billion people. Uighars will be covered under this plan - Every year we kill 10,000 plus Americans through lack of health coverage - some are Muslim but most are Christian - why aren't the fundamentalists more upset.
If Xinjiang was an independent country with oil or a key node on a pipeline route, the US would be killing lots more than 160 people (Muslims) to secure our "rights".
The Uighars are fighting the Chinese for their rights before they are overwhelmed by the masses from the east. At last count - Uighars made up 52% of the population. They will be a minority in their own province within five - ten years. This is a struggle for autonomy or independence - It is not simply Maoists versus Muslims.
I would actually like to hear how these Chinese Muslims are oppressed. And no, forbidding Sharia is not oppression.
How about favouring the Han over ethnic minorities, regardless of religion?
Our establishment would love to do the same to Muslims in the U.S. but doesn't dare - so far !
But I could be wrong !
Glenn Greenwald nails the hypocrisy of the enemy labeling by the neo-cons and their christian conservative allies. In fact, Greenwald omits a pet cause of evangelicals, Burmese hill tribes like the Karen in the midst of long playing guerrilla war against the SLORC, who get their attention because they are "Born Again" fighting against a "corrupt godless regime," (the corrupt part is right).