West Reassures Itself: At Least It's Not China

The New York Times has just published an article concerning the way the Communist Party in China mistreats its Uighur minority, especially with regards to their Islamic faith. The article is to be commended for the fact that it brought to light issues ailing this often under-reported region of the world.  Central Asia, with its labyrinthine country names and impressively hellish urban landscapes has been easily ignored by the media, so it's good that the article was written, even if it was the latest in a vein of implicit Sinophobe sentiment sweeping through America. 

The article points to several repressive measures China has taken against its Uighur population in order to stem the spread of Islam in the country. These include harsh regulations regarding the Hajj pilgrimage, a ban on government officials praying at mosques, and a ban on students taking part in fasting during Ramadan. These measures are undeniably harsh, but you can feel the self-righteous paranoia of the American press seeping through, pointing to the Chinese regime's discrimination against Islam with tremulous fingers and bleating 'Lookit, they're worse than us!'. Well, obviously. This doesn't make the disgusting and dangerous anti-Arab and anti-Muslim undertones sweeping through the USA and in a different way, through Europe, any less execrable.  

What China is realising is what the rest of the developed world has already realised, but is too cowardly to admit beyond far-right blogs and Domestic Security committees. Extremist radical religion is blatantly dangerous, and religion turns extremist and radical in areas which are suffering from either political dissatisfaction or economic suffering. The Uighur region of China is suffering from both of those, and is very clearly a powder keg for the Chinese regime, which have already had to deal with attacks from radical muslims that left 22 people dead in the region. Clearly there is a problem here beyond the Chinese Communist Party furiously getting their rocks off at the prospect of intimidating and oppressing yet another ethnic minority.  The way they are dealing with it is characteristically heavy-handed and unhelpful. Radical Islam burgeons in the region because the Chinese government is squeezing tight, and it won't get better if China squeezes even tighter. The Chinese authorities need to see all the red flags they're putting up (as it were), and instead turn their hand to initiatives designed to coopt and assimilate Islamic culture into their society, rather than compartmentalising and problematising it. 

(Correction: due to the strong protestations of one of my beloved readers, A Politic Blunder would like to make clear that it does not believe that the USA is more islamophobic than Europe.)