This post: "China Fears Ethnic Strife Could Agitate …" was originally posted at Talk Islam - a crescent waxing eloquent. The RSS feed may not be used at other sites without permission. You can subscribe to this RSS feed for Talk Islam at http://talkislam.info/feed/

This post: "The shape of empires past. elaboration o…" was originally posted at Talk Islam - a crescent waxing eloquent. The RSS feed may not be used at other sites without permission. You can subscribe to this RSS feed for Talk Islam at http://talkislam.info/feed/

the critical fiction of the modern chinese state is the idea that the manchus administered the west as if they were just another province of the chinese nation-state. they did not. rather, xinjiang and tibet were domains within the personal empire of the manchu warlord. naturally the communists have an aversion to admitting that their state is heir to an empire, so they make up a false history whereby xinjiang and tibet were always parts of china. it is in fact the height of irony that modern chinese have resentments with the russians because of the conquest of the amur river valley in the 19th century; the amur river valley was never part of the chinese domain before the manchus brought it into the chinese state.

This post: "clarifictaion on article about chinese e…" was originally posted at Talk Islam - a crescent waxing eloquent. The RSS feed may not be used at other sites without permission. You can subscribe to this RSS feed for Talk Islam at http://talkislam.info/feed/

This post: "in the comments to a post on uyghurs peo…" was originally posted at Talk Islam - a crescent waxing eloquent. The RSS feed may not be used at other sites without permission. You can subscribe to this RSS feed for Talk Islam at http://talkislam.info/feed/

Andy McCarthy believes all Uighurs are terrorists because they are rioting in Xinjiang, China. His evidence for them is that the Guantanamo Uighurs are “terrorists… trained in al-Qaeda-affiliated camps.”

Even disregarding the absolute lie of that charge, think about its logic: because 17 U.S. prisoners were held on terrorism charges, then ALL OF THEIR ENTIRE RACE are terrorists when they riot against a racist authoritarian regime.

This post: "Another one of the influential PR firm B…" was originally posted at Talk Islam - a crescent waxing eloquent. The RSS feed may not be used at other sites without permission. You can subscribe to this RSS feed for Talk Islam at http://talkislam.info/feed/

This post: "also, obvious #1 reason that any small n…" was originally posted at Talk Islam - a crescent waxing eloquent. The RSS feed may not be used at other sites without permission. You can subscribe to this RSS feed for Talk Islam at http://talkislam.info/feed/

1) ethnicity, the uighurs are turks.
2) region, the uighurs live in china’s ‘wild west’
3) colonialism. xinjiang means ‘new territories,’ and for most of its history was not a part of the chinese state (the manchus administered it as a personal domain for much of its history, not as part of china proper)
4) race. the uighurs often do look different.
5) class. like many ‘indigenous people’* the uighurs are less well off than han immigrants to xinjiang

* the manchus exterminated oyrat mongols from the northern half of xinjiang, dzhungaria, in the 18th century in a series of genocidal wars. dzhungaria was resettled by kazakhs and uighurs, before being swamped in the 20th century by han immigrants.

This post: "aziz’s post at CoB on the china situati…" was originally posted at Talk Islam - a crescent waxing eloquent. The RSS feed may not be used at other sites without permission. You can subscribe to this RSS feed for Talk Islam at http://talkislam.info/feed/

Thoughts on reports of rioting in Western China today:

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.

This post: "Glenn Greenwald: What if the Uighurs wer…" was originally posted at Talk Islam - a crescent waxing eloquent. The RSS feed may not be used at other sites without permission. You can subscribe to this RSS feed for Talk Islam at http://talkislam.info/feed/

This post: "Riots in Western China Amid Ethnic Tensi…" was originally posted at Talk Islam - a crescent waxing eloquent. The RSS feed may not be used at other sites without permission. You can subscribe to this RSS feed for Talk Islam at http://talkislam.info/feed/

“Palau’s accommodation to accept the temporary resettlement of these detainees is a humanitarian gesture intended to help them be freed of any further unnecessary incarceration and to restart their lives in as normal a fashion as possible,” [President] Toribiong said.

Palau, made up of eight main islands plus more than 250 islets, is best known for diving and tourism and is located some 500 miles (800 kilometers) east of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean.

This post: "The Pacific island nation (and tourist p…" was originally posted at Talk Islam - a crescent waxing eloquent. The RSS feed may not be used at other sites without permission. You can subscribe to this RSS feed for Talk Islam at http://talkislam.info/feed/