Comments on: Diaspora Uyghurs in America, Norway on Norway Terror Plot

By: Porfiriy

Porfiriy — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:44:32 +0000

Uyghurpawlos, welcome to our blog! We’re excited to see perspectives from a Uyghur Christian and hope you keep on returning with your observations. I agree with you – and I hate myself sort for typecasting, but based on my own observations most radicalized Uyghurs are the ones who associate themselves mostly with extremists in (or from) Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Middle East, etc. And most radical Uyghurs subscribe to a philosophy in which “nationalist” aspirations are, in fact, subordinate to religious ones. It’s quite important for commentators and analysts to realize there is a distinction here, a distinction that’s essentially agreed upon by both the secular, human rights Uyghur community and the Islamist one. To subsume these two into one Uyghur bogeyman only serves the interest of the PRC government.

By: Porfiriy

Porfiriy — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:40:21 +0000

That’s something that I find fascinating, though, about this commenters perspective on “Uyghurness.” In the contemporary way we conceptualize nationhood and ethnicity there seems to be this reflexive disapproval of some group of people treating – whether consciously or not – ethnicity as some sort of flexible or malleable entity. Flexibility and malleability somehow devalues ethnic identity, they are things that are supposed to be fundamental or essential in some fashion, and it’s based on this axiom that you see China apologists quite gleefully point out the “artificiality” of Uyghur identity as concocted, apparently by conniving Soviets and bearing no relation to the 8th, 9th century Uyghurs of the Tarim.

Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is ethnicities, and, even more so, “nationality” is indeed a malleable and quite artificial construct and even the idea of being “Han Chinese” (Guangdongren, Sichuanren, and Northern Chinese all lumped together) as a ostensibly co-equal “minzu” in today’s “socialist harmonious society” is just as constructed, artificial, and flexible as Uyghurs and their early 20th-century “ethnogenisis.” That being said, I have to say I have the opposite feeling as you in this particular case – I think that it’s not sad, rather, it’s actually kind of exciting to see a Uyghur embrace the idea that Uyghur identity is something that is constructed and, in fact, participated in by people, today. And so said Uyghur puts forward an idea that, if terrorists or extremists who themselves desire to subsume their Uyghur identity into an Islamic one, shundaq bolsun, they are not Uyghur. Point to any nationality or ethnicity in the world and you can see it being bent, shaped, and sculpted to serve populist, personal, or political interests: French ponder a banning of the burka, Americans figure out how to deal with “illegal immigrants” on whose backs their society (and vicariously culture) stand on, China tries desperately (and clumsily) to unlink the idea of “Han-ness” from the idea of “Chinese-ness” (Uyghurs are Junggoluq, too!). And so in some ways I find those parties operating on an axiom of some sort of unchangeableness or timelessness kind of disingenuous, and on the other hand parties that openly embrace/acknowledge the flexibility of these ideas are thinking in new ways.

By: uyghurpawlos

uyghurpawlos — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 23:20:16 +0000

I am a Uyghur Christian; I know most of the Uighur Muslims does not reject us. Although many of my friends say themselves Muslim, but they do not against to read the Bible. Uyghur Muslims are very secular Muslim.
In Uyghuria (Muslim like to say East Turkestan) for most Uyghur people the nationality is important than their religion. But in the West some Uyghur Muslim became more religious after they absorb Arab influence. Anyway they are not terrorist.

By: kahraman

kahraman — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 17:57:23 +0000

I can’t help but feel the second poster cited above is trying to explain away the accused’s ‘Uyghurness’ in a way that attempts to exonerate ‘true’ diaspora Uyghurs from any involvement with this case.
This speaks well to both the nervousness of Diaspora Uyghurs and the success China has had of branding them as terrorists. Of course, this writer also mentions other ‘radical Uyghurs’ who were presumbly known by Uyghurs in Norway. I find it somewhat sad for Uyghurs this person has to implicitly defend to notional purity of Uyghurness.