The Uighurs: Exposing the Myth of Muslim Solidarity

The recent clashes in the Xinjiang region of China between Uighurs and Han Chinese have received media coverage around the world. The battle between the Muslim Uighurs and the ever-growing Han Chinese population in their home region might be expected to attract support for them from around the Islamic world. In fact this has not been the case, once again exposing the myth of international Muslim solidarity.

Within China the Uighurs have received no support from fellow Muslims. Even if one accepts the official Chinese government figure of only twenty million Muslims in the country (others claim at least double that figure, if not more), then the Uighurs, a group of around eight million people, make up the second largest Muslim group after the Hui, who number more than nine million people. However, the Hui are barely distinguishable racially from the overwhelming majority of Han Chinese in the country and they have shown little interest in the sufferings of their fellow Muslims in Xinjiang. Race would seem to be more important to them than religion.

Outside China, only one country, Turkey, has made any real protest about the plight of the Uighurs, even describing their oppression by the Han Chinese as 'almost genocide'. The condemnation came from Turkish prime minister Erdogan, leader of the moderate Islamist government of that supposedly secular state. Yet it is unclear whether Erdogan's solidarity with the Uighurs is derived from considerations of race or religion. Turkey bases much of its influence in Central Asia on spreading the idea of pan-Turkism. Its support for the Uighurs may have more to do with their Turkic ethnicity than their Islamic religion.

The indifference shown by most of the Islamic world to the suffering of the Uighurs is not surprising. Few countries, whether is Islamic or not, wish to offend China, the world's rising economic superpower. Saudi Arabia still has pretentions to leadership of the Islamic world, or at least the Sunni Muslim part of it, but it is reluctant to anger the Chinese, whose appetite for Saudi oil is already large and can only increase further in the future.

Yet certain political groups still like to portray the Muslim world as some sort of monolithic entity whose united power can pose a challenge to the rest of the world. The chief exponents of this view are the opposing extremists who champion the idea of 'a clash of civilizations' between the Islamic world and the West.

On one side are the American neo-conservatives, who are still influential despite the end of George W. Bush's presidency. They still seem to believe that Muslim hordes pose an existential threat to Western civilization and its supposedly beleaguered Middle Eastern outpost, the state of Israel. In their view the so-called 'Islamofascists' are ever-ready to launch terrorist attacks and can rely on the support of the majority of Muslims around the world.

On the other side, the leaders of Al Qaida and similar Islamist terror groups claim that the Muslim masses are only waiting for the call to rise up against the pro-Western governments of their countries. They will overthrow them and then create a worldwide caliphate which will unite all Muslims in a superstate that can resist all Western influences.

Of these two apocalyptic visions, the neo-conservative version is the most obviously absurd. Never in history have the majority of the world's Muslim governments been so submissive to one authority, the United States of America, and a non-Muslim authority at that. Muslim governments are not united against the West; they are united in submission to it. America calls them its allies; Al Qaida and others denounce them as the lackeys of Crusader and Zionist imperialism.

Some 57 countries have full membership of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the largest Muslim inter-governmental body in the world. Of these 57 countries, 56 have functioning national governments. The exception is Somalia which has had no effective national government since 1991. The international community may claim to recognize the transitional regime in Mogadishu as the national government, but hardly any Somalis do and its effective power does not even encompass most of the capital city.

Of the 56 functioning national governments of the OIC, only four are considered to be hostile to the United States and its Western allies. These are Iran, Sudan, Syria and Uzbekistan. The first two countries are likely to remain hostile to the United States in the near future, but America is making efforts to win over Syria, while Uzbekistan may be ready to allow US bases in the country once more in return for large payments and a blind eye being turned to the Uzbek leader's poor human rights record.

When it comes to governments, the Muslim world is united on the side of the West not against it, as in the neo-conservative fantasy. But what about the populations these pro-Western Muslim governments rule? Are they, as Al Qaida claims, ready to rise up and overthrow their oppressive governments and then unite in worldwide struggle against the West? Barely a dozen of the 57 countries of the OIC qualify as democracies. The rest use military and police power to suppress any popular discontent. However, even if all the OIC countries were democracies, would their Muslim populations be as anti-Western as the Islamists claim?

Turkey and Indonesia are Muslim democracies which in the past had military rulers supported by the West. They certainly have Islamist political parties which enjoy wide popular support, but this has not translated into violent anti-Western feeling or a desire to join other Muslim countries in a jihad or holy war against the West. Once Western interference has been removed and democracy established, Muslims seem happy to pursue the economic advantages of association with the West, while in foreign affairs their countries follow their own national interests which may or may not include solidarity with other Muslim states or groups.

The idea of the Muslim world as some sort of monolithic bloc which poses a threat to the West is clearly a myth which is propagated by both American neo-conservatives and Islamist terrorists for their own political purposes. Given a free choice, most Muslims would wish to be friendly with the West provided it ceased all military and political interference in their countries. Similarly, most Muslims have no interest in the deranged fantasies of Al Qaida, but they do want their religion to be treated with respect worldwide. Muslim countries have religion as a common bond between them, but on many occasions their different national interests are likely to be of more importance than religious solidarity, which is probably bad news for the Uighurs.