In China, there isn’t a single street in Beijing, Shanghai, and all other large and small cities that does not have a Muslim restaurant, Muslim noodle shop, or a Muslim kabob stand. Also, there are thousands of mosques and imams, some of whom are women for exclusively female mosques.

“A hundred miles east of Yinchuan in the small town of Ling Wu, 50 other women, their heads covered with scarves, sit in a room reciting verses in Arabic from the Koran. They are being taught by Yang Yu Hong, one of two women imams at the Tai Zi mosque. Yang received her title of Imam from the Islamic Association four years ago. She is one of approximately 200 certified women imams in the province.” ~ Full article by Pallavi Aiyer.

Why tarnish the message of an eternal God with the dirt and cunning of day to day politics? The Quran itself says that there is no compulsion in religion, which means that no citizen can be forced to follow religious edicts. Thus, what one wears, eats, and drinks, and where one prays and which sports one plays are not (and should never be) political matters for government officials (elected or not) to impose on others.

To have a theocratic government will either mean that a hard-line, standardized understanding of religion would be imposed on everyone, or that ijtihad (religious interpretation) will be open to the public, which means in both cases that only Muslims can participate in government. This necessarily means that all non-Muslims would be degraded to second-class citizens where their desires, outlooks, and votes would be necessarily banned.

And it’s not just non-Muslims that could possibly suffer in such a system. Suppose a Muslim has a different view of how Islam should be practiced. Wouldn’t a theocratic government (even a democratic one) end up breaking the rule of “no compulsion in religion” by forcing the religious rule of majority on them? I still remember in religion class (from kindergarten all the way to high school throughout the Middle East), Christian students were allowed (sometimes forced) to leave the classroom. For them, religion class was recess; some went out to the playground and shot hoops. Is that going to be the fate of a Christian Saracen under an Islamist government?

A human civilization as advanced as ours cannot accept such a regression into racism and social/religious stratification. A true democracy necessarily means that all citizens are equal, regardless of race, religion, or political beliefs, which just so happens to be in line with the Islamic teaching that there is no difference between one human being and another except in righteousness (a righteousness that all human beings are capable of partaking in regardless of their personal faith).

Mao: “U.S. imperialism invaded China’s territory of Taiwan and has occupied it for the past nine years. A short while ago it sent its armed forces to invade and occupy Lebanon. The United States has set up hundreds of military bases in many countries all over the world. China’s territory of Taiwan, Lebanon and all military bases of the United States on foreign soil are so many nooses round the neck of U.S. imperialism. The nooses have been fashioned by the Americans themselves and by nobody else, and it is they themselves who have put these nooses round their own necks, handing the ends of the ropes to the Chinese people, the peoples of the Arab countries and all the peoples of the world who love peace and oppose aggression. The longer the U.S. aggressors remain in those places, the tighter the nooses round their necks will become.“  ~ Speech at the Supreme State Conference (September 8, 1958)

Chinese World Map, made in 2006. It shows Palestine (巴勒斯坦), but no Israel (以色列)

And it wasn’t only demagoguery and rhetoric. The Chinese government, along with the Soviet Union, provided arms and training to Fatah and the PFLP fighters. And in 1975, the Chinese voted “yes” on UNGA resolution 3379 which stated in the strongest language of condemnation that Zionism is a form of racism. And still, at the 1991 vote to revoke UNGA 3379 (being the only UN resolution to have ever been revoked in history), China showed solidarity by being absent. In 1988, China had fully supported Arafat’s declaration of Independence and immediately established official diplomatic relations (even though the Palestinian Embassy in Beijing had already been opened back in 1974). Moreover, the Chinese government refused to grant visas to Israeli citizens to enter China until the PLO recognition of Israel in the late 1980s.

But all of this changed with the death of Mao, and the emergence of pro-American, pro-Capitalist Deng Xiao Ping (1978). In 1992, China finally recognized the state of Israel and established official relations. But in truth, Israel had bought China’s love back in the mid-1980s, with American military technology. Despite US fury and objection, Israel had secretly sold American-donated military technology to China, including the Israeli proto-type fighter jet Lavi (Pentagon provided 90% of the funding; its construction involved 120 American firms), “one of the deadliest weapons in the air.”

“…the close defense relationship between Israel and China dates back to the mid-1980s, and involves the transfer of “five billion dollars’ worth” of U.S.-made computers, high-tech electronics and advanced manufacturing equipment used to create long-range missiles, nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.” ~ source

And what does Israel get in return for caressing China, risking its long-term relationship with Uncle Sam? It gets the Chinese government to humiliate the Arab ministers’ delegation at Tianjin (April, 2010), by refusing to sign a document declaring E. Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

It also gets to air a mesmerizing, twelve-episode Chinese-produced documentary on several CCTV channels (China’s official television stations), called: Walk Into Israel – The Land of Milk and Honey (走近以色列), featuring Einstein as one of the greatest products of Israel.  On July 30, 2010, at the launch of the documentary (reported People’s Daily), the Israeli ambassador, to 450 Chinese diplomats and VIP guests, said:

“Israel and China are two great civilizations known for their contributions to mankind and two modern states that share a rich history and many modern challenges. After watching the TV series, people may have a better understanding of the history and development of the 4000-year-old Jewish civilization as well as the rapid development of the modern State of Israel. This series has the potential to enhance mutual understanding and traditional friendship between Chinese and Jewish nations, promote cooperation between the two peoples and jointly build a better future for all. “

Despite the continued solidarity with Palestine among most Chinese, it is among the Chinese elite where being a friend of Israel has become fashionable. The media’s coverage of Israeli crimes is becoming milder, and several Chinese so-called liberals are speaking in favor of Israel (the same ones who spoke in favor of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 1991 and 2003). Although, to the average Chinese, the image of the bulldozer is all too familiar, it is the Chinese youth who are most susceptible to this Israeli cultural penetration, the youth who have joined “the ranks of the apathetic and the indifferent;” the ones who don’t know why their electronic messages don’t go through when that one forbidden combination of two numbers is typed in.

Lucky enough not to fall on (botched) International Burn a Quran Day, this year’s Eid al-Adha for some was observed on November 16th and other ardent moon-sighting observers November 17th, marking the end of Hajj and commemorating the willing sacrifice of Prophet Abraham. In addition to the staple Boston Globe photojournalist essay, here is a round-up of some auditory-tantalizing Hajj Stories:

1. Two South Africans Cycle to Hajj in Al Jazeera, Arab News, “Capetown to Mecca” by Cyclelicious.
2. Over 13,500 Chinese for this Haj

3. No room for terrorism in Islam: Haj sermon by Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh of Saudi Arabia

Merry Eid y’all!

*The picture selected from the BG photoshoot was done so because it closely resembled my favorite photo from BG’s Eid ul-Fitr series, which is below:

This is proof that, contrary to ultra-religious oxymoronic views, cultural norms and habits trump any religious teaching. Praying in your jeans and t-shirt in Jordan, for example, is perfectly fine. But in Sanaa, early nineties, I got stoned with pebbles and called “Amreeki” because I had jeans and t-shirt on. In China, the Chinese Imam insisted that I must put on a Chinese toga (although my attire was acceptable by Sharia) before I walked into the 1300 year-old mosque in Xi’an (The Great Mosque of Xi’an). He said that the Chinese [Muslims] would feel uncomfortable seeing me praying in trousers. Speaking of Chinese Muslims and culture trumping religious teachings, you will find that Muslim restaurants, run by devout Chinese Muslims, would not serve swine products, but are totally fine serving beer. The strict Wahhabi sect hasn’t penetrated their culture yet as it did in places as far as Bangladesh and Bosnia.

The Muslim culture in the Middle East, thanks to Saudi influence on school curricula throughout the past century, has been fixated on sex to the point where men have become almost completely relieved of any guilt related to sexual offenses, from perverted staring to rape. Instead of teaching boys that being perverted is wrong, they were taught that it is always the girl’s fault if they ever get a hard-on: If she was not wearing a short skirt, then it is because of her seductive arms. If she covers her arms, then it is because she is showing her neck and hair. If she covers her neck and hair, it is because you can still conjure the shape of her body. If she is covered from head to toe in, let’s say, a black cloak, and the man still gets a hard-on, it is because she is walking alone in public without a male companion. What is a woman, despite being covered, doing outside of her home, walking alone (or with other women)? Obviously she’s trying to seduce men and make them think of sinning! Why else would she leave her home? The slut!

This is what it has come down to. The following is an excerpt from an actual conversation I had with a taxi driver in Amman:

- “You heard about the girl who got raped by her cousin in the West Bank?”
- Taxi Driver: “No, what happened?”
- “Well, since the crime was within the same family, they decided not to go to the authorities and deal with it among themselves. They had a meeting to discuss the case and the appropriate response. The male was 26 years old, and his female cousin was four years old.”
- “Four? You mean fourteen!”
- “No, four. She was four years old. And someone in the family asked what she was wearing. He was told that she was wearing a short dress, to which he thought must have been a factor to why the young man did what he did.”
- “Disgusting! Unbelievable!”
- “Yeah, so finally, they decided to kill the young man for what he did. And that is what happened.”
- “Four years old! What a monster! I mean, had she been ten years old, I would have been understanding of his actions.”
- “What? Rape is wrong regardless of the girl’s age, you are aware of that, aren’t you?”
- “Yes, but if she was wearing a short dress, what do you expect to happen? Men have urges you know.”
- “So if she was ten years old, the guy is not guilty?”
- “Would you really blame him for the urges that God has put in him?”

Unfortunately I arrived to my destination and was thus forbidden the philosophical fruits from that sage’s vocal chords.

Why is it that women in “Godless” places like China, Korea, and Japan virtually never face sexual harassment in public, regardless of time, place, and clothes? For over five years now living in East Asia, not once have I witnessed verbal or physical harassment, not even a whistle from a construction worker to a hot girl in a night gown, walking alone, at 2:00 in the morning! Then I spend one week in Amman and hear about a dozen cases that happened just that week.

Perhaps, instead of covering every part of a woman’s body less her eyes, it would be more effective to just cover the man’s eyes. That would really solve the problem once and for all. Chastise the man who removes his blindfold in public, then no woman would ever be called a disobedient whore for stepping a foot outside her house. Here is a novel idea: How about the ultra-religious start teaching their kids that it is not OK to be publicly perverted, instead of teaching them that women who walk around without a head cover are sinful whores? For a sexually-deprived man, no amount of covers and cloaks could impede his “urges.” It’s not that the Chinese man has no urges. The difference is that when he was a kid, he was taught some manners!

Muslim school girls from St. Maaz high school  practise [sic] Chinese wushu martial arts inside the school compound in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, July 8th 2008. Girls from ages 10-16 participate in weekly sessions during the school terms. (Agencies)

While the photos are two years old, they’re still pretty bad ass. And only prove the Sino-Islamic alliance Huntington predicted. Awesome. Also note that this is not new to the region, as South Indian Muslims commonly engage in learning the various martial arts.

[tarboush tip: ahmed, uwais]

His holiness, the fourteenth Dalai Lama risked the ire of Chinese Authorities when he came out explicitly in support of the Muslim Uyghur minority yesterday, Uighurs have fought for equal rights and autonomy in Western China.

“Let us not forget about dem Uighurs in East Turkestan… dey be resisting oppressions and shit.” He told a crowd of 3,000 in Dharamsala, the Indian town that has been his home for five decades.

“Mad props go to my boyz SinTian, MadSkillz, and Lythal Ryder, Dem homies are true motha fuckaz, we know they stuck between a rock and a hard place.” Said his holiness in reference to oppression by Chinese authorities and manipulation by external forces that seek to exploit the Uighur uprising for purposes of destabilization inside China.

Analysts predict that the CIA and US State Department directly fund the Uighur exiled groups in order to manipulate them to menace the Chinese government, especially as the latter showed resurgence during the global economic crisis that is far superior than any western economy.

“We know their cause is just, and they suffer from China like a mother fucker, but we know dem Uighurs are sometimes pushed around by da man.” He added towards the end of his speech, “yet they get no love from the man, CNN, NBC, FOX News and dem motha fuckaz can’t bring dem selves to support true Muslim Uighurs.”

KABOBfest’s China Bureau Chief, Chaim Sugarman, asked about the validity of the claims by China that the ethnic Turks have been violent in their uprising and call for equality, to which His Holiness responded: “Uighur please… if all da heat you be packing is some weak ass syringes that you be stealing from a methadone clinic, how deliberately violent your uprising be, shiiit.”

A Uighur woman yells at Han Chinese soldiers to demand the release of imprisoned Uighur men (Newsweek/David Gary/Reuters-Landov)

The recent clashes between Han Chinese and Turkic Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang province have made the front pages here in the States and around the world as of late. Headlines flashing “Tensions worsen in China’s West,” “Deadly ethnic Violence in China,” and “Uighurs vs. Han Chinese” have been the some of the eye-catching titles of some of this past week’s articles and news reports about the violence and the bloodshed in the former Islamic Uighur Kingdom.

For starters, it is interesting that most of us stand at the lower levels of literacy (usually between very illiterate to somewhat literate) when it comes to the politics and the internal affairs of the world’s most populated country. If asked about China last week, here is a sample of what I would have told you: China’s capital is Beijing, it hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan are Chinese, it’s a Communist country, there’s a Chinatown in every major city in the U.S., most cheap goods in the U.S. are made in and imported from China, and they make some damn good food (at least the Sczechuan and the Canton province dishes). That’s about it.

What I didn’t know until just recently and what most of us are still not aware of, is that like its southern neighbor Tibet, the Xinjiang province was also invaded and taken over militarily by the People’s Liberation Army (a.k.a. the Chinese Army), who came to Xinjiang to “liberate” the territory in 1949. Since that time, the country’s biggest province has been the scene of a massive settlement movement on the part of millions of Han Chinese, who have been funded and subsidized by Beijing to move and to live in the newly acquired territory.

Sound familiar?

Yeah, the same Machiavellian politics are very reminiscent of Israel’s settlement course of action and its systematic ethnic cleansing of the native population in its newly acquired territories. A detailed look at Chinese census reports show that Xinjiang’s Han population has grown from roughly 299,000 in 1953 to 5,284,000 in 1982; from 5,696,000 in 1992 to a nice round 7,497,700 in 2000, a number which snatches the majority belt from the once majority Muslim Uighurs, and all thanks to a well organized, effective and unstoppable settlement policy put in place by the government. Similar demographic shifts of Han Chinese settlement have also occurred in Tibet.

It is also worth mention that most of the recent articles and broadcasts have covered the current tensions in Xinjiang by mentioning and seeming to focus on the “angry Muslims” attacking the “ethnic majority” Han Chinese and thus provide the world with yet another flawed and misconstrued image of Muslims who just happen to be “angry” for no apparent reason, who are ready to slit some throats with “knives and bricks.” The title for this post actually comes from a co-worker of a friend who was in the mood to highlight the fact that Hey! here’s another example which goes to proving yet again, that Muslims are bloodthirsty animals who just want to go around killing people.

What most reports fail to mention is what actually started the recent Xinjiang Intifada, namely, Beijing’s handling of the deaths of two Uyghurs in “a confrontation in far southern China . . . when Han Chinese fought Uyghurs working in a factory in Shaoguan . . . after a false allegation that some of them had raped a Han Chinese woman.”

If anything, this recent explosion of anger does not stem from the fact that these people are Muslims. No, this outburst of scuffles and attacks is the manifestation of the tensions between the Han and the Uighurs in Xinjiang in recent years; it is the expression of Uighur frustration towards unjust and biased government policies namely, massive Han immigration, the substantial development that favors only the Han Chinese in Xinjiang, and the uneven economic growth this development has created; their anger is the result of an ongoing lack of equal opportunities on account of ethnic discrimination, and the dissatisfaction that ensues when employment levels go down, poverty rates go up and an entire population feels that their means of sustenance and culture are slowly being eroded while they are yet alive.

I am surprised at how little myself or anyone who is not an Asian Studies major actually knows about what is going on in Xinjiang or in China, for that matter. We all know about Palestine, we all know about Darfur and for crying out loud, we all know about Tibet (thanks to those wonderful Hippies). How many of us know about Urumqi, Kashgar and Turfan? How many have heard or are familiar with the World Uighur Congress or the East Turkestan Independence Movement and the plethora of parallels that can be drawn between their struggle and the many other movements against injustice in today’s world? Another enlightening attribute about the recent incidents in Xinjiang is the resonating silence of the International Muslim community, with the exception of probably Turkey and Muslims in India, with regard to the whole thing, especially those Islamic countries in the bordering vicinity of China and the Xinjiang province.

Where is the International community’s backlash condemning the harsh crackdown of the protests and demonstrations we saw with Iran? Where is the International Muslim solidarity with the Muslims of China? Where’s the Twitter and the Facebook?

[Tarboush Tip: J, Raesah, Kinsey]

The Arab League only has three members who are fully party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, and Jordan is the most powerful of them. The other two are Djibouti and the Comoros islands. This case is shaping up to be a fascinating test for the world’s standing war crimes court.

Sudan, like the United States and Israel, signed on but never ratified it. This means the ICC’s jurisdiction over the crimes in Darfur is based on the idea of universal jurisdiction — the most egregious of crimes can be prosecuted whether they occur in states that are party to the ICC or not. This stems from the fact the case was referred by the United Nations Security Council, which would likely have to take responsibility for arresting al-Bashir if the ICC’s member-states are not up to the task.

Since 2004, Sudan has failed to comply with U.N. Security Council demands “to apprehend and bring to justice” perpetrators of atrocities in Darfur. United Nations Secretary-General said Bashir can avoid prosecution if Sudanese courts try those accused of crimes of war in Darfur, including Bashir himself.

In Darfur, up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have been driven from their homes since rebel groups took up arms against the government in 2003. The conflict stems from shortages in arable land and water leading to a conflict between the nomadic and sedentary tribes of Darfur.

The decrease in arable land can probably be attributed to climate change, although there is debate about the actual causes. It appears the Sudanese government enabled and facilitated this conflict by arming and supporting the Arabic-speaking nomadic herders against the non-Arabic-speaking farmers.

Though a state as weak as Sudan may seem like relatively low bearing fruit — in terms of the scope of the killing and weakness of its alliances with other states — it will be a difficult case for the ICC, politically.

Al-Bashir responded by expelling 13 NGO’s doing relief work in Darfur. Many of them were contracted by the United Nations. It would be a shame if this ended up being the only outcome of the ICC’s efforts.

Failure could devastate the ICC project. While it amassed the evidence for prosecution, it needs al-Bashir present for trial (trying him in absentia is not permitted). Which states will actually intervene to implement such a trial is an open question.

The United States has its hands full and is not very interested in upsetting the Arab League members it needs for its other (pre)occupations in the region — which, by the way, raise their own international war crimes questions.

If the ICC cannot get al-Bashir, it will never get George W. Bush, as it should. Perhaps if it built a case against Bush, it would have more credibility going after al-Bashir, as well. It would seem less to be in the pocket of western powers.

Secretary of State Clinton’s remarks on March 6th did not shed too much light on how far the United States is willing to go to make an ICC prosecution and punishment of al-Bashir possible:

Governments and individuals who either conduct or condone atrocities of any kind, as we have seen year after year in Sudan, have to be held accountable. The ICC has issued an indictment based on a very long investigation, and it is now in a judicial system, properly so. We are going to hope that there is not any increased violence on the part of the government in Khartoum. In the face of this indictment, President Bashir would have a chance to have his day in court. If he believes that the indictment is wrongly charged, he can certainly contest it. But I certainly hope that it does not lead to any additional actions of violence or punishment on the part of the Bashir government.

It sounds like the political equivalent of forming a committee. And it will take years to work out.

Other Security Council players, like China, are vested in the Sudanese regime, or obsessed over their own sphere of influence, namely Russia.

Will any in the Council really go head-to-head with China over a cruel third world despot?

Without the necessary political traction, this could very well backlash. If the ICC cannot effectuate the punishment of weak violators, the hope for international justice against the worst, the strongest, will be nil. Perhaps the world is still not ready for international governance, even though it is needed badly.