Officials warn of global religious extremism threat to China

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/officials-warn-global-religious-extremism-threat-china-46087679

Chinese officials are issuing new warnings about the specter of global religious extremism seeping into the country, following reports of fighters from China's Muslim minority fighting alongside militants in Syria and Iraq.

Sharhat Ahan, a top political and legal affairs party official in Xinjiang, on Sunday became the latest official from a predominantly Muslim region to warn about China becoming destabilized by the "international anti-terror situation" and calling for a "people's war."


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Although some scholars question whether global jihadi networks are active in the country, top Chinese officials are increasingly echoing strands of international discourse to back up claims that Islamic extremism is growing worldwide and needs to be rolled back.

In recent years, hundreds have died in violent incidents mainly in Xinjiang that officials blame on Uighur separatists inspired by the global Jihadi cause.

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"What the Islamic State and extremists push is jihad, terror, violence," Li said. "This is why we see Trump targeting Muslims in a travel ban. It doesn't matter whether anti-Muslim policy is in the interests of the U.S. or it promotes stability, it's about preventing religious extremism from seeping into all of American culture."

Wu Shimin, a former ethnic affairs official from Ningxia, said that ideological work must be strengthened in the region to promote a Chinese identity among its Hui population, the descendants of Muslim traders plying the Silk Road centuries ago.


The officially atheistic Communist Party has long viewed religion with suspicion but has generally granted a fair degree of religious freedom to its Hui minority, especially in their heartland of Ningxia, where mosques dot the skyline. The party has kept a far tighter grip over Xinjiang's Uighurs — who have a language, culture and physical features that are more closely linked to Central Asia — partly due to the existence of a decades-old separatist movement.

But the comments by party officials in Ningxia, seen as traditionally more lax on ethnic and religious policy, reflected the top Chinese leadership's growing anxieties about Islam more broadly over the past year, analysts said.