3.4 Culture and Religion Remarkable geographical distances are key to understanding the tremendous cultural diversity of Xinjiang existing not only among the various Muslim nationalities but also within the Uighurs as well. The Uighurs are an ethnically Turkic group of Muslims who probably arrived in Xinjiang as part of the great westward migration of Turkic peoples from what is now Mongolia in the eight and ninth centuries. In addition to their collective identity as Uighurs (the name meaning “Unity”), most tend to identify themselves by the oasis town they originate from such as Kashgar, Yarkand, Karghalik or Turpan. Oases have maintained separate and strong local identities despite their common religion, language and culture. Uighurs are Sunni Muslims following the Hanafi school law placing themselves in the mainstream tradition of Islam. Historically in Xinjiang, as well as in other parts of Central Asia, Sufism developed although not always harmoniously. Violent raids and warfare by two rival Sufi sects wreaked havoc in Xinjiang from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. In broad terms, Islamic life in the oases of the South of Xinjiang, particularly in Kashgar, appears to be more conservative than in the North. The practice of Islam, particular in its revived form of recent years, and considering the inseparability of religion from all aspects of Muslim life, including politics and government, has become a symbolic means of confronting the Chinese State. By embracing Islam, Uighurs reject the atheism of the Chinese Communist Party as well as its goals of modernization and social liberation. Such anti-modernist feeling is however far from being universal in the province, as significant segments of the Uighur population are keen to take growing advantage from the remarkable economic development propitiated by the Chinese government development policies in the region. Early PRC attempts to accommodate cultural differences have in recent years increasingly given way to assimilation policies colliding with Uighur traditional values. Language has also become a symbolic issue. The traditional Arabic (and Koranic) script that had been used in the region for more than a thousand years was banned at the time of the Cultural Revolution when thousands of historical books as well as a number of important mosques went destroyed. Arabic script has been in the past twenty years re-introduced. However, in order to take advantage of any educational and economic opportunities, the native population is obliged to learn Chinese. Meanwhile, few Chinese learn the local languages. The cultural, linguistic and religious distance between the two peoples is not closing and social interaction remains therefore negligible.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 10:32:27 +0000
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