Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

Islam in China 1 7 9pressure and withdraw their iron hand from Tibet. Uyghurs have begun towork closely with Tibetans internationally to put political pressure on Chinain international forums. In Istanbul on April 7, 1997, I had the opportunity tointerview Ahmet Türköz, vice director of the Eastern Turkestan Foundation,which works for an independent Uyghur homeland. Türköz noted that since1981, meetings had been taking place between the Dalai Lama and Uyghurleaders, initiated by the deceased Uyghur nationalist Isa Yusuf Alptekin.These international forums cannot force China to change its policy, any morethan can the annual debate in the United States over the renewal of China’smost-favored-nation status. Nevertheless, they continue to influence China’sability to cooperate internationally. As a result, China has sought to respondrapidly, and often militarily, to domestic ethnic affairs that might have internationalimplications.Since 1997, China has been in the process of developing ways to govern thenewly integrated territory of Hong Kong. Given Chinese visions of eventuallyreuniting with Taiwan, residents of Taiwan will be watching how China dealswith this and other problems of national integration. During the Dalai Lama’sMarch 1998 visit to Taiwan, he again renounced independence, calling forChina to treat Tibet under the same “two systems, one country” policy as HongKong, yet the P e o p l e ’s Daily continued to call him a “separatist.” Taiwan will certainlybe watching how well Hong Kong is integrated into China as a “specialadministrative region” with a truly separate system of government, as opposedto Tibet and Xinjiang, which, although so-called autonomous regions, havev e ry little actual autonomy from decisionmakers in Beijing.C h i n a ’s handling of ethnic and integrationist issues in Xinjiang and HongKong will have a direct bearing on any future possible reunification with Ta i-wan. Beyond the official minorities, China possesses tremendous ethnic, linguistic,and regional diversity. Intolerance toward difference in Xinjiang mightbe extended to limiting cultural pluralism in Guangdong, where at least fifteendialects of Cantonese are spoken and folk religious practices remainstrong. Memories of the repressions of the Cultural Revolution, when all formsof diversity, political or cultural, were severely curtailed, are still very muchalive there, as elsewhere. If rising Chinese nationalism entails reducing ethnicand cultural difference, then anyone who is regarded as “other” in China wills u f f e r, not just the Uyghurs.China is not immune from the new tide of ethnic nationalism and “primordialpolitics” sweeping Europe, Africa, and Asia in the post–cold war period.Much of that movement is clearly a response to globalization in terms of localization:increasing nationalism arising from the organization of the world intonation-states. No longer content to sit on the sidelines, the nations withinthese states are playing a greater role in the public sphere, which JürgenHabermas (1989) suggests is the defining characteristic of civil society in the