The Oppressed Uighur Muslims: Why the Corporate Media’s intense Focus on them?

Crescent International

The Uighur Muslims in China are going through very tough times. Nevertheless, the corporate media’s intense focus on their plight that regularly demonizes Muslims and in particular Muslim activists elsewhere should raise a red flag.

Recently a prominent Muslim activist in the UK with substantial social-media following posted an article about the terrible treatment of Uighurs published by the UK’s independent newspaper.

The article describing the horrendous torture of Muslims in China relied on the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as one of its sources.

Considering that Haaretz is based in Occupied Palestine where Muslims are regularly tortured, murdered and imprisoned simply for demanding their fundamental right to a homeland, it is at best hypocritical of the Israeli paper to talk about the plight of Muslims in China.

True, unlike other Israeli papers, Haaretz periodically highlights Zionist abuses of Palestinians but it is still part of the apartheid system occupying Palestine.

The Western corporate media is awash with graphic stories of how badly the Uighur Muslims are treated.

The narrative and construct of many reports reminds seasoned observers of the narrative and reports published about the alleged inhumanity of the Syrian government at the start of the proxy-war in 2011.

Let us recall the infamous fake video showing a Muslim being buried alive for not agreeing to worship Bashar al-Assad or the fictitious Gay Girl in Damascus quoted by numerous “respectable” corporate media outlets.

The ‘Gay Girl’ was an American impostor, Tom MacMaster, a student based in Scotland.

The war on Syria, one of the most heinous mass misinformation operations by the corporate media and Western regimes, should be an important media literacy lesson for people to never forget.

Good propaganda is never a complete lie; it is mixed with some truth to make it sound credible.

The corporate media which legitimized the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and continues to whitewash Western support for brutal dictators in the Muslim world, who oppress Muslim activists in the same way as the Chinese government is doing, have little credibility to present themselves as champions of the rights of Muslims in China.

The NATO regimes view China as a strategic, economic and military rival and would like to undermine it. Thus, they have a vested interest in mobilizing public opinion against Beijing.

When reading reports about the oppression of Muslims in China, it is important to keep this context in mind.

In the age of massive disinformation, it is crucial to not just focus on the news, but the entire context and the intellectual framework.

The Uighur Muslims are indeed oppressed. What about the Palestinians, Kashmiris, Yemenis and a host of others?

Why hasn’t the corporate Western media given a fraction of the coverage to their plight as they have to the Muslims in China?

Extreme caution is in order lest Muslims are misled the same way as they were in Syria eight years ago.

END

Islamic movement fighting on so many fronts

Editor

The killings of Palestinians continues unabated, as Palestinian Muslims continued the al-Aqsa intifada in defiance of Israeli attempts to suppress it through brute force. Even as the Palestinians faced some of the worst days of the intifada, however, representatives of Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority began meetings with Israeli and American representatives in Washington to bring the Palestinian ‘peace process’ — also known as the Palestinian sell out — back on track. It was a stark reminder of the reality that Muslims’ leaders are often our worst enemies.

The point was emphasised by the reports of further massacres in Algeria. Since the military coup in January 1992 that prevented the Islamic Solidarity Front (FIS) from taking power after its overwhelming electoral victory the previous month, over 100,000 Algerians have died. According to the authorities, they have been killed by Islamic activists. The idea that mujahideen might, under any circumstances, find reasons for the sort of brutality against innocent Muslim people that has become commonplace in Algeria’s recent history makes no sense whatsoever, and there is ample direct evidence, and even more circumstantial evidence, pointing to the Algerian state as the real perpetrators of the crimes.

The Algerian regime might well be one of the most ruthless regimes in the Muslim world when it comes to dealing with its own people, but it is has many rivals for the title. While some naive Muslims have looked to Arab states for support for the Palestinians in their struggle against the zionists, the regimes of kind Abdullah II in Jordan and king Muhammad V in Morocco are only two of several that have been more concerned with preventing their people from turning anti-zionist protests into anti-government ones. Far from condemning Arafat for his repression of Hamas and other Islamic activists, Arab states are doing precisely the same thing in their own countries. Both regimes have cracked down hard on Islamic activists protesting against the zionists, for fear that the public mobilization might turn against themselves. Another way of avoiding this would be to take a firm stance in support of the Palestinian intifada, but this appears not to have occurred to them. Instead, the pressure from the Arab states has been not on the zionists, but on Arafat, to return to the negotiating table and reach a settlement, even though such a settlement can only be to the zionists’ advantage.

In numerous Muslim countries, Islamic movements are being viciously suppressed, often far more viciously than the Islamic movements in Palestine. It is hard to imagine which has the greatest impact on a Muslim community: the sorts of hardship being suffered by the Palestinians, or the more subtle but perhaps more even painful hardships imposed on Muslim women in Turkey for trying to fulfil their Islamic duty to cover themselves and conduct themselves with modesty and reserve. Similar secular policies are being pursued by the government in Tunisia. In Uzbekistan, scores of Muslims who wish to practice, or to live according to their faith in public and social matters, are in jails, and Islamic institutions are subject to regular crackdowns and closure. The examples are legion.

Islamic movements confronting the forces of kufr on the front-line against Western civilizational imperialism (and its allies and agents) have a high profile, be they in Palestine, Kashmir, India, east Turkestan, Chechnya, Sudan, Nigeria, or the Balkans. But the battle of Islamic movements in the Muslim countries, fighting against agents of kufr planted deep into our societies, and imposed on us as rulers and leaders, is arguably far harder and even more important. Until Islamic movements overthrow these rulers, and create Islamic states in the heartlands of the Muslim world, the struggles in Palestine, Kashmir and other such places will not be won.

The struggles of these Islamic movements take many forms: political, military, intellectual, social and cultural. Often they are harder to see for Muslims elsewhere, particularly in the West, than the movements of the frontiers, and information about them is harder to come by and to understand. Supporting them, in the heart and in material terms, is often harder. But while we support wholeheartedly the struggle in Palestine, we must remember also, at this time more than any other, that there are other movements requiring our support and assistance all over the Muslim world, not only in our prayers, but by our actions.

 

Editor