A central pillar of the Islamic faith is its expectation that Muslims will come to the aid of their fellow believers. This informs an understanding that the Islamic community (or “umma”) will sustain even amid significant external pressures. It is one of Islam’s most beautiful qualities.
At the political level, this pillar helps explain why, for example, Article 12 of the Constitution of the United Arab Emirates declares that the “foreign policy of the Union shall be directed towards support for Arab and Islamic causes and interests.” It also helps underline why successive Pakistani governments have (their flexible application of constitutional law aside) taken great public pains to offer their absolute commitment to Islamic values and law.
Increasingly, however, when it comes to the UAE and Pakistan, these words of fealty savor but a shallow wit.
Today, one of the most significant of all external pressures on the global umma is Communist China’s treatment of its Uighur Muslim citizens. In China’s northwestern Xinjiang province, more than 2 million innocent Uighurs have been forced into concentration camps. From there, they have been subjected to forced reeducation, sterilization, prostitution, and a litany of other horrors, including slave labor and murder. You might think that this Nazi-style mistreatment of so many Muslims simply because they are Muslim would concern every Islamic-majority nation. You might also expect that America’s recognition of this genocide would find shared support across the Islamic world.
Sadly, you’d be mistaken. In many Muslim-majority nations, governments tend to respond to this Uighur tragedy with silence. But it’s even worse in the cases of the UAE and Pakistan.
In a new interview with China’s CGTN state media network, the UAE’s ambassador to Beijing was asked about his views on China’s policy in Xinjiang. Ambassador Ali Dhaheri didn’t hesitate. He explained that “traveling in Xinjiang gave me a different and special feeling.” The UAE government, he said, “strongly support China’s measures aimed at developing Xinjiang, creating jobs, developing infrastructure, and expanding investment fields and opportunities in order to eradicate poverty.”
This presentation of Beijing’s Uighur genocide as some kind of smiley-faced vocational job scheme is a total fabrication constructed by Xi Jinping’s propaganda machinery — but one, it seems, that the UAE is all too happy to promote. (Side note: President Biden and the Congress must pay closer heed to the UAE’s relationship with China.)
Still, Dhaheri’s glee over a Muslim ethnocide is nothing compared to the Pakistani government’s attitude. Building on what appears to be a trend of Islamabad allowing the Chinese government to write its Uighur-related statements at the United Nations, Sen. Mushahid Hussain just explained why he has joined Team Uighur Ethnocide. Hussain’s trips to Xinjiang had shown him, the senator said, how the Uighurs have benefited from new access to “gainful employment, with new access to opportunities in education and employment.” Hussain observed that the “people in Xinjiang are building a new tomorrow for a better life for themselves with the passage of time.” Notice the similarity in rhetoric between Hussain and Dhaheri?
Now, ask yourself something: What do the governments of the UAE and Pakistan care more about? Their supposedly sacred values or their access to Chinese investment? The question nearly answers itself. Nearly.
