Social Media Arabizing, Unifying and Radicalizing Uyghurs, New Study Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 6 – Social media have played a major role in Arabizing, unifying and radicalizing Uyghurs in China, a new study by two London-based scholars finds whose conclusions apply to Muslim nations in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle Volga as well, according to a summary provided by the Fergana portal.

            Its author, Artem Kosmarsky, says that the rebirth of Islam in China’s Xinjiang occurred at roughly the same time and in roughly the same way as in the adjacent republics of Central Asia; but he notes that there has been little attention to the ways in which social media have shaped and intensified this process (fergana.agency/articles/105628/).

            That gap has now been partially but significantly filled by Rachel Harris of SOAS and independent scholar Aziz Isa who surveyed how Uyghurs have used social media and reported the results in a 5500-word article in the latest issue of Central Asian Survey entitled “Islam by Smartphone: Reading the Uyghur Islamic Revival on WeChat.”

            In many ways, the Chinese government unwittingly created the conditions for the transformation of the Uyghur movement from a largely peaceful one based on traditional values to one drawing on the Islam practiced in the Arab world and committed to more radical change than Beijing could ever tolerate.

            By 2013, the two scholars say, the WeChat social network had 500 million users and the Uyghurs had their own messenger within it called Undidar.  That became “the key means of communications” among the Uyghurs; and as Chinese repression increased, it became in many ways the last remaining space that was both Uyghur and Islamic.

            Until the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, Harris and Aziz say, the Chinese government “looked through its fingers” at what was happening on Undidar. In their view, “this gave a unique window to the feelings and thoughts of Uyghur Muslims” and especially the role of middle-aged women in the radicalization of others.

            Such women took the lead in using WeChat to propagandize “the ideal way of Islamic femininity” by showing “beautiful Muslim women in hijabs with happy and rosy-cheeked infants in their arms” or providing guidance on how to live in ways that promoted a particular vision of an Islamic future for Uyghurs.

            These women were especially effective in reaching Uyghurs in rural areas because they used videos and audio texts more than they used written texts; and for many of the less well-educated Muslims, that meant that they were more affected by pictures and by sound than by texts.

            Before the end of 2014, Beijing realized it had a monster on its hands.  But by that point, the Uyghurs had become so accustomed to using social media that when Beijing blocked one kind they shifted to others, including WhatsApp.  That kind of adaptability was something the Uyghurs learned from the social media, yet another way the Internet transformed the movement.

            The Harris-Isa article provides both a wealth of detail on the Uyghurs and also a model of how to study the impact of social media on Muslim communities elsewhere including first and foremost in the post-Soviet states.