The movement for a “moderate Islam” is not moderate at all. It is a tool created by Chinese propaganda and embraced by Russia.
by Ma Wenyan
“International Seminar in Islamic Moderate Thought” may look like a nice name, It is, in fact, a fraud. These events were created by the China Islamic Association, i.e., the Chinese Communist Party’s body controlling Chinese Muslims, in 2016.
The first seminar on “Islamic Moderate Through” was held in Urumqi, Xinjiang. The purpose was abundantly clear: define “moderate Muslims” as those subservient to the Russian and Chinese governments and actively supporting the repression of “separatists,” be they the Uyghurs in China or the Chechen not aligned with the Putin regime or other independent Muslims in Russia. The events are dominated by Chinese bureaucrats of the China Islamic Association and Russian “State Muftis” totally loyal to the Putin administration.
On July 25, President Yang Faming of the China Islamic Association headed a Chinese delegation to participate in the fifth such “International Seminar on Islamic Moderate Thought” in Kazan, Tatarstan’s capital in Russia. He gave a keynote speech titled “Vigorously Promote Islamic Moderate Thought.” A key theme of his speech was advertising China’s Belt and Road Initiative as a way of connecting countries with a significant Islamic presence.
Yang conveyed to the seminar the greetings of President Xi Jinping, who he said has expressed the hope that the movement for an “Islamic moderate thought” will play an important role in combating “religious extremism, non-correct religious comprehension, and separatism.”
Russian state muftis, including Rawil Ğaynetdin, head of the Muslim Religious Administration of the Russian Federation and the Russian Mufti Council Chairperson, enthusiastically agreed. Ğaynetdin told Yang that, just as it happens in China, in Russia Muslims (meaning state-controlled Muslims) are mobilized to combat extremist and separatism and manifest their patriotic feelings (meaning supporting the war of aggression against Ukraine).
A look at the list of the speakers show the countries they came from: in addition to Russia and China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Iran, Bahrain, Qatar, and Ethiopia. Some of these countries have different foreign policy views, but what they have in common is the idea that Islam should be controlled by the states. In none of the participating countries did Muslim leaders express any support for the victims of the anti-Islamic persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang or protest the vandalization of the mosques of the Chinese Muslim Hui community in China. Some have sent delegations to China to proclaim that “all is well” for Muslims there.
This is not “moderate Islam,” it is pro-cultural-genocide Islam. The attempt by China and Russia to control the definition of “moderate Islam” should be firmly resisted and denounced for what it is: fraud, lies, and disinformation.
