BEIJING — The Islamic State has been recruiting far and wide for members to join its ranks on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria or elsewhere. Now those efforts are extending to China.
BEIJING — The Islamic State has been recruiting far and wide for members to join its ranks on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria or elsewhere. Now those efforts are extending to China.
The group recently posted a digital recording of a new chant in Mandarin Chinese that calls for Muslims to “wake up” and “take up weapons to fight.” The chant is typical of many others released by the group, also called ISIS or ISIL.
The chant was posted online by Al Hayat Media Center, the foreign-language media division of the Islamic State, according to an assessment Monday by the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks the propaganda of jihadi groups.
The chant, or nasheed, is an exhortation to rise up but does not specify a target. It could be aimed at placing China in the cross hairs. The Islamic State’s leader, the cleric Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, released a recording in July 2014 in which he named China as one of many countries in which “Muslims’ rights are forcibly seized.”
Some political Muslim groups, especially in Turkey, have joined international human rights advocates and other organizations in condemning China’s anti-Islamic policies in the western region of Xinjiang.
There, many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking ethnic group that mostly practices Sunni Islam, say they are discriminated against and persecuted by the ruling ethnic Han.
In recent years, violence has surged in Uighur areas, and the Communist Party says it faces a terrorist threat there. Chinese officials have said that security officers have seized recordings from abroad that inspire Uighurs to take up arms. Last month, Chinese officials said that security forces had used a flamethrower to force 10 “terrorists” from a cave in Xinjiang after tracking a group that officials believed to be responsible for a recent deadly coal mine attack. Security officers killed 28 people linked to the attack, official reports said.
The Chinese recording is addressed to the “Muslim brother” who is listening, but the Islamic State kills many Muslims, including by beheading and burning victims alive.
There is no reliable information on how many Chinese have joined the Islamic State or other armed groups in Syria to fight against the government of President Bashar Assad, whose forces have killed huge numbers of civilians.
© 2015 The New York Times Company