Fred Hiatt expresses shock in his Washington Post column that Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed Bin Salman did not rush to the defense of his fellow-Muslims, the Uighurs being “re-educated” by the Chinese:
China is a leading oppressor of Muslims, so it should come as no surprise that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia — the kingdom that views itself as defender of the Islamic faith — would visit Beijing to deliver a stern rebuke.
After all, China has penned an estimated 1 million Muslims into concentration camps in western China. It has sent ethnic Han Chinese to live with Muslim families and report on anyone who refuses to eat pork or shave his beard. It is wrenching children from parents to reprogram them away from their faith and culture in mass orphanages.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman must have had a lot to say when he met Chinese President Xi Jinping late last week.
Wait, what’s that you say? The prince had nothing to say on behalf of China’s Muslims? In fact, he defended what China calls an effort to fight extremism?
Allow me to explain. For MBS Islam is a tribal religion. His tribe is, first, Saudis, then other Arabs. That Saudis barely consider other Arabs Arabs at all is hardly a state secret. How much farther down in the scale are the Uighurs or Turks? How much farther down are we? In addition the Turks are the Saudis nearby geopolitical foes. After all the last caliph was a Turk.
“So before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel.â€
― Leon Uris, The Haj
Any number of reasons can be given, e.g. guests do not criticize how their host runs his household, the Saudi King is not the Caliph, the basic problem though is that the chattering class refuses to accept the world does not respond to a arched eyebrow and moue of distaste.
The Chinese are entirely correct in their suppression of Islamic Uyghurs. Islam is incompatible with any other religion or political doctrine, and whenever its adherents become more than a very small minority, they engage in a death struggle to impose Islam on their neighbors.
The US and the EU should be expelling all Muslims from their territories. In the US, that would include the heretical Nation of Islam.