Is China exaggerating the Uighur terror threat?

As Islamic State (ISIS) propaganda stretches slick tentacles into the West, luring Americans and Europeans to fight jihad in Syria, the terror group also is increasingly seducing recruits along the Eastern Silk Road. More than 100 Uighur Muslims from China are currently fighting jihad in Syria, according to recently leaked ISIS documents, and Chinese state media has reported Uighur recruits at three times that number.

The Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking ethnic minority group nestled in the northwestern mountains of Xinjiang, have long accused China of religiously motivated persecution. But in recent months, as militants have staged terror attacks outside China, the Uighur issue has taken on a transnational dimension, raising security concerns for the People’s Republic.

Earlier this month, a Uighur Muslim crashed an explosive-laden van into a Chinese diplomatic compound in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, killing himself and wounding five civilians. Kyrgyz officials last week identified the suicide bomber as Zoir Khalimov, and claimed his attack was supported by the Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. Though an exact fighter count is impossible to confirm, more than a thousand Uighurs could be battling alongside the Nusra Front, according to Beirut-based analyst Haytham Mouzahem.

Two alleged terrorists, both ethnic Uighurs, are currently standing trial in Thailand for masterminding the 2015 Bangkok bomb attack, the deadliest in the country’s history. Some claim the bombing was politically motivated, while others say it was an act of Islamic terrorism.

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has hotly denounced China’s oppression of Muslims like the Uighurs, proclaiming his desire for an Islamic caliphate stretching from Morocco to Xinjiang.

Despite the real terror links, human rights groups say China is exaggerating the Uighur threat to justify abusive law-enforcement policies and tight religious restrictions in Xinjiang. And the crackdown isn’t helping to curb the terror threat.

Tough religious scrutiny from Beijing “could be a push factor driving people to leave the country and look elsewhere for a sense of ‘belonging,’” claimed a New America Foundation report published last month.

Uighur supporters say the minority group is simply looking for religious freedom.

“The so-called radicals are those who hope to flee China and live a stable and dignified life in a safe and free country,” Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the World Uighur Congress, told The Guardian.

China’s repressive policies in Xinjiang will “worsen the situation for the local population, particularly its Muslims,” said Dru Gladney, Professor of Anthropology at Pomona College, who has lived in Xinjiang and specializes in the people, culture, and politics of the ancient and modern Silk Road. “We have seen terrorism orchestrated by Uighurs,” he added, “but…many of them were made scapegoats for wider problems in Chinese society.”

Of China’s 1.37 billion people, between 1 and 2 percent identify as Muslim. Only a sliver of them are Uighur Muslims. But as Protestant church growth has risen sharply in recent decades, so has mosque construction—with 65 percent of China’s estimated 39,000 mosques in Xinjiang. Some experts claim Arabic is the fastest growing language in China.