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ISIS Extends Recruitment Efforts to China
ISIS Extends Recruitment Efforts to China With New Chant
Edward Wong and Adam Wu, New York Times
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 assessmenton Monday by the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks the propaganda of jihadist groups.
The chant, or nasheed, is an exhortation to rise up but does not specify a target. (See below for a full translation.) 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. Just 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. (A Radio Free Asia report said women and children were among the dead.)
At the time of the 2010 census, China had about 10 million Uighurs and 10 million ethnic Hui, a Muslim group that generally speaks Mandarin and is common across northwest China. They are the largest ethnic minority groups practicing Islam in the country of 1.4 billion. There are also smaller groups that are predominantly Muslim, like the Kazakhs and Tajiks.
The leaders of the Islamic State adhere to an ultra-Orthodox form of Sunni Islam called Salafism, one that is not popular among Chinese Muslims. Salafists denounce many other Muslims as heretics, including other Sunnis, and are especially hostile toward Shiite Muslims. The sect is tiny, but Saudi Arabia, a United States ally, promotes Salafism and its close cousin Wahhabism, whose adherents seek to “purify” Islam of modern influences.
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 ISIS or other armed groups in Syria to fight against the government of PresidentBashar al-Assad, whose forces have killed huge numbers of civilians.
In his recording from July 2014, Mr. Baghdadi said Chinese was one of 12 nationalities of fighters in ISIS. The male singer of the new chant had a hint of a northern or northwestern Chinese accent.
Wu Sike, a former Chinese envoy to the Middle East, said in late July last year that about 100 Chinese fighters were being trained or fighting in the Middle East. He said that number came from foreign news reports, even though no foreign news organization has reliable estimates of Chinese fighters. Mr. Wu said most of the fighters were ethnic Uighurs. He did not say specifically that they were members of the Islamic State.
In September 2014, the Iraqi Defense Ministry posted on its Facebook page a photograph of an Asian man with a bruised and bloodied face and said the man was a Chinese fighter for ISIS whom Iraqi soldiers had captured. The ministry did not provide further details.
In 2013, a group fighting Mr. Assad posted a video online that purported to show a Chinese warrior named Yusef brandishing a Kalashnikov rifle (a subtitle said his Chinese name was Bo Wang). Yusef, who appeared to be ethnic Han, spoke in Mandarin and said he had gone to study in Libya before traveling to Syria to help overthrow Mr. Assad, who “is butchering every Muslim here in cold blood, including children and women.”
As it has done with many other nations, the Islamic State has been goading China. Last month, its online magazine, Dabiq, said it had executed a Chinese hostage, Fan Jinghui. The Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed the report. It was unclear how Mr. Fan, 50, had ended up as a hostage or what he was doing in the Middle East. He had told a reporter in China that he was a “floater,” with no attachments in his life.
After the killing, President Xi Jinping of China said he would crack down on terrorism. But unlike Russia or the United States, China has carried out no known military operations in Syria or Iraq, where it has extensive oil interests in the Shiite-controlled south. Many Islamic State fighters cling to a prophetic end-of-days vision of engaging in an apocalyptic battle with foreign nations in Syria and Iraq.
Below is a translation of the Mandarin-language nasheed:
We are mujahid/Our shameless enemy will panic/To die fighting on the battlefield/Is our dream
We are mujahid/Our shameless enemy will panic/To die fighting on the battlefield/Is our dream
A century of slavery/Leaves that shameful memory/Deep in the ignorant slumber/Nightmare will continue on
A century of slavery/Leaves that shameful memory/Deep in the ignorant slumber/Nightmare will continue on
Wake up! Muslim brother/Now is the time to awaken/Take up the faith and courage/To fulfill the lost doctrine
Wake up! Muslim brother/Now is the time to awaken/Take up the faith and courage/To fulfill the lost doctrine
We are mujahid/Our shameless enemy will panic/To die fighting on the battlefield/Is our dream
We only abide by/The Quran and the Sunnah/No power/Can stop our progress
We only abide by/The Quran and the Sunnah/No power/Can stop our progress
To fight in God’s way/Is the Great Allah’s command/Take up weapons to fight/Admire Allah’s truth
To fight in God’s way/Is the great Allah’s command/Take up weapons to fight/Admire Allah’s truth
We are mujahid/Our shameless enemy will panic/To die fighting on the battlefield/Is our dream
The glory of Islam,/Is etched in the history/To let it shine again/Is what we are striving for
The glory of Islam,/Is etched in the history/To let it shine again/Is what we are striving for
Wake up! Muslim brother/Now is the time to awaken/Take up the faith and courage/To fulfill the lost doctrine
Wake up! Muslim brother/Now is the time to awaken/Take up the faith and courage/To fulfill the lost doctrine
We are mujahid/Our shameless enemy will panic/To die fighting on the battlefield/Is our dream.
Copyright 2015 New York Times Co.
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