More Than 100 Chinese Muslims Have Joined The Islamic State

Chinese state-backed media has claimed that 300 Chinese Muslims are fighting with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and authorities have blamed the violence emanating from its restive northwest on radical Islamist ideology and residents’ ties to foreign terrorist networks. U.S.-based experts and human rights groups have disputed both claims, arguing that China’s repressive political and religious policies have caused the tensions and that, at any rate, the number of Uighur Islamic State fighters is negligible. But new documents, leaked by an Islamic State defector in early 2016, suggest that Beijing is likely correct about the scale of Uighur involvement with the militant movement — if not about the underlying cause.
A July 20 report from New America, a think tank in Washington, DC, examined more than 4,000 registration records of fighters who joined the Islamic State between mid-2013 and mid-2014. These rudimentary questionnaires asked basic questions of each fighter, including origin, travel history, level of education, former employment, and previous jihad experience. Analysis of the records revealed that at least 114 Chinese Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim Turkic-speaking ethnic group concentrated in the northwestern Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang, entered Islamic State territory during that time period. Nate Rosenblatt, the author of the report and an independent Middle East/North Africa researcher, obtained the data from contacts made during his previous research in Syria.