Chinese brutal repression of its Muslim minority would, one expects, lead to cries of condemnation in the Arab press. The Uighurs are an ethnic and religious minority - Turkic and Muslim numbering over 40 million - in a nation where state ideology is atheism and Chinese nationalism is strongly pronounced.

Although separatists exist among the community, Uighurs as a whole just want the freedom to worship and to have their cultural identity respected instead of consistently trying to be erased by the government in Beijing which wants to mandate a homogeneous Chinese identification.

Riots recently broke out between the Chinese authorities and Uighurs. The state police have killed over 150 people and according to exiled Uighur dissident Rebiya Kadeer about 10,000 people have “disappeared”.

All this should arose the emotions of Muslims, no? Alas, only one Muslim nation has strongly condemned the assault: Turkey. The Uighurs are a Turkic people so that isn’t surprising.

Why have the Arabs as a whole stayed silent? For starters, Islamic identification is often exaggerated by Westerns. Many Westerns look at all Muslims and assume that Islam is the main drive in life. Islam is an important factor, but not always the main motivator of emotions. Arabs tend to be Arab nationalist more than Islamic “nationalists”. Thus the Palestinians actuate the strongest collective emotions of Arabs not because the Palestinians are Muslim per se, but because they are fellow Arabs and their suffering is close to home. The Arab-identification cannot be underestimated and one could even point to Turkey’s condemnation as being one rooted in similar ethnic solidarity rather than pan-Islamic sympathy.

But there are other reasons for the silence. Many Arabs view China as the new rising superpower. This superpower, unlike the U.S., doesn’t have a strong alliance with Israel. Many Arabs believe that, unlike the U.S., China sees it in its interests to align with Arabs rather than Israel to secure the precious oil a booming Chinese economy will increasingly need. Thus many Arabs believe that a new superpower China will support their effort to liberate Palestinian and thus do not want to alienate China by criticizing its actions. It is pure political calculation.

Arab prejudice is also at hand. Many Arabs do not view Uighur Muslims as equals. How they justify this truly un-Islamic view? I do not know. But it exists. The Uighurs are made to be the Muslims on the fringe, and thus not worthy of strong support or at least they do not incite a lot of emotions.

And in all of this one has to consider that organizing protests both in the state-controlled or heavily-self-censored media and in the public square isn’t the easy thing to do in the authoritarian Arab world. Many Arab governments prevent any protests not just those directed against the regime for fear of setting a precedent that will come to haunt them.m