The Uyghur Insurgency — Separatist, not Islamist

It tells you something that the main terrorist threat to the Chinese government is Islamist.

I hope Sullivan means it tells you about the Chinese government’s brutal repression of Uyghurs. And I hope he’s not merely repeating Chinese government propaganda equating attacks on the Chinese army — right or wrong — with “terrorism.” Finally, I hope by “Islamist” he meant to say “separatist.” (And most separatist Uyghur political parties are peaceful).

One example of how unhelpful it is to use a looks-like-a-duck categorization-by-religion approach to the evaluation of varied violent movements; should we lump together the IRA and Lebanese Christian militias as well?

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