[Buddha-l] buddha-l Digest, Vol 103, Issue 6

[Gad Horowitz]

How typical of members of the self-styled cosmopolitan white Anglo rulers of the universe to assert that THEY have "very little ethnicity"; it is only the lesser breeds without the law , like the Zionist Jews, who continue to committ the sin of having too much ethnicity. 

Sent from my iPad

On 2013-09-13, at 3:22 AM, Antonio Ferreira-Jardim <antonio.jardim at gmail.com> wrote:

> In terms of understanding modern resistance movements in Western China, why
> does it matter when the people we now know as Uighur first began to use
> that name to identify themselves? The fact is that they now refer to
> themselves as ethnically Uighur and it is this identification in addition
> to their religion that forms the basis of the resistance movement in
> Western China. It is not simply the fact that they are Muslims. They view
> themselves as part of an ethnic identity (whether historically accurate or
> not) seeking self-determination. Take the time to read and listen to the
> leaders of these resistance movements, they rarely ever mention the
> religious aspect of their collective identity, instead they emphasise what
> they perceive as their collective ethnic identity and desire to determine
> their own destiny.
> 
> Your discussion regarding the appellation "Hindu" was apropos nothing.
> 
> 
> On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 5:08 PM, Dan Lusthaus <vasubandhu at earthlink.net>wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Dan, do you think that these resistance groups consult wikipedia before
>> determining how they identify? We are not talking here about what the
>> ur-identity of these groups may or may not have been.
>> 
>> If you are talking about ethnicity, and by that you mean something more
>> than modern invented "identities", then that won't do.
>> 
>> This sort of identity-formation has a long historical record. Take the
>> "identity" Hindu. It is originally a term used by invading muslims to
>> indicate all who lived south of the Indus river -- a geographical
>> identifier, not a religious or even "ethnic" label. It originally included
>> not only Vaishnavas, Shaivites, etc., but Jains, Buddhists, etc., anyone
>> south of the river. It became an official ethnic identifier when the
>> British used it for their census, and included even then Jains, etc., for
>> whom privileges, etc. accrued by identifying with certain groups. A label
>> originally given to them by outsiders today has spawned hindutva -- they've
>> added an abstract nominal ending essentializing the identity, with all
>> sorts of questionable historical and universalistic claims.
>> 
>> But to call "Hindus" in either the original or current senses "ethnic" is
>> to employ vague terms to lump together the otherwise difficult to lump
>> together, aside from a certain religious affiliation, which itself is
>> diverse and of plastic contours and borders.
>> 
>> Modern Uighurs began to identify as Uighurs in 1921, at that time
>> acknowledging the absence of historical linkage with the earlier groups to
>> which that name applied. To cite again the Wiki piece:
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> Use of the term "Uyghur" was unknown in Xinjiang until 1934, when the
>> governor Sheng Shicai came to power in there. Sheng adopted the Soviets'
>> ethnographic classification rather than that of the Kuomintang and became
>> the first to promulgate the official use of the term "Uyghur" to describe
>> the Turkic Muslims of Xinjiang.
>> --
>> 
>> Last three words: "Turkic Muslims of Xinjiang".
>> 
>> They call themselves "Uighurs" so that the uninformed will blindly accept
>> their territorial claims and political aspirations, confusing them with,
>> e.g., Tibetan, who have legitimate historical and political claims.
>> 
>> Since you are the one doing the eel-wriggling at this point, why don't we
>> just move onto a more pleasant topic?
>> 
>> 
>> Dan
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