Tuesday, July 4, 2023

The Uyghurs or Weegers of the Silk Road, Central Asian Muslims of China and Their History

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                    


Who are the Weegers in China?
There are about 12 million Uyghurs, mostly Muslim, living in Xinjiang, (upper left-pink and large land mass), which is officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The Uyghurs speak their own language, which is similar to Turkish, and see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations. Those that can have escaped to Turkey.  
 China accuses Weegers of terrorism so their reaction is a brainwashing education/cruelty program.   That said, China does have a terrorism problem, and has suffered multiple terrorist attacks in recent decades. High-profile cases include:  A March 7, 1997 bus bombing in the Xidan section of Beijing  An October 28, 2013 car bomb explosion in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square  A March 1, 2014 mass knifing attack at the Kunming, Yunnan railway station  A May 22, 2014 car bomb attack at an outdoor market in Urumqi, Xinjiang  The August 17, 2015 bomb attack on Bangkok, Thailand’s Erawan Shrine, which killed 20 people, including seven Chinese citizens  The September 30, 2015 explosion of 17 package bombs in Guangxi Province  The November 2015 killing by Islamic State militants of former Chinese teacher Fan Jinghui and another hostage.                                               
   This Weeger/Uyghur man looks like he is wearing a kippah on his head.  
A Uyghur man works at his shop in Kashgar in the Xinjiang region. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
They are Muslims, which means they are a people who were converted Asians by Muslims after 632, when Mohammad died and his followers set out to convert the world.  
It could be that these people bear some Jewish genes.  Why?  Chinese traveled on the famous Silk Road and so did Jews, trading along the way.  The earliest mention of Kashgar occurs when a Chinese Han dynasty envoy travelled the Northern Silk Road to explore lands to the west so the Chinese were going out of China to discover the West, while the Jews went into China to trade.  

Another early mention of Kashgar is during the Former Han (also known as the Western Han dynasty), when in 76 BCE the Chinese conquered the Xiongnu, Yutian (Khotan), Sulei (Kashgar) and a group of states in the Tarim Basin almost up to the foot of the Tian Shan range.

What was going on in 76 BCE in Jewish history?  

140–63 BCE
The Hasmonean dynasty rules Judea. The Hasmonean kingdom expands outward to Idumea, Samaria, Perea, Galilee, and Gilead due to weakness and dissolution within the Seleucid Empire.  63 BCE  Pompey lay siege to and entered the Temple, Judea became a client kingdom of Rome.                             
The steady collapse of the Seleucid Empire under attacks from the rising powers of the Roman Republic and the Parthian Empire allowed Judea to regain some autonomy; however, in 63 BCE, the kingdom was invaded by the Roman Republic, broken up and set up as a Roman client state.

Ptolemy speaks of Scythia beyond the Imaus, which is in a “Kasia Regio”, probably exhibiting the name from which Kashgar and Kashgaria (often applied to the district) are formed. The country's people practised Zoroastrianism and Buddhism before the coming of Islam.                             


   Our great Jewish genius, Hillel, lived in the 1st century BCE, born in Babylonia, then lived in Eretz Yisrael (not called Palestine until 135 CE).  Good thing he didn't travel on the Silk Road then but remained a scholar.  Uyghers seemed to be a lone tribe apart from the Han people of China.  

In the Book of Han, which covers the period between 125 BCE and 23 CE, it is recorded that there were 1,510 households, 18,647 people and 2,000 persons able to bear arms. By the time covered by the Book of the Later Han (roughly 25 to 170 CE), it had grown to 21,000 households and had 3,000 men able to bear arms.

Recent decades have seen a mass migration of Han Chinese (China's ethnic majority) into Xinjiang, allegedly orchestrated by the state to dilute the minority population there.  China finds them terroristic and instead of using war tactics on them, or Nazi tactics of mass murdering, are using brain washing techniques instead, but to no avail in weaning them from Islam.                                

                   
A Uyghur man in Kashgar--definitely not a black-haired Chinese man.  

 Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghurs are recognized as native to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China. They are one of China's 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. The Uyghurs are recognized by the Chinese government as a regional minority and the titular people of Xinjiang.

The Uyghurs have traditionally inhabited a series of oases scattered across the Taklamakan Desert within the Tarim Basin. These oases have historically existed as independent states or were controlled by many civilizations including China, the Mongols, the Tibetans and various Turkic polities. The Uyghurs gradually started to become Islamized in the 10th century and most Uyghurs identified as Muslims by the 16th century. Islam has since played an important role in Uyghur culture and identity.                               


My father's Jewish line is a rare one.  Besides being Jewish (population is 0.02% of world population, he is about 5% of the Jewish population by being a Y haplogroup Q, now tested as a QBZ67.  DNA traces the line originating in Siberia, Mongolia and parts of Turkey!!! Could these Weegers be our cousins, albeit distant ones?  

                   Tahir Hamut, a Uighur now living in Virginia whose blood was taken by the police in Xinjiang, said it was “inconceivable” that Uighurs there would have consented to give DNA samples.  Credit...Kate Warren for The New York Times.  Our DNA labs do not take blood;  they take spit.  Other people who share my father's Q line are our native Americans of both North and South America.  I bet Tahir is also a Q, though the article I'm reading did not say...drat!.  

This holding onto one's religion shows that the feelings religion gives one is quite different than a person selecting for themselves a political system like a democracy or communism.  Genes involved can be quite different from each other.  Pashtuns from India, Afghanistan and Pakistan were found to be practicing some Jewish rites without knowing their source or reason.  Weegers are holding onto their religion of Islam for dear life;  take it away and they are no more.  

China has also been accused of targeting Muslim religious figures and banning religious practices in the region, as well as destroying mosques and tombs. Uyghur activists say they fear that the group's culture is under threat of erasure.  Many Jews in the past resorted to be burned alive at a stake rather than accept another religion-Christianity.  The Spanish Inquisition did things like that.  China's brain washing does alter people's attitudes, but forcing them only makes them stronger in holding onto their belief system.  

From another source: Among the Eastern Asian and European populations, the Uyghur population has a closer relationship with the Hui (Cangzhou, China), the Hungarian and the Mongolian populations. The proximity between the Uyghur population and the Hui population is consistent with historical records, which indicate that the present Hui population is an admixture of Central Asian, Han, Mongolian, Uyghur and other populations formed around the 13th century. 

The relatively close relationship between the Uyghur population and the Hungarian population is consistent with the Asian origin hypothesis of Hungarians33,34,35,36,37

The proximity between the Uyghur population and the Mongolian population could be speculatively explained by the migration of Orkhon Uyghurs, proposed ancestors of present Uyghurs, from Mongolia to Xinjiang around the 9th century. The migration allows gene flow between the Orkhon Uyghurs and the indigenes in Xinjiang, such as Tocharians, that are genetically similar to northern Europeans28,38,39

The fact that the indigenous population is much larger than the Orkhon Uyghur population may also explain why the Uyghur is genetically closer to European populations than Eastern Asian populations as is shown in this study.

 Out of the 100 Uyghur male samples typed in this study, 99 unique haplotypes were observed. The overall HD is 0.9998 with a DC of 0.9900. The results indicate that the 26 Y-STR loci system provides strong discriminatory power within the Uyghur population due to its high resolution. The system can be potentially used in population genetic studies and forensic practices because of its power to describe variation within the population.

I'll bet that most were Q's.  The article didn't say. 

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